Ella Hunt Is Bringing It All Together

Ella Hunt has been working a long time. The New York City-based actor and musician, who earlier this year released her debut solo record Blindspot, and whose role as AJ Pascarelli, a Bostonian “corporate baddie” in Mindy Kaling and Charlie Grandy’s comedy series Not Suitable For Work is earning her standout reviews from critics, was a born performer. As a child growing up in the English countryside, “I would sing for anyone that would have me,” she recalls. And at the sweet age of nine, prompted by a family friend who worked in the music industry, Hunt began writing her own songs. “I began playing by ear, writing songs out of a desire to be playing what I was hearing in my head. Pretty quickly it became a very soothing outlet for me, emotionally.”

Hunt’s childhood, spent on a farm in Devon, passed in a kind of tranquil, quiet beauty, more than half an hour away from the nearest town. Because her mother, a sculptor, and her father, an art dealer and artist manager, together introduced her and her siblings to the buzz and energy of London’s art world while focusing at home on the importance of boredom—giving them each space to experience it—Hunt discovered early on what meant the most to her, and what she could really do with it. “I think it’s hard to aspire to things we don’t see,” she says. “In that way I feel really, really fortunate that I grew up in a community of people who believed that was possible.”

While attending what she describes as a rural English boarding school, Hunt was scouted at ten by a talent agent for her role in a school play, and she began her first auditions. “I was not a very successful child actor,” she says with a smile. But she found she loved being on stage and discovered there “that first thrill that I could make people laugh,” which sustained her interest long enough to find success and pleasure as a teenager. “I knew that I loved it,” she says. “But I didn’t know how to enjoy it. And I find joy is really essential to any kind of artistry.”

In 2017, Hunt had her breakout film role as the lead in Anna and the Apocalypse, John McPhail’s British indie horror Christmas musical. When she first agreed to the project, she recalls friends teasing her—‘you don’t have to do this zombie musical.’ But something about it pulled her in, and the experience of making it was, she says, fantastic. And then the film did really well. Her role in it, both as actor and singer, put her on the map for future prospects. When she was then cast in Dickinson as Sue Gilbert, across Hailee Steinfeld’s Emily Dickinson as her sister-in-law, friend, and lover, Hunt moved to New York, where she fell in love with the city, “someone in it” (her now-husband Thomas Bartlett, the musician Doveman), and wound up staying. She says New York was a city that changed things for her in that it “opened up joy;” more inspired creativity and creation followed.

I meet Hunt over Zoom from my Los Angeles bungalow. She lives in Harlem. “The internet seems to think I live in Brooklyn Heights,” she says, laughing. “I do not.” Talking through a screen, Hunt seems full of energy for most things. She has an almost childlike sincerity in her demeanor, combined with an underlying intensity that makes me believe she does not have a hard time standing up for herself. I also get the sense she feels a fierce protectiveness over the people she cares about. Over the course of an hour, cheerfulness is the dominant takeaway. The only moment I see it stick is when she mentions Blindspot. The album, she tells me, was written in the wake of her half-sister Emily’s death from brain cancer in July of 2023. “For the first few months,” she says. “I was afraid to write about that period at all.” But finally she did, and once she started, “it really came out like vomit.”

Blindspot, whose thirteen tracks run a total of about forty-five minutes of sweeping piano ballads and heartfelt vocals, was produced by Jimmy Hogarth (The 1975, Amy Winehouse) and recorded partly in London and partly in New York; it was released in June via Historical Fiction Records. And Hunt says it was written, nearly in its entirety, over the course of a couple of weeks in late 2023 and early 2024. “It was very unconscious—in that way that can feel so euphoric and impenetrable as a writer,“ she explains. “When I come out of that space, I can’t imagine ever being able to get back into it.” Hunt says some of the songs began as poems, some lyrics were written alongside their melodies; the overall experience boosted her confidence—as a person and an artist—and held her through the process of grief. “I’m not sure it’s a conscious unlocking so much as a personal evolution that is really hard to put words to,“ she says. “Grief definitely sped up that process a lot. Naught to sixty in a few weeks.”

Now, Hunt is “actually resting.” As a British expat, she missed the tradition of Sunday roasts, so she and her husband are carrying the baton by hosting Sunday dinners for family and friends every week, because, as we agree, “that community and coming together around food” is kind of the point of life.

Not Suitable for Work is now streaming on Hulu. Blindspot is out now.