Did you hear the scream of the Buffy fans around the world after it was announced that you were signed to a different pilot rather than a Faith spin-off?
I feel kind of bad, but I also need to get something else going. We created this character five years ago and it's the kind of thing where I want to be standing on my own two feet a little bit and not be following in Buffy's footsteps. I love the show and have so much respect for the writers and everyone, but it was going to be the kind of commitment - which God knows these kind of things are - it needed to be something new.
Had they pitched you their concept of the Faith series?
I had a lot of conversations with (creator) Joss Whedon, (consulting producer) Marti Noxon and Tim Minear, and I realized what amazing writers they were and what amazing concepts they were able to come up with if it was to happen. For me, I never wanted to be locked down to television commitments - it's six years - and I'm a severe sufferer of ADD (laughs). What if I don't want to do this anymore and I've signed on the bottom line? But when this pilot came up, it was such a cool story and character.
I have a lot of similarities with Faith, but this new character (on Heroine) has more room for growth and different directions that I feel are closer to me. Something about being it really affected abd grabbed me when I first read it. It felt like more of a coming-of-age role, in that age of 22, 23 or 24, which hasn't been done before. I think it's an important time for girls because my best friends and I for the past year or two have been having all these indentity crisis problems where we're getting to this age. We used to play this flip, sassy, tough-girl routine, but when you get to your mid-20s and you start to feel responsibilities for the things that you do and the people around you that you wouldn't have even thought about before. It's a cool age; it's a cool kind of psychology to look into, and that's what interested me in the role.
What is the concept of the show and the character?
She's a normal girl who happens to have witnessed her mother's murder when she was 5 or 6 years old. She's got an older sister and brother, and they're kind of functioning as a family unit. Everything is running as it is until she gets a job at the New York City morgue. We don't know if it's supernatural or where it comes from - it could be related to seeing her mother murdered when she was so young - but she starts to hear voices from the bodies in the morgue where she's working, which is a job she didn't want in the first place. All of a sudden, she wakes up the next morning to find that she has X amount of hours to save this person that she doesn't even know. All she has is the name and the morgue report to keep them from dying.
There's definately a Six Feet Under, Sixth Sense cool quality to it. And at the same time, she's trying to recreate this family unit that she, her brother and her sister haven't had since her mother passed away. Her brother is a compulsive gambler and can't get his life together; her sister has a drug problem. She's trying to get this family back and figure out her friends and boyfriend - just dealing with life at that stage. She's graduated from college, and it's like "What happens now?" It's so cool and well-written - John Feldman is the writer - and Phillip Noyce is directing the pilot. I'm such a fan and so excited to work with him.
I was actually shocked to see you doing a TV series at all.
I was, too (laughs). It wasn't a spur of the moment thing. There were a lot of conversations and a lot of "Look, I don't want to jump into something that I don't really believe in, and I don't really trust," because I'm 22 years old, and there's a lot of stuff that I want to do. I also feel that because I'm young, why not give it a shot? Plus our economy and the estate of the affairs in the world right now, and I just feel like everyone's doing the grind and working to get by. I'm a worker bee at heart; I love going to work every day. When I'm not working, that's normally when I start obsessing in my head and overanalyzing every little thing that I'm not doing and all the things I should be doing. But this is something I know I can love and really turn out because I have the energy and the drive for it right now. I thought, "Why not?" I know it's not going to be shit, just because of everyone involved. It's got the potential to be badass.
If it does work, you've got job security, and there's something to be said for that, too. The money's good.
Hell yes! (laughs)