Brittany Curran – The Magicians

By starrymag | May 6, 2020

By: Lisa Steinberg

 

 

Q) It was kind of bittersweet for me in the finale that we see such short interactions between Fen and all of these other characters whom she hasn’t really had many scenes with before.  

 

A) There are certain characters that really didn’t interact that much.  I think at the end of the series I had interacted with everybody.  Some not until the very end.  But I am glad at least we had it.  Like when I finally had scenes with Jade [Tailor] I was so excited. It took five years, but we finally got it.

 

Q) Continuing on with that, to me it was also sad that we didn’t get to say goodbye to some favorite side characters too, like our favorite Fen foil, Tick.

 

A) Oh my God, I love Tick Pickwick.  I love Rizwan Manji who plays Tick.  He is so great.  I think part of that was things beyond our control because Riz was on other shows; he was like a series regular on two big network shows. I think part of it was like logistical things, but I love him so much.  I would have loved to see how Tick and Fen kind of figure out their shit at the end.  Probably never.  Even though Fen is the birth mother of the new world and literally created it, I think he still would find a way to look down upon her, which I love.  I love how absolutely ridiculous and classist he is. He’s just such a terrible person, but he’s amazing. [laughs]

 

Q) He always has been that one person that no matter how much Fen has evolved or how high her journey has taken her; he still finds a way to undercut her.  To see how he would feel about Fen when we leave her in the finale, for my own reasons, I would have loved to see what he felt or what he had to say about it all coming down to Fen whom he had no faith in.

 

A) I know. I wonder what he would say. I think, of course I am not Riz and I am not the writers…I think Tick’s whole thing is that he is so deeply a classist that anyone that was a peasant or started as a peasant and wasn’t naturally born in royal blood he just despises. I don’t think Fen could ever, ever gain his respect, which just goes to show how ridiculous that line of thinking is.  It mirrors itself in real life too, the whole old money and new money thing.  People who don’t care no matter what, all they care about is where you came from and they do not care at all where you end up.  I think most people aren’t like that in real life, but there definitely are some that feel that way.  I think Tick represents them hilariously.  I wonder if he’s more sexist or more classist. I think it’s even.  I think he might be more classist than sexist. I think that would always win out.  I think he would pick a royal woman over a peasant man.  He just hates peasants; he has a particular venom for peasants.

 

Q) And Riz’s delicious delivery of Tick’s lines was always so charmingly smug.

 

A) Riz pulls off this character so brilliantly!  I don’t think you can have a character that is such a piece of shit be so wonderfully charming with many people.  I am so glad that Riz got to grace our screens with his presence as Tick.  It’s so funny. He’s so nice and kind in real life and he is very much the opposite of Tick in real life.

 

Q) Fillory was Fen’s home, but she never was able to feel like she fit in because of her family and the way she was treated by the other residents. And seeing her be the mother for a whole new world was so full circle. She got to talk about the good parts of Fillory for her, but also create something new that would be good to her too.  Something pure for her.  

 

A) Yeah, I think Fen was the perfect person to create this world because she has such a good heart, it’s like a good heart to a fault.  As you said, living in Fillory a lot of the people were mean to her and didn’t give her the time of day, but she never let that get in the way of her love for Fillory. Just because other people had the free will basically to treat her shitty, she didn’t allow their free will to affect her own free will to love her birth home and to love her land.  I love that.  I love how resilient she is that she didn’t, because it’s so hard and so much easier said than done.  Like what the finale episode was not letting your external circumstances affect you.  Even though it’s insanely hard not to, focusing on your own internal circumstances and Fen’s internal circumstances is that Fillory is her home and where she is from and what she loves, and she didn’t let anyone ruin that for her.  But she’s also not fine.  She’s not an idiot and she could see that there were faults with this place that she loved.  I mean, I think in life everything that we love has faults. There is nothing that’s perfect.  So, I love that she never let anyone dampen her love for it, but then she didn’t let her own idealism dampen the truth of what Fillory was, which was that it wasn’t perfect, and it could be backwards sometimes.  It wasn’t fair.  I love that she has such a pure heart but could still be honest about it. I am so glad that she was the one who created the new world.

 

Q) It’s like this penultimate moment for Fen.  She went from peasant, to a wife trying to make this awkward arranged marriage work with Eliot who is trying to push her away, to the mother of a log, to the mother of a real daughter in this kind of Pinocchio moment, to acting High King, and finally birth mother of a new world. 

 

A)  When I read that finale script I was so happy.

 

Q) The writers took so much of the love and pureness within her and gave her this spotlight allowing her to be the woman that she was meant to be. She didn’t have a voice for so many seasons.  She wanted to be useful, and help, and learn and to be a part of the core group.  At the end, the person they need to use to create this new world is Fen.

