In a cultural landscape that has inundated, if not altogether walloped us over the head, with content about male murderers, Ella Purnell finds herself in a decidedly unique position.

She stars as Rhiannon Lewis, the underappreciated and oft-ignored wallflower turned serial killer in the dark comedy “Sweetpea” which is currently streaming on Starz and is based on the popular book series by C. J. Skuse.

Rhiannon’s breaking point looks quite different than most people’s. Traumatized by memories of a childhood punctuated with vicious bullying and bereft at the more recent death of her father, the beleaguered administrative assistant soon finds solace in slashing her way to some semblance of justice. Viewers can hear her catalog “People I’d like to kill” at various points throughout the series. Let’s just say it’s a lengthy list.

It’s not like she hasn’t been part of bloody ensembles before. Prior to portraying Rhiannon, Purnell played Jackie, the doomed soccer team captain on Showtime’s “Yellowjackets.” More recently she’s helmed Amazon Prime Video’s post-apocalyptic drama series, “Fallout,” adapted from the video game of the same name.

"We want to kind of try to get the audience to relate to Rhiannon, relate to her emotions — obviously not her actions."

But there’s something altogether different about her lead role on “Sweetpea,” and not merely the fact that it’s her first time serving as an executive producer. Speaking to Salon in a recent interview, Purnell explained the intricacies of embodying a character with whom we can simultaneously empathize with and criticize, while also learning how to shed certain gender-based inhibitions.

“We want to kind of try to get the audience to relate to Rhiannon, relate to her emotions — obviously not her actions,” she said. “And that seemed really challenging. I wanted to watch that show; it seemed like something I would want to watch. I'm fascinated by psychology, and I love anything that kind of makes me feel torn.” This same sense of consternation is ultimately what piqued her interest in “Sweetpea.”

“I didn't know if I could do it, to be honest, because it scared me,” Purnell said. “And so, therefore I needed to do it.”

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This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

I’m interested to learn what drew you to the project.

For me, it was just the initial pitch. I hadn't even read the script and I knew I wanted to do it. I sat with Patrick Walters, who's our executive producer, and he said, “We want to make this show. It's going to be a dark comedy.” Immediately, I was like, “I'm all ears,” because I love dark comedies.

And we wanted to make it about this female serial killer. We wanted, psychologically — we wanted to make the audience feel conflicted, morally conflicted. We want to kind of try to get the audience to relate to Rhiannon, relate to her emotions — obviously not her actions. And........

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