Warrior Nun is the next Netflix series you need to binge-watch. The all-new series is the epitome of fierce. Warrior Nun follows a 19-year-old woman named Ava, played by Alba Baptista, who wakes up in a morgue with a new lease on life and a divine artifact embedded in her back. She discovers she is now part of an ancient order that has been tasked with fighting demons on Earth, and powerful forces representing both heaven and hell want to find and control her.
HollywoodLife talked with Alba ahead of the show’s launch to get the scoop on the show. The actress revealed that she fell in love with the character of Ava instantly and teased Ava’s main “struggle” this season. Ava will be “torn” between her responsibilities as a halo bearer and being a normal 19-year-old. Read our full Q&A now.
What stood out about the role of Ava and Warrior Nun that made you really want to immerse yourself in this world?
Alba Baptista: This character is just so special in the way that the preparation for the character was so different because, usually, you have to do some sort of research for every character. With this one, I really just needed to get loose of all of my insecurities and all of my perfectionism. Ava’s inner child is so present throughout the whole show, and I think that’s such a special characteristic for a character. That made me fall in love with her instantly, just her naive state of mind and purity in a way. It’s a very different lead character I would say, especially for a series that has the sort of genre of fantasy and comic action. It’s very unpredictable.
With this being a show about warrior nuns, did you have to do any type of physical training for the role?
Alba Baptista: I did. So I arrived about a month earlier before we started shooting and a couple weeks before the rest of the cast just to do some general physical training, even though my character isn’t supposed to be a professional in all the fight scenes. But the other characters and the other girls, they had to do serious training. They were amazing. They were some real-life ninjas.
In the trailer, we know that Ava does become the new halo bearer. How does she feel about that? What can you tease about her arc as she steps into this new role?
Alba Baptista: Ava’s struggle throughout the whole season is that she’s torn between assuming the responsibilities of being a halo bearer or just following her desires and dreams. So this will be her general conflict throughout the show. She’ll definitely run away from the responsibilities for a little while because it is a lot to take in to be the halo bearer and to be the chosen one, which she doesn’t believe she is. It’s that classic Matrix Neo situation.
On the other side of that, she does get a second chance at life. How does she handle the knowledge that she was dead and now she has this chance to be alive again?
Alba Baptista: Ava is tasting freedom for the first time in her life after being liberated from an abusive orphanage and being a prisoner of her body and mind. As a result, she wants to experience everything at once, which does lead to her becoming quite reckless in her ambition. But she embarks on this fish out of water journey, receiving an accelerated education in all facets of life.
What can you tease about the dynamics that Ava has with the rest of the nuns?
Alba Baptista: She’ll definitely start as an outcast because she comes later on and this order has existed for so many years and these girls grew up with as their reality. Just as the spectator, Ava is getting to know all of this for the first time. So it’ll take a little while because this character also survived her childhood and teenage years in a very lonely reality, so she had to create her own defenses and be sort of the lone wolf. She’ll have to adapt to become a sister with the other girls and the girls with her.