Teddie Allen Finds Her Own Spotlight in MobLand

Teddie Allen had rarely attracted notice from strangers before Glastonbury Festival last year. She was accustomed to running into acquaintances at Worthy Farm, having attended the event since childhood. Her father, the charismatic actor Keith Allen, is such a devoted fan that he once directed a play inspired by the festival. This year, however, some of the people approaching her were genuine fans, because the first season of MobLand had premiered a few months earlier.

Teddie, the younger half-sister of singer Lily Allen and actor Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones, John Wick), appeared alongside Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan in the stylish gangster drama. Although her first-season part was supporting, she quickly made an impression. “People would come up to me and I’d think that I knew them,” Allen recalls, cringing. “But they were just like, ‘I love the show.’” Fortunately, her friends sometimes intervened to turn down selfie requests when she was “quite drunk because it was late in the day”.

It must have been disorienting for Allen, who was only 19 at the time, but she adapted quickly and can now recognise the irony of her increased visibility. “I remember growing up [and] being quite an insecure person. I would be like, ‘Mum, I feel like everyone’s looking at me,’ and she’d be like, ‘No, don’t be ridiculous,’” Allen says. “But she can’t say that anymore because sometimes they are!”

It may sound minor, but Allen is likely to be recognised even more often now that season two of MobLand premieres later this month. Her character, Gina Da Souza, the teenage daughter of mafia fixer Harry (Hardy) and his weary wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt), has a substantially larger role in the new episodes. Allen effectively conveys Gina’s confidence and capability as the teenager establishes her own criminal enterprise beyond her father’s chaos, while suggesting the hurt concealed beneath her impassive exterior.

“I just think she comes into herself so much more,” Allen says while meeting NME at a lively brasserie near her West London flat. Coincidentally, it is the same restaurant where her sister Lily was interviewed in 2018. Although this is Teddie’s first profile, she arrives alone, without a publicist for reassurance, and chats over Earl Grey for well beyond the allotted time. Easygoing and willing to laugh at the sometimes absurd coverage that comes with being an Allen, she seems comfortable with the attention.

At a television premiere in February, one gossip site described her as “Lily Allen’s rarely-seen sister” – an obvious piece of clickbait. “I was like: ‘Excuse me, I go outside all the time!’” she says, chuckling. When the first season of MobLand aired, another site recycled quotations from a joint interview Allen once gave with Keith. “[The gist] was: ‘nepo baby discovered’,” she recalls. “I was like, guys, I’ve been here on the internet literally the whole time!”

“In MobLand, I have to say things like, ‘You fucking c**t!’ Helen Mirren tells me to get on with it…”

Gina has more pressing concerns than questionable headlines. “You get beyond that angsty teenage thing she’s got going on in the first season,” Allen says. “[The new season] delves more into the actual complexities of her relationship with her dad, and a lot of that comes because she wants his love.” Fed up with both parents, Gina leaves the family home and moves into a Hackney flat with her boyfriend, Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon).

Eddie is the grandson of Harry’s ruthless employers, Conrad and Maeve Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren). The young couple sustain themselves by extorting unsuspecting YouTubers, although Eddie admits that Gina is the operation’s true mastermind. When Maeve orders her grandson to end the relationship and refers to Gina as a “little whore”, it becomes clear that Allen’s character is viewed either as a threat or, at minimum, a dangerous distraction.

Although Gina is furious with her father, whom Allen says has made her feel “boxed into” a life on London’s criminal fringes, she has clearly inherited much of his talent. “Obviously, through the years she’s learned all this stuff, maybe even subconsciously from watching her dad… and being around the Harrigans,” Allen explains. “And so she’s like, ‘Why shouldn’t I use it?’ And she’s good at it – really good at it.”

Allen is now accustomed to sharing scenes with an accomplished cast that also includes Paddy Considine, Toby Jones and two-time Oscar nominee Janet McTeer, but some of her first-season interactions with Hardy and Mirren were initially intimidating. “The script is so vulgar and you’re usually so in their face, [saying things] like ‘you fucking cunt!’” she notes.

