Anna Silk, Ksenia Solo, Kris Holden-Ried & Zoie Palmer – Lost Girl

By starrymag | March 28, 2014

Q) Ksenia, I know that we’ve kind of seen you for a large part of the comedic person on the show and this season we’ve gotten to see you be a little bit more emotional and tearful, how hard is it for you to play that or which one do you prefer?

Ksenia Solo: I prefer to cry all the time.

Zoie Palmer: You want to play Lauren.

Ksenia Solo: Oh, can I please? I mean, the last thing I need to do is to learn all that science talk. I don’t think I could pull it off nearly as well as Ms. Zoie Palmer. I had been doing drama really my whole life until I came on to Lost Girl and it was a really nice switch because I had never really done comedy before so I’ve had a great time all of these years and it’s been nice in Season 4 to go deeper and get to experience this crazy journey playing Kenzi and we had some really intense emotional stuff and I’m glad that we did because I really enjoy when the show does go darker so it was a great challenge for me but I enjoyed doing it.

Q) You have such an amazing fan-based whether it’s the couples fan-base or the shows fan-base directly, there’s polls that they’re voting in and they’re nominating people for different awards and things like that and I wanted to find out what does that all mean to you all individually? What does that kind of support and attention mean to you?

Anna Silk: I think it pretty much means everything to us. I mean, I can only answer for myself I guess but to have the support of the fans and the fans have, from the very start, really embraced the show and really been vocal about their love for it and what they think about every detail of it and that really means more to us than anything because that’s who we’re making the show for.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah, it’s like in TV we often, I’ve said this before, we film this show in a little dark room with lights and just each other and we don’t have like a theater where we get an interaction with an audience and the fans are our audience and to see that we’re actually making them happy, that’s the greatest reward we could have

Zoie Palmer: Yeah, I could really only echo all of that really. I think I feel exactly the same way. They’re sort of the heartbeat of the show in so many ways and I think that as the seasons have gone on and we have a real understanding of how integral they are to the show, they mean more and more to us as we go on.

Ksenia Solo: Yeah, and I think we only all play our parts and do what we do but it’s the fans who make the show successful and it’s really amazing to know that people all over the world can enjoy it. You know, we get fan mail from countries very, very far away and you go, oh my God, there’s people, you know, in Australia and Korea and wherever in the world they’re watching and they’re enjoying and I feel like because of this global community that’s what’s brought the show to the place where it’s at. So I think we’re all very humbled and extremely grateful.

Q) So, last night’s episode was obviously very, very sad, I know I was crying, could you guys talk about just kind of what your reaction was when you found out about Hale and also for Anna and Ksenia filming that scene?

Ksenia Solo: It was very sad to find out about Hale dying. I think it was extremely unexpected and, you know, the character and the person, K.C. Collins, is such an integral part of the Lost Girl family and we’ve all really grown together over these last five years, five years since the pilot. And so, of course, it’s like losing a family member in a way. It was very sad. Yeah, but I think we knew I think at the beginning of the season that that was going to happen. I think we did, is that right you guys, I can’t remember exactly when we found out but, you know, so we all kind of had to make peace with it as the season went on but it was really hard to say goodbye to him for sure.

Anna Silk: Yeah, I mean, K.C.’s brought such a lot to that character too and he’s such a fine talented actor that, you know – and such a great human being that losing one of our family members is sort of what it feels like but he’s such a talented guy, he’s running around doing shows all over the place.

Ksenia Solo: And he’s so cool too. So he’s just like not that we’re not cool but the cool factor has changed on our show.

Anna Silk: We have no more cool left.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah, K.C.’s – I mean, like him and I have been partners in crime since the Day 1. Like, I remember that opening scene where we’re finding, you know, Anna’s first kill in the elevator there and it’s been such a joy working with him and I wasn’t involved with the scene where he died but him and I definitely had our own goodbyes but they’re not for forever I know, just like everyone says, he’s working and hopefully I’ll be on one of his shows after Lost Girl.

