Aubri Ibrag is settling into her new home in London, having recently relocated from Los Angeles, and is adjusting not only to the new city but to this century. 

“We’re constantly in this bubble of Victorian everything, and it is quite jarring when you go out into the normal world after being in that for so long,” the 23-year-old star of Apple TV+’s “The Buccaneers” says. “You’re just like, ‘holy sh-t, I’ve been living in this 19th century bubble for the past months. You kind of do feel like you sort of teleport in this alternate universe.”

The Russian-born Australian actress plays Lizzy on the hit period drama, who emerged as the breakout star of the second season, which recently concluded.

Ibrag originally was sent the script for lead Nan, played by Kristine Froseth, but after auditioning was sent scenes for Lizzy instead. 

“I was like, ‘oh my god. She has so much depth to her and she has such an interesting story,’” Ibrag says.

The show, based on the unfinished novel of the same name by Edith Wharton, follows a group of young American women who arrive in London society hoping to secure husbands. Lizzy, Ibrag’s character, is caught in a love triangle in the second season, after enduring sexual assault in the first. 

“What’s interesting to me about Lizzy’s arc is obviously Season One, she was going through a lot — she was sexually violated by Lord Seadown, and I think that made her quite withdrawn, and shame became her second skin in a sense,” Ibrag says. “After that, she was so ashamed of what happened that she sort of isolated herself from her friends. And I think that she became quite numb to the idea of love and to the idea of sexual desire and that stuff. But what’s interesting in the second season is that she experienced sort of an awakening again, and she’s like, ‘I thought I would never feel this.’

“That was the most interesting part about her development in the second season,” Ibrag continues. “She obviously doesn’t make the best choices with Theo [Guy Remmers], and he is her best friend’s husband, which is questionable that she does go there, but I think it’s almost like her way of just taking her power back and being like, ‘I deserve to feel this pleasure in my body and taking the ownership back.’ I think it’s all part of her journey of healing. The fact that she is so quiet and she’s almost reserved, but she has so much going on underneath [is what] makes her a very fascinating character to me. She doesn’t say everything that’s on her mind, but what’s on her mind is so intense and it slips through sometimes and then she sort of reels it back in, because as a woman in the 19th century, that’s what you were taught to do.”

Ibrag had just signed with an American manager and moved to Los Angeles from Australia when she received the audition for the show; it was only the second tape she received upon moving to L.A. 

“I remember reading it and just being so excited by the chaos in the writing of it all,” she says. “I’ve been manifesting a period drama for ages, telling all my friends. When some of the other period dramas were coming out, I bought this outfit and I was walking around my flat just sort of putting on [an accent] and saying, ‘you must enter the society at once and find yourself a husband.’ And then literally the next job that I book is a period drama. So I feel like it was all manifested from the start.” 

Ibrag always knew she wanted to act but growing up in Dagestan, Russia, she didn’t have any examples around her of how to make that a career. 

“All of my family is a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer. And so when I said to them, ‘oh, I want to act,’ it was basically the same thing as saying, ‘I want to fly to space and live on Mars,’” she says. 

After finishing school, she quite literally Googled “how to be an actor” and found an acting coach online who directed her to get headshots. The headshot photographer then introduced her to her Australian agent, and the rest is history. 

“It was all kind of the luck of the draw, but it all started with just literally Googling,” she says.