Dakota talked to GoldDerby recently about The Alienist. You can watch the interview below.

Dakota talked to The Los Angeles Times about The Alienist! This interview is a part of their Envelope series of Emmy Contenders – this is good news for the upcoming awards season! I’m sure you’ll all enjoy watching this video, as Dakota shares a bit of insight into her decision to join the show and what playing Sara Howard felt like.

Dakota has given InStyle an interview about her upcoming film Please Stand By, which is out now in select theaters and on demand. The original article can be found here, and you may read it below.

Dakota Fanning has always been wise beyond her years. The blond-haired, doe-eyed actress got her first major role at the ripe age of 7 in 2004’s I Am Sam. Her performance as the precocious child of a developmentally challenged father (Sean Penn) earned her a SAG Award nomination the following year, making her the youngest nominee in history.

Now 23, Fanning shows no signs of slowing down. She currently stars as a police secretary on TNT’s period drama The Alienist and has a new film, Please Stand By, about an autistic woman who escapes from her group home to submit her Star Trek script to a Hollywood writing competition, arriving in theaters and on demand today. The latter was something of a-full circle moment for Fanning, as the subject matter paralleled the project that cemented her status as a leading actress. Here, Fanning discusses her new movie, learning to speak Klingon, and the need for female-focused stories.

What drew you to this script? It was so well-written and so moving. [Wendy] had so many quirks: her love of Star Trek, knitting, her dog … there were so many little things that were woven into her. Most importantly, the character didn’t lead with the fact that she was on the autism spectrum. There were so many other things that were more important about her.

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With The Alienist premiering tonight, People has published an article in which Dakota talks about the show and her character Sara Howard, whom she describes as a feminist and the main reason she joined the project. You can read it below.

Dakota Fanning is coming to television.

The 23-year-old actress stars as Sara Howard in TNT’s The Alienist, a dark thriller set in 1896 New York City. Howard works at the police station and helps investigate the case of a serial killer targeting young boys alongside Daniel Bruhl’s Dr. Laszlo Kreizler and Luke Evans’s John Moore, a cartoonist.

Even though it’s a dark story, Fanning was excited to join the show thanks to her feminist character.

“I think what drew me to it is the character that I play, she’s the first female to work for the police department that has more of a role than someone who cleans,” Fanning tells PEOPLE. “And it’s funny because the time that it takes place, it’s kind of coming up on a new age for America and things are changing [like they are now], so it’s like getting to do the 1896 version of that.”

Another big draw was nabbing her first TV role. Although Fanning has been working in movies the majority of her life, the actress was looking forward to appearing in a project that was much more accessible to a larger group of people.

“I’m such a fan of what’s happening on TV right now and was excited to do something people could come back to each week,” she says. “When you make films these days, it can be such a crapshoot whether people see them. This is more accessible.”