Pic from Comics Continuum
*For the uncut version of this interview, check out Katianna's Place.
Season 2 DVD Extras: Lauren Lee Smith Interview, short version
Lauren Lee Smith: For season one, Emma was a telempath, so pretty much she can receive and transmit feelings and emotions from people. So she can, you know, she can really screw people over pretty much with her mind, and make them do all sorts of crazy things and pretty much whatever she wants. Which is actually I think part of the reason too why her powers have evolved. Because I know that there was a question of, well, if she can really make people do whatever she wants with her mind, then why wouldn’t she just do this? Or that? Or take over the bloody world? So for season two--actually, the last episode for season one--all of our powers sort of evolved and I got this new psionic blast, which is a lot of fun. I get this, like, energy ball in my forehead and I can shoot people. Which is good too, because last year, I didn’t really have to do that much fighting, Thank God. But the fighting that I did have to do, I mean, Emma doesn’t come from any fighting background or anything. So it’s not likely that she would just know how to go out there and kick butt. So this gives me a way to have a physical power and actually hurt people without having to karate chop and do the flying kicks and stuff. Which I know Vicky and Victor have had training before and they come from that. I’m sort of a wuss. I’m much happier with having my little mind blast.
I think initially she was just extremely frightened of the whole thing and I don’t think she really wanted to believe that she had these powers. She just sort of wanted to ignore them. And I know the beginning of last season, she was really fighting that for the most part. And fighting against whatever it was that she had. And I think especially for season two, she’s gotten a lot more confident. I think she feels now that she is more a part of the team and she has something a little bit more to contribute. It’s like her family now. Adam is sort of like the father figure of all of us to a certain degree, and then with Jesse and Shalimar and Brennan, it’s like they’re my brothers and sisters. So I think originally Emma had sort of a crush on Brennan, but they didn’t really take that anywhere, so I don’t know. Maybe she’ll start to have a crush on Jesse or something, we’ll see. But as of now, I think they want to keep it very much that we are a family. We have a lot of fun. I think we’re all very, very lucky. I think we all get along so well. I mean, I haven’t done a tv series before, but I’ve heard stories about cast members just not getting along, and it just being a nightmare. So I think we’re very, very lucky. We all really like each other.
We’re having quite a lot of trouble with what we’re supposed to be doing with the psionic blast. Originally they had it where they were coming around and doing the whole look thing again. For one episode, I don’t know if you can even notice or not, but they had me going like pow! *makes a shooting noise* And I’m like no, no, no, no, let’s not do that one. Cause I can imagine, you know, going machine gun like, pow, pow, pow! So now I think it’s all gonna be in post, you know? I can think about it, and I form the blast and then it shoots out.
I had never really been into science fiction before this. I think the one science fiction movie that I really liked was Them that I remember seeing years ago. And I have an obsession with ants. Like I have a tattoo of an ant, and I have an ant ring and stuff. So I was like, yeah, Them! And that’s the only thing that I had really seen. But I have an older brother who was very much into science fiction and comic books and stuff, so when he heard about this, he was like, “Yeah, right on!”
If someone is telempathic and they are reading someone’s emotions and stuff, they would obviously, they would be very screwed up. They should be up and down and all over the show. So I think that’s something that we’re gonna play with because, God, it’s gotta be confusing, and it’s gotta drive her crazy sometimes. And it’s gotta make her angry, and it’s gotta make her upset and highly emotional. So that’s something that I really like about my character. It’s fun to play. You never know what you’re gonna get with Emma. You would always want to evolve the character, and I think that’s what’s so great about playing a mutant, because you never know what’s going to happen. And in a lot of these last episodes, we’ve been showing with other guest mutants who come on, how they’ve evolved. And it’s not necessarily a good thing. So it sort of leaves the question as to well, what’s gonna happen to us, you know, down the road? What’s gonna start changing next? You know, is Shalimar gonna start growing hair all over her, like in this episode, where we have the big hairy beast guys? And is Emma gonna become a complete schizophrenic? Or, you know, who knows? So that’s what’s really fun about science fiction. You can really take it anywhere and play around.
I’d love Emma to get a little bit more crazy. You know, it’s always fun to play the sort of screwed up girl, so I’d love it if her emotions just started getting all out of whack and she didn’t know what she was doing. And also, I have to say the “Double Vision” episode was so much fun. So much fun getting to play the bad part of Emma. So, I mean, it would be really cool to get to do something like that again too. Every episode is a whole new thing, you know? Especially with season 2. It’s like a completely new show, really it is. It’s really opened the doors, I think, for a lot of really neat things to come.
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