Ella Purnell dreads being typecast for her 'poop finger' in Fallout: 'This finger is the bane of my life'

Lucy smiling while using her pip boy
(Image credit: Amazon MGM Studios)

Ella Purnell has doubled up with videogame TV series in the last few years, starring in both Arcane as Jinx and Amazon's Fallout show as Lucy MacLean. Obviously the main commonality between the two is that they both take inspiration from popular videogames—League of Legends and Fallout, but another smaller link is that Purnell has lost a finger in both shows.

In Fallout, Lucy loses her finger after a violent altercation with The Ghoul and then later gets a new one reattached by the courteous Mister Handy, Snip Snip. Then, in Arcane Season 2 Jinx gets her finger shot off by Caitlyn mid-fight. While the loss in Arcane didn't take any extra effort—since Purnell was just a voice actor for that series—it's taken a higher toll in Fallout.

When asked whether she's worried about being typecast as someone who loses fingers during an IGN FanExpo interview, Purnell replies: "That would be one of the worst things to happen to me.

Ella Purnell talks having a "poop finger" while filming Fallout! #ign #arcane #fallout @FANEXPOHQ - YouTube Ella Purnell talks having a
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"Do you have any idea how annoying it is to have that finger painted on me every single day," Purnell continues. "This finger is the bane of my life." The special effects team needs to make it look like Lucy's finger isn't her own.

"They paint it, but this is the finger—I don't know if you guys know—that you use the most, for everything all the time," Purnell says. "Then you have to take it off, put it back on, it's very annoying. I just have this 'poop finger' all the time. Or I go to Whole Foods and I'm picking up the vegetables and people are looking at me like 'Stop touching the vegetables with your 'poop finger'. It's just terrible."

Also, if you're wondering, 'poop finger' is a technical term that the head of makeup Mike Harvey apparently coined during Season 1's shoot. "He started calling it 'poop finger' and it caught like wildfire, everybody started saying it, and yeah that's the name of it now," Purnell says. But the 'poop finger' isn't even the most impressive special effects job in Fallout, I think that prize has to go to Walton Goggins and his incredible Ghoul makeover.

Elie Gould
News Writer

Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.

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