Q) Zoie, obviously it would be really fun to play a fae, but do you think that Lauren, and also for Ksenia too, do you think your characters would actually want to be a fae if it came down to it? I know Kenzi has had sort of that thing but not for real.

Zoie Palmer: Well, I know for Lauren, I mean, my feeling about her is that she is such an experimental person that I can’t imagine that hasn’t occurred to her at some point just because she pushes boundaries in science all of the time and so I feel like it wouldn’t be beyond her to push this one too. That’s sort of it. I feel like she would – it’s definitely occurred to her, that’s not something that never dawned on her. For research purposes. That’s a (key) thing.

Q) This season has had a lot of major plot twists and surprises including, you know, we just talked about Hale. When you first had the script in hand for each episode where there any particular surprises that you found the most surprising?

Ksenia Solo: Well Hale for sure. I think one of the things that our show runner (Emily) said about the season, which I think is so accurate, is that the highs are high and the lows are low this season because there’s several things that happened that where really amazingly great and then things that were not so great like Hale and I don’t know, I think there’s always a surprise in every episode.

Kris Holden-Ried: We usually have chats with our writers or like our show runner or Jay Firestone on our executive (board) so it’s not always the scripts that come and surprise us because luckily we’re on a show that’s small enough that we can actually talk and collaborate with the writers and creators. It’s always better to know in advance what’s going to happen so you can plan what to do with it as opposed to just going, oh my God and I wish I had done something else in another episode to set it up better. So, luckily they’re on board with that and they don’t just give us the white drafts the day we start shooting.

Q) Ksenia, in an interview that we did at the beginning of the season you said that the theme of the season was coming home and I think we’ve definitely seen that with the episodes that have aired. Can you elaborate on how that’s going to play into the season finale?

Ksenia Solo: Oh good lord if I tell you I’ll have to kill you. Goodness, it’s very hard without giving anything away but, gosh I think… All the characters are just trying to find peace, they’re trying to find each other and in that sense are trying to find home and come together and survive and I don’t know. Nothing I say is going to beat the finale. I’m just going to give up before I say something even more stupid.

Anna Silk: The highs are high and the lows are low.

Q) I was reading an article from a few weeks ago and it says that plans are to restart production this spring, has it started yet for you?

Kris Holden-Ried: Not yet.

Ksenia Solo: No, in a few weeks. Yeah, we’re in preproduction now so we – the actors are not there yet but things are happening.

Q) Do you have any difficulty since the show airs in Canada first and then the US, does it make it any more difficult for you in terms of keeping spoilers from people?

Kris Holden-Ried: Absolutely.

Anna Silk: It’s impossible. It’s not hard, it’s impossible.

Kris Holden-Ried: For many reasons we all wish that they would simulcast. Also just because, you know, there’s the piracy issue as well but then everybody from the states who really wants to watch finds ways to watch it privated before it airs in the states so then – also, in network television people are always looking at numbers and because a lot of our audience is so Internet savvy and they watch it on the net the numbers don’t show properly

Ksenia Solo: I was surprised actually last night on Twitter to see so many people that watched it for the first time as well. I mean, I do wish that everyone could see it at the same time but I was surprised to see that some people going like, oh my God, Hale… People just experiencing it for the first time so some people do wait for the airing here which is good.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah, I think you’re totally right, I think it’s actually the majority that do.

Anna Silk: But it’s so awful when we have like huge plot twists and like big surprises and half the world knows about them and the other half doesn’t and everyone’s talking about it on Twitter and people can’t go on Twitter because they don’t want spoilers but then they go and they see the spoilers and then they’re upset because the whole season is ruined because they find out how it ends. It’s just very not fair I think that – to the fans.

Kris Holden-Reid: So let’s all voice our opinion to the networks; simulcast, please. Maybe they’ll listen.

