Alycia Debnam-Carey makes the need to believe a dangerous promise painfully understandable. Her work as Milla in Apple Cider Vinegar is a strong reason to look beyond the survival stories that have dominated her television work.
Fi1m perspective
In Apple Cider Vinegar (2025), Milla Blake wants a reassuring health claim to be true. Alycia Debnam-Carey makes that desire understandable without treating Milla as a fool. We were moved by Milla’s fear, because Debnam-Carey makes it clear why a comforting answer might be so difficult to question. Kaitlyn Dever gives the series’ central liar, Belle, an unsettling plausibility; Debnam-Carey gives us an equally good reason to stay when the story moves away from her. We recommend her performance, though the programme too often interrupts the people it ought to let us understand.
She has had plenty of practice playing young women in crisis. Her breakthrough as Lexa in Jason Rothenberg’s The 100 (2014) placed leadership and vulnerability in a dystopian setting. As Alicia Clark in Fear the Walking Dead (2015–2023), she had eight seasons to develop a survivor and also directed an episode. Her return to Australian productions through The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (2023), playing Alice, and then Apple Cider Vinegar offered a useful change of setting. The pressure on her characters need not come from a ruined world to hold our attention.
The writing by Samantha Strauss, Angela Betzien and Anya Beyersdorf gives the people harmed by misinformation a place alongside the person spreading it. That matters to Debnam-Carey’s contribution: Milla has to be someone we want to understand, not simply evidence of the damage done. Her performance rewards that attention, making the desire for reassurance credible without asking us to endorse her judgement. The difficulty is how often the series moves us elsewhere. Its restless structure works against the patience both the writers and Debnam-Carey bring to Milla.
We would like to see her given more contemporary roles with this much interest in why people make mistakes. There is enough in Milla to justify a drama that stays with her for longer, rather than repeatedly returning to somebody else. Start with Apple Cider Vinegar, allowing for its habit of changing the subject just as someone becomes interesting.
Biography
Alycia Jasmin Debnam-Carey is an Australian actress. She was born on 20 July 1993 in Sydney and attended Newtown High School of the Performing Arts, where she studied classical percussion.
Debnam-Carey made her screen debut in the 2003 short film Martha's New Coat. Her feature film debut came in Into the Storm (2014). She is known for her roles as Lexa in The 100 (2014–2016) and Alicia Clark in Fear the Walking Dead (2015–2023), on which she also directed an episode. Other credits include The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (2023) and Apple Cider Vinegar (2025) as Milla Blake. She received AACTA Award nominations for the former and for her performance in the latter.
