Ella Lily Hyland is the need-to-know star of Fifteen-Love, the #MeToo show from Line of Duty producers about a teenage tennis player and her abusive coach

Trigger warning: sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Fifteen-Love, Amazon Prime Video’s #MeToo show about a teenage tennis player and her abusive coach, is must-see TV and at the centre of it all is Ella Lily Hyland’s ace performance. For his latest GLAMOUR UK column, Josh Smith Meets, Josh talks to Ella about the intense preparations she undertook to bring this abusive relationship to the screen.

“I’ve just dyed my eyebrows blonde for art, so I am thriving,” Ella Lily Hyland immediately tells me Zooming in from her homeland of Ireland where she is shooting a secret pilot.

Ella is truly thriving right now. This latest mystery project will be one of many roles that come Ella’s way after her first major screen role in Amazon Prime Video’s new psychological TV thriller, Fifteen-Love has received rave reviews. And if you haven’t watched it yet, Fifteen-Love is essential viewing but you wouldn’t expect anything less from the producers of Line of Duty and Virgil.

Fifteen-Love begins with 17 year old tennis ace, Justine Pierce (Ella) who, whilst readying herself for the semi-finals of the French Open, kisses her coach Glenn (Poldark’s Aidan Turner) in the locker room. But all is not what it seems. As the match reaches its conclusion, Justine collapses on court in pain with a severe fractured wrist, an injury which ends her career. When we flash forward to the present day we find Justine partying hard whilst holding down a job as a sports physiotherapist at her old sporting academy and her life comes crashing down around her again when her ex-coach returns and Justine accuses him of sexual assault.

There truly aren’t enough adjectives to describe Ella’s performance in the show: she’s mesmerising, intense, powerful and vulnerable all at the same time and it’s a pitch perfect nuanced performance that is needed for sensitively portraying the abusive relationships that can develop within imbalances in power. A TV show exploring abuse in tennis is timely too, as former world number four, Jelena Dokic recently shared images of the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of father after losing a match and Grand slam champion, Pam Shriver recently revealed she had a traumatic relationship with her 50-year-old coach when she was just 17 years old. She has since called for more rigorous policing of the relationships between young athletes and their coaches.