Q)Obviously right now things with the relationships are really different because Rainer’s there and Bo is off in a different direction. Can we assume though that next season it’s going to be more of the triangle that we’re used to back again? I know that that’s kind of what’s so popular about the series.

Kris Holden-Ried: Assume nothing.

Zoie Palmer: I don’t have a clue.

Anna Silk: I only have a small clue. I don’t know for sure. We’re not told a ton of stuff obviously but, you know, I do know that the triangle is not going away, I don’t think it would ever go away. So, I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen with it in Season 5 but maybe… I don’t know.

Q) Zoie, could you talk about your scenes this year with Ebony because they’ve been really great?

Zoie Palmer: Yeah, you know, it was a huge, what’s the word, blessing I guess to work with Emmanuelle, she’s such a talented interesting actress and it took us so long to get into scenes together so we didn’t know how it would go and whether or not it would play. You know, sometimes something really works on set and then you see it and it’s like, oh hmm, it doesn’t play but it did really nicely and so it was both a pleasure to do it and then a pleasure to see it. It was – she’s fantastic and she’s such a lovely actress and we had a really great time actually.

Q) This is for everybody with Season 5 about to begin, you had some really cool guest stars and when they come in they always bring their own flares and flavor to the show specifically to their episode, is there anyone that you would just really love to have in the coming season?

Kris Holden-Ried: Oh God, there’s so many brilliant actors that I’m sure all of us would love to work with.

Zoie Palmer: I know, I could think of a million.

Anna Silk: Yeah, I mean our guest stars always bring so much and they always have really great roles to play because the guest star roles tend to be so colorful and I don’t know.

Zoie Palmer: I was just saying, the shows been really smart about the guest stars we have had a lot of sort of sci-fi genre folks and I think its fun when we keep it in that world. Like some people from Battlestar might be interesting or Torchwood or I don’t know, like sometimes it’s fun to have some crossover type folks on the show.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, someone actually mentioned that it would be interesting if we started crossing some worlds like whether it’s the True Blood or the vampire – you know, these sort of worlds start uniting but almost like Marvel has united, you know, these different franchises with the Avengers. I think that would be kind of fun.

Zoie Palmer: That would be. The sci-fi Avengers, I like the sound of that.

Kris Holden-Ried: I’m down.

Zoie Palmer: I’m down too, I can already pick my outfit, that would be good.

Q) Zoie and Ksenia, looking back a couple of episodes back I believe it was the episode La Fae Epoque where you had the plotline going into Dyson’s head a bit there. The two of you had some pretty distinctive costumes in that episode and I’m just kind of curious what that was like when you found out what they were and being able to perform that way?

Zoie Palmer: Well, for me I was mostly trying to get my head around the fact that I had to sing in French and do a fight scene and have sex with Dyson so what I was wearing was sort of the last thing on my mind but when we got to the costume fighting, of course, it’s a corset and I wore corsets during my theater training on occasion and remembered them being just a little uncomfortable so the signing scene was a little bit difficult because – well, although you’re doing it to playback you still have to look as though you’re signing and that was a bit of a struggle in something where breathing was a challenge but I have to say, they did a tremendous job with those costumes like what a brilliant – I think that (Maurine) did a brilliant job and the team over there did a brilliant job on the costume. Ksenia, I don’t know if you want to add anything for your experience with that?

Ksenia Solo: Yeah, it was definitely interesting as Zoie said, you’re being slightly suffocated, you know, and I didn’t even have to sing so props to Zoie. It was a very interesting outfit. For me my challenge was not poking people’s eyes out with my wings because they were so big and I was so, of course, not used to wearing them that our wonderful background actor who really made the scene come to life they were – half of them were practically injured after filming that scene because every time I would make a little turn I would nip somebody so I felt very sad about that and I was a little cold being so uncovered so it did not go without its challenges but I think it was cool for Zoie and I to, you know, just to be able to do something completely different and look a way that our characters have never looked and will never look again.

Zoie Palmer: Try wearing wholly man pants, that’s all I have to say.

