His Dark Materials star Simone Kirby has opened up about what it was like for Dr Mary Malone to meet the Mulefa in season 3, as well as the difficulties of learning a new language for the scenes.

Ever since the BBC series made its debut in 2019, fans have been bowled by the extremely faithful TV adaptation of Sir Philip Pullman’s beloved book trilogy.

One character in particular who’s captured the hearts of viewers has been the portrayal of physicist Dr Mary Malone, played by Jimmy’s Hall and Notes on Blindness actor Simone.

During a recent conversation with Metro.co.uk, Simone shed light on a pivotal moment from the third and final season – when Mary meets the Mulefa for the first time.

In the books, the Mulefa are fascinating and highly intelligent creatures from another world who are able to see Dust with the naked eye, and in the original source material have a diamond-shaped skeleton.

Mary meets the Mulefa, becoming particularly close with one of the sentient beings called Atal, and is able to learn their language – which uses both words and the movement of their trunks – to communicate with them.

Mary Malone forms a strong bond with the Mulefa (Picture: BBC)

While His Dark Materials frequently used puppeteers to film scenes with humans interacting with their daemons, Simone was able to finally work with them in the third season as they depicted the Mulefa, describing the experience as ‘quite theatrical’.

Simone explained how the puppeteer would stand ‘behind this big head’, but she had to remember that in the final cut, the Mulefa’s bodies would also be visible.

Recalling her rehearsals with two puppeteers called Elliott and Olivia, she said: ‘We tried to work out how we’d move around each other and not bang into each other. I had to keep in mind that I’m just seeing the head but there’s this huge body behind it as well, so I can’t walk through it.

‘There was a lot of rehearsal, a lot of working out to do.’

A glimpse at the puppet Simone acted opposite in her scenes (Picture: Bad Wolf/BBC/HBO)

After working out the logistics with the puppeteers, Simone would also have to do certain takes without having a puppeteer to act opposite, so she had to remember what she previously did and replicate it to ‘thin air’.

‘It was tricky and a whole thing to get used to as well – trying to emote to thin air is odd,’ she stated.

The physicality of working with a puppeteer was one thing – but learning the Mulefa’s language was a whole other challenge of its own.

‘[The Mulefa] didn’t speak English. So the barrier between Mary and Atal getting to know each other is a lot to do with language and how they’re trying to communicate with each other,’ Simone explained.

The actor outlined how learning the language wasn’t just about picking up words and phrases, but also figuring out the correct movements so that Mary could articulate herself authentically.

‘I worked with a linguist where it’s not just about the language and seeing what’s on the page as well. It’s about how the Mulefa would speak given that they have the trunk and the shape of their mouth and how they can’t really move them,’ she shared.

‘So certain sounds have to be “ah” sounds rather than “ooh” sounds, things like that, having to learn all that. So we worked quite hard on it and again, I would have to sort of listen and repeat and listen and repeat and then I’d have to make videos of myself doing little scenes, little snippets of scenes to see what was coming across well. So it was a lot of hard work.’

Despite having to grasp a new fictional language, Simone was given the freedom to do small bits of improv in the scenes as well.

‘I had times where we were on set I’d be asked, “Well do you want to throw in a line?” so I’d have to go back to my little dictionary and pluck the words and pull together lines so I could improv a little bit,l which is tricky when it’s a new language. So it was interesting,’ she recollected, clarifying that she wouldn’t improvise for ‘reams of monologue’, but only small exchanges.

‘You get used to it after a while and then it begins to sound more natural, but it was great.’

His Dark Materials returns tonight at 7pm on BBC One and is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

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Mary Malone forms a strong bond with the Mulefa in the third and final season.