leads her to learn about numerous kidnappings. Keen promises that the largely anticipated season 3, which will premiere in December, will be full of new adventures for Lyra and company. You could say Keen and Lyra grew up togeth- er. Inseparable as ever, the two investigated first love, sexual awakenings, and dealing with death and grief simultaneously. Keen started filming His Dark Materials in peak adolescence; The world has accordingly watched her and Lyra metamorphose into adults. “I think that was why Jane Tranter (ex- ecutive producer) decided to hire an actress who was the age of the character,” Keen remarks. “Be- cause it’s really been quite easy for me to empa- thize with the growth of Lyra—I was going through a real-life version of what Lyra was going through.” His Dark Materials is significant and intel- ligent, particularly when it presents the idea of dæmons. Dæmons are the physical manifestation of one’s inner self. They present themselves as an- imals capable of human intelligence and speech. Their purpose? To help understand one’s soul. Ly- ra’s dæmon is a Pine Marten named Pantalaimon. Keen elaborates, “I think one of the best meta- phors in His Dark Materials is: when you’re a kid you have a very clear sense of self, and then when you hit your teenage years, you don’t anymore. As you get older, what you have to do is kind of try to get to that place you were in when you were a kid, but from an adult point of view, which I think is what happens with Lyra and Pantalaimon. You have to break the bone to rebuild it again.” In other words, dæmons equate to healing your inner child. Keen lives up to this idea effortlessly. On her co-star Lin-Manuel Miranda’s last day on set, they filmed in the Brecon Beacons in Wales, amongst luscious quarries and mountains.The 5 AM air was brisk, and the actors held hot water bottles to their chests. “As we all know, Lin is an amazing rapper and an amazing freestyler,” Keen remembers of navigating the moment with youthful openness. “He came up with the idea of doing freestyle rap battles. However, everyone was super bad except for him. Then we had warm tea and played hot hands. It was childish and just very fun.” As of late, Keen has taken on a project that she can’t disclose much about, but she did tell me it involved intricate preparation. A testament to her boldness, she tackles the challenge openly. “ I feel invincible when I’ve done something that I was too scared to do before,” she asserts. “For example, I’m doing a job now for which I need to do some training, and every time I manage to do something that I wasn’t able to do the day before it’s amazing.” We might have skipped talk of the weather, but one does wonder what the forecast might be like for Dafne Keen this upcoming sea- son? We wait and see. But rest assured, she won’t be needing an umbrella.
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