Ksenia Solo: Listen, nobody makes wholly man pants look as good as you so…

Kris Holden-Ried: Oh God. Those pants just on a funny note.

Ksenia Solo: We were just missing Kris in a corset.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah, exactly.

Zoie Palmer: Next season.

Kris Holden-Ried: It would be so sliming on me. I can’t wait, maybe I’ll make it a wardrobe necessity in Season 5.

Q) I was kind of wondering, I really love Kyle Schmid and it looked like even from the promotional material that he might have been planned to be in that role even last season, is that the case do you know?

Kris Holden-Ried: No, that wasn’t the case.

Ksenia Solo: No, no, I wonder where you got that from.

Kris Holden-Ried: I know that we were looking for the actor.

Ksenia Solo: But, yeah, they’ve been looking for him for a while.

Kris Holden-Ried: But Kyle’s just fit the part.

Ksenia Solo: He’s great. Kyle’s just awesome. Yeah. He was fun to work with, he was really great. He had lots of great energy and he’s just really intense in his performance and so he was a really great fit to our show. I actually worked with Kyle when I was like ten years old and I remember even back then going, this kids got talent and so all these years later he’s just, you know, matured into an extremely talented actor and I didn’t get to have any scenes with him but just from what I saw, you know, the attraction with him and Anna in all of those scenes, I really enjoyed watching afterwards. But I think we felt that we all felt really happy and lucky that he came and did Lost Girl

Q) The other thing I’m noticing is that it’s wonderful to see how the dynamic of the triangle has changed too this season. It was very much very against each other even in a friendly way but this time it almost seems like Dyson and Lauren are kind of just amused and accepting and I’m wondering about your thought process as to how that shift has gone?

Zoie Palmer: I love it personally.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah. I think it – what as it Zoie, it was mid-Season 2 or Season 3 where we both looked at each other one day and we’re like, enough is enough. We just got tired. We didn’t want to play the stereotypical two opposite lovers and like the – we didn’t want to play any sort of adolescent petulant behavior towards each other. We wanted to show these as mature adults, characters, who both happened to love the same women and grew to respect each other out of that and thankfully the writers and everyone agreed and we’ve been able to sort of go down that road as opposed to something that wouldn’t have been quite as interesting.

Zoie Palmer: It’s complicated, it’s not black and white. I mean, I think that originally when Lauren and Dyson didn’t know each other very well there was an initial sort of dislike as there would be, I think, if you’re competing for the same anything. There was an initial kind of distrust for all kinds of reasons and then as the sort of four seasons have unraveled, I think they’ve proven themselves to each other in various ways in that they’re both willing to sacrifice what they do for Bo and I think that that’s earned the respect. But I think that there will be, I imagine in the future, still the occasional knee jerk reaction because they’re also human beings who happen to love the same person. So, I think it’s just really layered now in a way that has – it’s just layered and it’s evolved nicely that way I think.

Anna Silk: Yeah, and to see Dyson and Lauren it’s like now as we see a rivalry they also recognize a bit of humor in it now too which is really cool to see you guys play.

Q) That’s definitely come out this season. So was that your instigation rather than the writers?

Zoie Palmer: No, I think it was really collaborative that way.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah, it is. I mean, that’s what I was saying was so nice about Lost Girl is that the writer door is open and we can talk to them about things and how we would like to see our characters go and we all kind of work together and play off of each other’s ideas.

Q) What’s the funniest thing that every happened when you guys were trying to film the sex scene?

Ksenia Solo: Occasionally…

Kris Holden-Ried: Oh God.

Anna Silk: Well I was just thinking of our love scene recently where in the La Fae Epoque episode because I was making love with Zoie’s character Flora but as Dyson, I think we filmed that and when they called cut I remember just kind of falling over and being like, man, that is hard work. I mean, that was just – it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Like kudos to dudes, I guess. We had the crew laughing about that one.

