Australian star Milly Alcock takes centre stage alongside Tim Minchin in Upright, a cross-country tale about two lost souls as they learn about the bonds of family.

She plays Meg, a not-so-typical feisty teenager who has zero filter and zero time for nonsense – which gets her into as much trouble as it does get her out of it.

Street smart and wily, she’s a gifted liar which helps to spin a story, which is great protective armour for her when it comes to hiding her own demons and sadness at her own circumstances.

Speaking ahead of the release of Upright season one on Sky Atlantic, Milly spoke of bringing Meg to life, working alongside Tim Minchin in this two-hander series, and the odd moment she ran into a ‘real life Meg’ while filming.

She’s angry, they’re both kind of angry, there’s a minor car crash/collision situation which is where we meet both of our characters and where they’re introduced, so that kind of weird and odd situation is the first of many that we see them through, throughout the series.

Meg is a real force in the series, how much preparation did you do for the role and did you imagine a backstory for her to inform the character before you started filming?

With the prep and the work I just made sure that I knew everything that was going on so I re-read over all of the scripts again and again just so I fully understood them because we were shooting pretty much every scene, every day, and you just needed to be on top with the dialogue a bit. It is so back and forth and very conversational.

I didn’t do a lot of proper prep. I don’t have a method or particular style of doing it, I love to make playlists. I think that’s really important for the character and we got sent through some playlists and some songs that they were thinking of using and I kind of incorporated them.

This really helped with all of the emotional bits in the show so kind of just breaking down what she wants to show… which is really important because although she’s scared, she wants to appear aggressive.

Yeah, I was given all of the episodes, so I knew her backstory. I knew what to expect. I just needed to figure out how to show it

There’s a lot of teaching going on, they both help each other. I think Lucky teaches Meg to slow down, to not be as angry and sad, good things can happen. I think Meg is very pessimistic in the way that she views the world. Although she’s incredibly smart and witty and can read between the lines she’s terrified of saying that she’s scared and she’s quite vulnerable.

I think he teaches her a different life because obviously their lives are very different with Lucky coming from the city and Meg from the country. I think it opens her eyes to these sorts of opportunities, and I think Meg teaches Lucky a bit - she sort of grounds him. I think he gets in his own head and gets angry and frustrated and she’s always there to prove him wrong.

We got along really well which was great when you’re stuck in a car with someone for a couple of months. He was really wonderful to work with, I learned a lot from him from a professional point of view but also just a life point of view. I think those things are really important.

I met his family and everything which was really lovely and I felt very welcomed. I didn’t feel younger, I didn’t feel like an “other”, which is really good.

I think they’re similar enough to get along, but I think its Meg’s ability to just call him out for

everything which makes them get along so well. She pushes him to go, you know, more than he does but I think the bond is just really great because of the writing.

The whole hay bale thing in the first ep really kicks off the whole cusp of what the story is about and obviously those few monologues are very important within the unravelling of the show and what we learn about both of them. They are who’s who in that monologue.

We met an actual Meg, which was weird. We were in the middle of nowhere and we have extras come on set and this girl looks very similar to me about my height, my size, but she was actually driving to go see her dying Dad and was illegally driving across up to Perth.

She was an extra and we just started talking because you know when people have that thing where you’re like “I want to talk to you, you look interesting” so I just started talking. She was telling us about her life and we were a bit like “s**t… this is actually Meg.” The ongoing joke was that they would re-cast me midway through the shoot.

Jessica Barden, she was a huge inspiration for Meg. Alyssa in End of the F-ing World for me, I think she’s great. I think we’d get along. I hope she can drive because I can’t. I need someone to make the road trip happen and someone who can actually drive, so probably her!

It is about family and I think everyone has their own family things that go on. I hope that it makes people more understanding and kind of value, like, it’s all we have and you only get one. But also understanding that family doesn’t have to be by blood because Meg becomes family by the end of it, so I just hope that people become nicer to each other.