Siena Kelly

Amy, the young woman Siena Kelly plays in Adult Material (2020), is entering the pornography industry. The part brings together vulnerability and sexual confidence, a combination that keeps recurring in Kelly’s casting. Her naturalistic delivery suits this material: the woman’s feelings can still matter when sex is the first thing the premise asks us to notice. We value that steadiness, particularly in work that could easily turn its characters into examples of a social problem.

Adult Material is good, messy television whose compelling centre is Hayley Squires, and our recommendation rests chiefly on her. We were frustrated by its crowded storytelling, because its questions about consent and power sometimes compete for attention. Yet it takes those questions seriously without supplying an easy moral response. There is enough humour to keep its difficult subject from becoming an exercise in solemnity. Amy was a breakthrough part for Kelly, but that is different from saying she carries the programme.

Her earlier television work included Rhoda Swartz in Vanity Fair (2018) and a supporting part in Temple (2019). The move towards leading genre television is clearer in Domino Day (2024), where she plays a modern witch, and her role as Maria in Black Mirror (2025). Naturalism is useful in such elaborate premises, which still need people with recognisable feelings. These parts ask more of her than fitting neatly into someone else’s ensemble.

Her dance training helps explain the physical approach that runs through her stage and screen work. The theatre parts complicate the picture: Nora in A Doll’s House (2024) sits alongside Anna in Ava Pickett’s 1536 (2025). They are useful reminders that a recurring type of screen role need not define an actor’s possibilities, even if it makes casting easier. For the next television part, we would welcome something that does not begin with her sexual confidence.