Orphan Black
Critically acclaimed drama Orphan Black is about to enter its third season, and it promises to continue its adrenaline-pumping tradition as identical male clone soldiers put the bond between Sarah, Cosima, Alison, and Helena to the test. This is war.
Season 3 premieres Saturday, April 18 at 9pm on BBC America, Ch. 122 & 1122 (HD).The Orphan Black interviews
Tatiana Maslany and other Orphan Black stars joined co-creators Graeme Manson and John Fawcett as they talked about the upcoming third season, their characters, and clone dance parties. Here's what they revealed.
It's different for each one of them. For me, the writing is where is starts and the writing is so strong and the voices are so strong on that page. I never feel like I have to ask myself, "Oh, how do I create this person." The person is there — it's just acknowledging that the person is in me. I think as actors, we are all playing a character that's vastly different from ourselves. You get your cues from your fellow actors. I've said this a lot about both Jordan [Gavaris] and Maria [Doyle Kennedy]. If I'm playing Alison opposite them, they treat me differently than if I'm Sarah.
Honestly, I have no idea what is going to happen next year. I've been investigating myself a lot and trying to get myself more comfortable with telling stories about uncomfortable things, like pain or heartbreak, or grief. I'm trying to be more comfortable telling people those stories in my work, and showing people that I know what that's about. That's a scary thing to do as an actor, because you have to admit that you are vulnerable and you hurt and you've hurt people and you are not good all the time. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know whatever it's going to be I'm just going to dive in headfirst and I'll treat it like I do anything else.
Paul's always teetering on the fence, right? You never know what Paul's going to do. You never know what his true intentions are. I'm glad that we actually saw his true intentions at the end of the last season when we learn he was playing double agent the whole time and has been involved in the Castor Project and we know he wasn't a total jerk for the entire season. When I shot that scene when I had to frame Felix I thought, "Oh my God. People are going to hate me." But then Paul comes back and redeems himself in the end by helping Sarah out. That's about as deep as I can get with Paul — he's a man of mystery and he always will be.
I think we're pretty lucky with the writing. It's pretty well clear for us what the job is that we have to do. It's never a stretch for us, even though it might seem like a stretch when you're watching and thinking, "how the heck is that happening." Graeme and John are pretty great at just laying it out for us and making it really easy and simple.
& John Fawcett (Writer/Co-creator) (Director/Co-creator) Talk about the clone dance party at the end of last season.
John: Yeah, it took two days. But we were thinking, this episode is going so fast and there is so much pace and momentum behind it and we wanted to have something where we could say "ahhhhhhh" and relax for a little bit and do something fun. I thought, "this is exciting, we'll have a clone dance party." I didn't realize that when we aired it none of the fans were thinking that it was a nice relaxing moment. Everyone was on the edge of their seats thinking something really bad was going to happen.
At what point did you decide to make Ari into a clone?How did that come about?
Graeme: Probably about halfway through the season. We knew we wanted to introduce Project Castor — it was part of our long-term plan. But we did not know who that was going to be, or whether that person was going to come from our ranks or if we were going to find someone new. And largely John directing Ari was instrumental in us saying we can't kill this guy.
John: We couldn't kill him. That character, Mark, was originally slated to die in episiode 6. But he'd done all these great scenes and all this work, and we really liked him as a character and an actor. We were thinking no one would expect this to happen and it made perfect sense for the way we wanted to shape our mystery going forward into the following season. That was exciting. It was a really cool discovery.