Showrunner Anna Fishko talks to The Inside Reel abot tone, characterization, build and thematics in regards to her new series continuing the Orphan Black universe: "Orphan Black - Echoes" on AMC.
Category
đź“ş
TVTranscript
00:00I'm in danger, and I think you might be too.
00:17This is part of something bigger than you can possibly understand.
00:25I'm going to get some answers.
00:26You going to help me or what?
00:32Because you've worked on such a diverse amount of shows, I mean, I bring to mind Tyrant and
00:36Colony, ones that have so much dread, approaching Orphan Black, and obviously it's a new idea
00:43within Orphan Black, where did you have to start in terms of the psychology of a character
00:49like Lucy to permeate it forward?
00:53I think I just spent a lot of time thinking about really what it would feel like to wake
01:00up and not know who you were, and have to figure everything out from a very sort of
01:07limited data set.
01:10So she has a lot of skills, there's a lot of things that she does know how to do, but
01:17she just doesn't have a lot of, she doesn't have long-term memory, so she doesn't have
01:22the ability to recall her name or what's happened in her life up to that point.
01:28And so what would you, what would you want to know?
01:32Obviously there are the immediate concerns about safety, and so she's just trying, she's
01:36really just trying to survive, I think we would imagine for that first year of life.
01:43But once she'd kind of figured out how to kind of get herself on her own two feet, what
01:50are the things that she would care about?
01:52What are the sort of burning questions that she would still want answers to?
01:57And so I just spent a lot of time thinking about how that would feel.
02:12What is this?
02:42Now when you approached it tonally, obviously the idea of problem-solving, but conscience,
02:49what is the right thing to do in terms of the character?
02:52Can you talk about building that and building that over the season?
02:57Because it has to keep upping, but you have to understand her perspective as well as Jules'
03:01perspective and others.
03:04Yeah, I think I really wanted to kind of take this really complicated story and meet it
03:14out in tiny little pieces and packets of information up until about the midway point of the season
03:21where I felt like we could really explode it open and give the audience this hopefully
03:27satisfying answer about why Lucy was printed and who she was.
03:34And I felt like at that point we would really get this very hopefully moving and sweet and
03:40to a certain extent simple story explanation for who she was that maybe wasn't what we
03:45were expecting.
03:46And that would kind of cement the audience's kind of feeling about what was happening in
03:53a different way.
03:54So now that we had all of that information and that backstory, it would propel us into
03:58the second half of the season with kind of fresh eyes.
04:01This isn't how I wanted you to-
04:03What is this?
04:08You were created.
04:11You were printed from a high-resolution scan using a very complex process.
04:23I was- I was printed.
04:27It's a new technology.
04:29It's the four-dimensional printing of human tissue.
04:37That doesn't make any sense.
04:40It's the truth.
04:41Everybody, to a point, besides Lucy has a facade, you know, that they're sort of putting
04:46up and trying to sort of angle on that.
04:49Can you talk about looking at the characters that way?
04:52Because it has to start from the top.
04:54Obviously, having Kristen play the character was probably because of her empathetic nature,
05:01but because she of the way as an actress, she's very intelligent about it.
05:06Could you talk about finding the character in her and sort of moving with her in that
05:12idea?
05:13Yeah, I think- I think we- I really started with Eleanor's character to a certain extent
05:20because they're all prints of Eleanor.
05:23So, I spent a lot of time thinking about who Eleanor was before she got sick and what her
05:32kind of character traits, you know, as an academic and, you know, as a fairly, like,
05:38liberal, kind of smart, ambitious researcher, how those character traits might- might appear
05:49in somebody who had a very different experience of the world, like- like Lucy does and like
05:55Jules does.
06:08So,
06:30well, because if memory is an interesting thing, how we remember things versus how things
06:35actually play out.
06:36Can you talk about toying with the ideas of memory and the- the thematic of that?
06:41Because, you know, that- that can move so many different ways and you do it very well
06:45here.
06:47Yeah, I really was interested in this idea of these psychological experiences and our
06:52memories of them being core to who we imagine ourself to be.
06:57So, I think there's a moment where they go to see Eleanor's mother.
07:01They visit her in this sort of ice cream parlor and it's a really interesting scene
07:07and- and the mother character says that the most terrifying thing, you know, she's struggling
07:12with- with Alzheimer's and that the most frightening thing for her is that she can't-
07:16she wakes up and she can't remember who she is.
07:21And I think that- that sense of identity is tied to memory and that's a very interesting
07:28thing, right?
07:29Because it's- these are all things that have happened in the past, but those experiences
07:33kind of build up over time and they define who we are because they give us our sense
07:38of self.
07:38So, how scary would it be to have lost that?
07:42I have to figure out who I am.
07:45Sorry, do we know each other?
07:47Don't think so.
07:51I think she's me.
07:57This isn't gonna end well.