She is not exaggerating. As expected from a series partly produced and directed by Guy Ritchie, MobLand freely explores the coarser corners of the English language. “I remember being like, ‘I don’t know if I can say this’, but [Mirren] was like, ‘Just get on with it, it’s fine,’” Allen continues. “And then her character’s like, ‘I’ll kill you, you little bitch’ – but as soon as the camera cuts, it’s all just normal [again].”

When Allen was cast in MobLand shortly before filming began in November 2024, she was working in a restaurant. Her part was initially described as “very small”, so she travelled from her home in Stroud, Gloucestershire, to the production’s outer London set. She also concealed a broken ankle, fearing that mentioning it might jeopardise the role. “I kept taking the [protective] boot off to go into work,” she recalls. “I would be limping around, and people would be like, ‘You alright?’”

The decision not to disclose the injury paid off as Gina was gradually written into more scenes. Allen now regards MobLand as her largest role so far, particularly with Gina playing a more central part, but she was not entirely new to acting. As a child, she appeared in the 2015 television film Cider With Rosie, based on Laurie Lee’s memoir, and the 2016 adaptation of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows And Amazons. She also appeared in the 2018 fantasy adventure Four Kids And It, before setting her acting ambitions aside as she approached adulthood.

“I didn’t enjoy it. I think I thought I would,” Allen says of her earliest screen work. Despite the brasserie becoming increasingly busy and noisy as lunchtime approaches, she does not avoid this more serious part of the conversation. “I think being away from home with a chaperone… while being quite an anxious child, was not the best experience in terms of a little developing brain,” she says. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to be in those high-pressure environments. I just want to go to school and do normal job things.’”

“My parents never minded either way if I became an actor”

Acting runs deeply through Allen’s family. Her father, Keith, has accumulated nearly 150 film and television credits, while her mother, Tamzin Malleson, is also a successful actor known for British television dramas including Midsomer Murders and Unforgotten. Allen says her “parents never minded either way” about her pursuing the profession, allowing her to “kind of put [her acting career] to sleep” during much of her adolescence.

A temporary opportunity to leave Stroud rekindled her interest in performing. Allen describes the Gloucestershire town as “a small town where everyone knows everything about you,” so at 17 she accepted a position in Norway while working on the fourth season of the stark crime drama Wisting. She enjoyed the experience enough to return to acting. After landing another substantial television role in last year’s Malice, playing a member of an affluent family targeted by Jack Whitehall’s Machiavellian manservant, she felt ready to leave sixth form permanently.

Has she sought guidance from her parents? “I mean, I talk to my mum sometimes about scripts if I have an audition,” Allen says. “I think when I was younger, I was worried about the fame [aspect] but I was aware that I could always speak to them or Lily if it did get to a point where I felt really freaked out by it. But I think I thought I would be more freaked out about it [than I have been].” Despite the occasional sensational headline, Allen says she is taking the experience “all in my stride”.

Her prospects look promising. MobLand has recently been renewed for a third season – something Allen said she would “love to do” during an interview conducted shortly before the announcement. She will next appear opposite J.K. Simmons and Felicity Jones in The Thing That Hurts, an upcoming Brussels-shot film in which she plays a “troubled teenage girl who’s very different from Gina” in a story she describes as “bittersweet”.

As for her next project, Allen says: “I’d like to do more indie stuff, but then that’s what every actor says,” she adds with a self-deprecating eye roll. “And I’d be interested in playing with horror: a cool gothic horror. But I just want to do as much as possible.” Once a child actor who “hated” watching her own performances, she now finds satisfaction in every stage of the process. “I think getting older, you just kind of let go of that – and it’s freeing,” she says. “Even though it is a serious environment [on set], you can definitely play around more. And you get to meet so many great people, especially on a show like MobLand.”

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