Teddie Allen Still Can’t Believe She’s on TV
4 min readTeddie Allen is in her London apartment wearing hot-pink joggers, still coming down from the night before, when she attended the season 2 premiere of MobLand in vintage Galliano. It was a pinch-me moment for the 20-year-old actor, who, not long ago, assumed her role as Gina Da Souza in Paramount+’s gangster drama would amount to just a few lines.
Allen didn’t anticipate just how successful the series would become. “Even when we were filming, we didn’t realize how many people would watch it,” she says. “We all kept saying to each other, ‘Do you think people are gonna like this?’” They did—so much so that the MobLand premiere broke streaming records on Paramount+, placing it among the ranks of 1923 and Landman.
When Allen first started filming, her role playing the daughter of Harry Da Souza (the “fixer” for the Harrigan crime family, played by Tom Hardy) felt small enough that she could still imagine slipping back into normal life. She even thought she could keep her waitressing job. Her extended family, apparently, did too. “My mom’s cousins had been watching it, and they didn’t realize it was me,” she says. “For the first three episodes, they just didn’t clock it.” But as the series went on, Gina became a recurring character. Soon Allen was traveling more frequently from her parents’ house to the set in London. She stopped making her restaurant shifts—and ultimately got fired.
Allen grew up in a family of performers in a village in Gloucestershire, near Bristol, that she describes as “lovely and a little bit peculiar.” (“If you hit a cow, you are shunned by society,” she notes.) She started acting in children’s programs and television projects at around age 7. Her dad, Keith Allen, is known for his role in Trainspotting, while her mom, Tamzin Malleson, starred in Midsomer Murders. Her half brother Alfie Allen played Theon Greyjoy on Game of Thrones, and her half sister Lily Allen is currently on a global tour with her latest album, West End Girl. But even more than genetics, Allen thinks her penchant for acting stems from her childhood love of reading. “In a book, you’ve got so much space to understand every side of a character,” she says. “Even when someone is objectively bad, it’s more nuanced than that. Sometimes in films, because everything’s a bit more condensed, it’s quite easy for characters to be one-dimensional. But in a show, because we have six months of filming, you have so much time to think things through, and to add on, and to play with it.”
Top, skirt, baguette, socks, pumps, Fendi.
How did you approach season 2 of MobLand?
In season 2, everyone had so much space and time across the episodes to develop and add layers to their characters. To be able to do that and to play something that is more than just an angsty teenage girl was lovely, because it’s so easy to just go into the anger, especially when playing someone like Gina, who is very angry—and rightly so—but we get to see more sides to her, and you get a better understanding of the effects that growing up in that environment had on her and how it will shape the rest of her life.
You have had costars like Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren. What have you learned from them?
So much just from watching them, but specifically, less is more. A lot of Tom’s lines are so simple, but he brings such intensity.
What were they like on set?
Pierce is the proper star. Maybe it’s because he was Bond, maybe it’s because of the sunglasses and the way he dresses, but there’s a proper star quality about Pierce. They’re all so good at commanding the room and settling things down, which is much appreciated. They walk into a room, and it’s just focused. As soon as the camera stops rolling, it’s just like having a chat with anyone.
You have a role in the forthcoming film, The Thing That Hurts, which is being executive produced by Wes Anderson. What was it like working with him?
I have always wanted to work with Wes Anderson. That was such a wonderful job. The cast was all so brilliant; I got to work with J. K. Simmons, who was amazing to me. It was quite surreal to go from the chaos of MobLand to just be sitting there in these little brasseries and delis with those people, working on a Wes Anderson production. It was mental.
What were you able to channel or explore in that role?
[My character] Keaton was so interesting because she’s a girl similar in age to Gina. And she is also traumatized for different reasons and struggling. But her anger is a lot sadder and a lot less explosive and targeted—it’s of someone who’s struggling. It was nice to explore a range of emotions and grief.
Looking at the horizon, what are some things you’d like to do?
For stupid reasons, I want to do a period piece—because I want to wear a dress, a proper Bridgerton dress. I just think that’d be so fun.
Lead Image: Top, skirt, baguette, socks, pumps, Fendi.
Hair by Stelios Chondros at Julian Watson Agency; makeup by Bea Sweet for Huda Beauty; manicure by Sabrina Gayle at The Arch Agency; set design by Paula Salinas; produced by Giorgio Tsintoukidis at The Curated.
A version of this story will appear in the November 2026 issue of ELLE.