Zoie Palmer: Dyson would come in, Bo would come in and then Dyson would come back and then Bo would come back and I was just like “I’ll be here if anyone needs me.”

Anna Silk: And it was kind of weird because I had to see how Kris moved, it was weird but because we all know each other so well it was not – it was pretty comfortable.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah. Oh my God. I remember there was this one shot of Zoie’s face and I remember I was watching the monitor and I just – come on, I’m better than that.

Zoie Palmer: It was probably five minutes till lunch. I was like, “I’m starving.”

Q) Looking back over this past season, what has been your absolute favorite scene to film?

Kris Holden-Ried: The scene that is coming up in the end, in the finale. You’ll have to wait two weeks for me. That was my favorite scene this season anyway.

Anna Silk: I don’t know. I don’t really know what my – I mean, there were some that were really difficult and challenging and I know the one that Kris is talking about and that was certainly challenging but I don’t know. I can’t say that it was my favorite because it was really tough but, I don’t know. I don’t know, we had a lot of fun. I actually had a lot of fun in that lighter episode of the season which as the Krampus episode. It was fun to watch you and Zoie and Vex in your drunk scene on the bed was pretty awesome and I just was like, I mean, I think I said five million lines in that episode because I never stopped talking and it was just kind of – I just felt like this sort of – like there was a lot of energy in that episode and, I don’t know I had fun with that episode and I got to work with Rachel quite a bit in it which was a lot of fun and it was ridiculous but I enjoyed it. It was a nice kind of lighter break.

Kris Holden-Ried: I think that’s been one of our fan favorite episodes this season.

Anna Silk: Yeah, I think it’s quite popular. The one where we go back in time was really challenging too, you know, to play Dyson was tough for me because I couldn’t sort of rely on any of my Bo-isms or Anna-isms because that would be a give away that I’m no longer Dyson. So that was definitely a challenge for me so I actually had a lot of fun doing that and realized how stoic Dyson is; what a good observer he is. So it was a really good lesson and in that episode too because I was kind of the stoic observer of the story I got to see the cast around me playing roles differently than they normally do got to see just how talented everybody is and Zoie is my leading lady and Ksenia and everybody just really did something pretty amazing in that episode.

Ksenia Solo: I think my favorite was the tango scene because it was really awesome to see Kris and Hale, Kris and K.C., dance their butts of.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah, that was a great time.

Q) I wanted to follow-up a little bit on something Kris touched on earlier. You mentioned how doing the work that you’re doing you very much in the moment are not aware of the fan response until you get out and, certainly, nowadays with social media get a chance to experience that a bit. But I’m curious now that the show has really blow up worldwide, most of you have had a chance to go to like fan conventions. I know I got a chance to see you Kris and Paul and K.C. at Dragoncon last year, I’m looking forward to seeing Zoie and Ksenia this year. But I’m interested to hear from each of you maybe your first experience at a convention once you realize just how popular Lost Girl had become?

Kris Holden-Ried: I think Anna and I have an interesting like analogy like when we went for our first convention.

Anna Silk: Before we aired at all.

Kris Holden-Ried: Before we aired, it was like 12 people around that table going, so what’s Lost Girl?

Anna Silk: Yeah, Kris – we were at like a booth handing out little pamphlets and they’re like, what’s this show? And we’re like, oh well, you know, we just – we’re going to air soon and we didn’t really sort of – it felt more like the Lost Girl lemonade stand I think. And then the next season it was like, you know, we walked out on stage and just heard this screaming and then we suddenly felt like the fae Beatles for a moment I think and it was really cool to see just the overwhelming response from one year to the next and it’s only grown from there.

Kris Holden-Ried: Yeah, it’s been a really great experience. I’ve done a bunch of conventions now and I must admit the energy that you get from the people that you meet who have been influenced or touched by the show, it’s so – it’s extremely humbling and gratifying and thank you all so much for watching and enjoying and giving back to us. It really kind of fills us up and I know it empowers me to continue working.

 

*CONFERENCE CALL*