An exclusive chat with Tatiana Maslany on Orphan Black

Orphan Black offers sci-fi as a form of social commentary
An exclusive chat with Tatiana Maslany on Orphan Black

CANADIAN actress Tatiana Maslany plays multiple roles in the TV series, Orphan Black, created by Graeme Manson and John Fawcett. The series focuses on Sarah Manning, a woman who assumes the identity of a fellow clone, Elizabeth Childs, after witnessing Childs’ suicide. Tatiana plays a number of identical people who are all clones in the story, which raises concerns about the moral and ethical implications of human cloning, and issues of personal identity. Excerpts from an interaction — 

A lot of cool new guest stars in Season Five. Anyone in particular you were more excited to work with?
I was excited about everybody! Michael Huisman came on and he’s an amazing actor, so much fun to work with. Patrick J Adams was amazing, Michelle Forbes was incredible. We were blessed to have the guest stars. There was nobody who I was more excited about over another, I was just honoured that they wanted to come on our show. 

Each character has a different physicality and accent. Which clone is the most difficult to maintain physically, and which accent was the most challenging?
The London accent was the most difficult for me and remains so. It’s specific to a neighbourhood in London — that is a bit of a hard one, the Sarah accent. As for physicality, I’ve been playing a lot with Rachel, the clone we meet at the end of season one. She’s quite difficult to maintain throughout the day as her posture is impeccable and she’s always in the most painful high heels.

It seems that over the years the TV industry doesn’t take sci-fi seriously. Do you agree with that?
There are a lot of SF shows that could change that opinion. What sci-fi can do brilliantly is to reflect our world through a different lens, and speak about the future of where we’re headed or the present day of where we are now, and shed light on it in a way that’s entertaining and fantastical. It’s not the mundane everyday things that we experience, but heightened, and yet it can tell us about where we are as a society. So I think that sci-fi doesn’t get enough credit for the kind of social commentary that it is so often based on.

You have a huge fan base waiting for the new season. Does this put on more pressure?
I felt that a little bit when we came back to shoot the second season, as suddenly people were aware of the show. The first season, we didn’t even know if it was going to work or if people were going to watch it, so we could go off and do what we needed to do to make the series. But now people are watching, they have stakes in the show, and they care about the characters — so we really have to do it justice, for them. Ultimately, you come back and keep telling the stories, and you and just keep doing the work.

You seem fully committed to the characters. Do you feel conflicted when a clone inflicts pain on another clone?
It is hard. At the end of Season One, somebody asked me if I was happy that Helena died, that Sarah killed Helena. And it was hard to answer the question. So yeah, it’s a bit of a conflict, a bit of a mind meld. 

Orphan Black airs on AXN.
 

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