BBC America finally gave people a reason to stay home to watch TV on Saturday nights. The return of Orphan Black for its second season had viewers excited by clones and its favorite character, Sarah Manning, played by Tatiana Maslany.
Rolling Stone got the inside scoop on the 28-year-old actress’ take on the series and how she manages to portray so many different versions of herself.
She shared, “Oh my god, I’m not even remotely feeling like I’ll figure it out. Every character sort of has their own world, so it feels like we’re shooting a different movie every day. Even if I get comfortable in the process or I feel like I have an ownership over it, it doesn’t stop evolving and I don’t think I’d ever want it to. I want it to keep growing. As an actor, that’s what I have to keep doing — making sure it doesn’t get easy.”
Even Maslany was overwhelmed when she got the role. She admitted, “Once I got the part, I went, ‘Oh shit!’ Like, how does this actually happen?”
The Canadian-born actress does find some clones easier to portray than others who present more challenges.
She said, “There are certain clones that are easier on my vocabulary or my movement or even dialect, but [soccer mom] Alison, I was so scared to play her. I couldn’t relate to her. One of the creators said, ‘She’s the most feminine of the clones,’ and I was like, ‘What?’ For some reason, I had this sort of lock in my head on what it meant to be feminine. But I love all the characters. I feel really lucky that I get this whole gamut of women to play.”
One area of study that has helped her with the multiple characters is improv. She explained how important it has been to her work.
“Yeah, because you’re creating characters in the moment and you’re trying to make them as fully-formed as possible, which is something I’m focusing on all the time now just in a different context. There’s also something about character creation that I learned from improv — your imagination is really in high-gear and Orphan Black involves a lot of imagination,” she said.
Orphan Black airs Saturday nights on BBC America.
