I'm fascinated with psychology, and with why a person walks the way they walk or why they walk into a room the way they do or why we are the way we are, and it's not exclusive to the psychology of a character.
'Orphan Black' allows for people to have debates and theories and allegiances to different characters; to trust characters and hate other characters, but it doesn't tell you who is good or bad or right or wrong. That's the most exciting storytelling in my book.
Going back is a nice way to give definition to each of the characters because they are so vastly different. I would never want them to get blended together.
I think in the inception and creation of the characters, improv was the most important part for me, because I wanted to feel at home in those characters. I wanted to feel like I could commit to them. And so much of improv is saying yes and committing, so I think that's where the improv came in. Even if I'm saying yes to the X across the room from me, or the tennis ball on a stick, I have to stay alive.
Dance has always been a really important thing for me, so being able to physically express the characters through music and dance is like another layer to things.
I think that's why it's difficult for women when they watch TV and we see one version of a woman who is attached at the hip to a guy, and that's kind of her whole thing. You kind of go, 'I don't relate to this, I don't feel this.' You know? Maybe somebody does, but not everyone. That's the other thing about storytelling, is you can't represent everybody. You know, you can't seek to do that. You have to tell stories that you're interested in talking about and characters that intrigue you.
I'm an actor, so I'm interested in the pursuit of storytelling and character and challenging myself and expanding my craft. That's not something that ever ends, because as you grow as a person, so does your capacity to play different characters. New things come up, new things you want to explore and new stories you want tell about life and your knowledge of things. I don't think there's ever going to be that satisfaction of "and now, comfort."
John Cassavetes' films have really altered the way I see film and acting and storytelling and emotion and love, so I see acting as this incredible revealing of human nature and this means of telling our story, sharing our voice with the world. That's what acting is for me. It allows for people to experience things through the character, through the story.
It's always been my dream to just continually do really cool indie movies - character-driven stuff.
We do long-form-style improv. Our focus was characters and telling a long arc story over about an hour and a half. It was closer to a one-act play than one-off sketches.
I'm attracted to stories that excite my imagination, stories that, as I'm reading the script, I feel it, I can see it, I can hear the characters. I'm attracted to characters that are real, that tap into something inside me that I haven't explored yet.
I try to get roles that challenge me in what I can do and who I think I can portray. For me, it's about creating characters with really fascinating stories, because that's what I like to watch on TV.