 

A) Yeah, it’s like the dues she should have been given the whole time. And I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that at the same time every one of her friends started giving her the time of day and listening to her and respecting her, that it was also at the same time that Fen started respecting herself more and sticking up for herself. Of course, it doesn’t justify other people’s behavior at all and they have to be responsible for their behavior. It’s still sad.  Then, also, I think what is most productive is to figure out what you do have control over.  The whole time Fen did have the agency to stick up for herself and to put her foot down and, unfortunately, she just didn’t have the tools yet to know that she could do that.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when Fen finally put her foot down it was like you know what, you can do it yourself and she finally stood up to Margo (Summer Bishil), that they started respecting her more.  It’s unfortunate that that has to be that way. It’s unfortunate that there are people in the world that feel comfortable treating other people poorly.  But, also, Fen needed to learn that lesson because if she just kept on going along with everyone and being everyone’s puppy dog, then she wouldn’t have created a new world.  She wouldn’t have saved everyone. She would still be a sidekick.  I am just very proud of Fen.  Like Dumbledore says, “It takes a great deal ofbravery to stand up to ourenemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”  It’s so true.  I am glad that Fen finally found that strength in herself to do that.  I think she saw that once she started sticking up for herself that she started getting treated differently.  She could have known it all along, but it’s not easy to see that stuff. It’s so hard to see that when you’re living in your own head.

Even when I was on set and I had to say that line to Margo, I was legit nervous. But then I thought maybe this is good because I am internalizing Fen, and this is how Fen would feel in this moment.  I was talking to our director David Reed about it and I was like, “This is so weird. I actually feel nervous to say this line.”  He was like, “Use this.  That’s good a thing.  That’s how Fen would be feeling.”  Also, I had been Fen for four years and so naturally you start internalizing how these characters would feel even more, which obviously makes my job easier. So, I was like, “You’re right. Cool. This is how I feel and this is how Fen would feel and so I will just go with that.”  Even though you’re nervous, it doesn’t mean you can’t still be strong.  That is strength.  One of my favorite quotes is, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”  I think that’s a really important thing to know, and Fen finally figured it out.

 

Q) She was a Foo Fighter, a wife, a High King and then she became Fencicle of House Wahlberger.  She really went up in stature!

 

A)  Do you know how they got the name “Fencicle?”

 

Q)  No, I am actually not familiar.

 

A) In Season Two we were filming a scene in Castle Whitespire with Fen and Eliot (Hale Appleman). At the beginning of every single take Hale would improvise calling me something else funny and cute.  So, one of the takes he called me a “Fencicle” and it got put in the gag reel that year.  I thought it was pretty hilarious, so we kept saying “Fencicle” to each other jokingly. Then, the fifth season the writers actually put it in. Hale’s the one that came up with Fencicle jokingly on the gag reel in the second season.

 

Q) Everything comes full circle on “The Magicians,” so it seems. Pretty appropriate.

 

A) It really is.  It really is.

 

Q) The series has imparted so many lessons on fans.  We feel like we have grown alongside of these characters in many ways as well.  For people who feel like they are in Fen’s position to see someone be the example is inspiring and commendable for the show.  

 

A) Exactly. Yeah.  I love the writers and I love how they have developed Fen over the seasons.  I feel like it’s very within the scope of a fantastical, insane world, and I feel like they have done such a good job of relaying a person who did start out so meek and so subservient.  I love how they did it in such a realistic way where it’s like people don’t just overnight go from what’s been ingrained in them and how they have been nurtured and also their own nature to all of a sudden one thing happens and they can get over their anxiety and fears.  It’s like there is a big event that can shift them, but it doesn’t happen overnight.  Even if we have moment of, “Well, this is the person I want to be,” we still go backwards sometimes.  That’s just being human.  Fen would make progress and in one episode she would be so much more confidant, and then she would go back a little bit.  That’s how people really are. Then, because of the give and take over four years, when she finally has that snap moment where she does stick up for herself and she is the confidant person she always wanted to be, it makes sense because she already had all of these years of growth behind her that led her to finally having this moment.  Even though I would have loved for Fen to just be this strong empowered Fillorian right out of the gate, that’s not how it is for a lot of people, especially people who have been groomed to be a certain way.  And Fen was certainly groomed.  Anyone who has been groomed to be in an arranged marriage, like hey, this person whom you haven’t met, you’re going to be stuck with them for life that messes with your psyche and that’s how Fen grew up. This man you have never met who lives on a different planet who we don’t even know who even it is yet, you’re going to spend the rest of your life with him.  That must mess with her psyche.

 

Q) I know that you got to shadow the director during an episode of this season as well, and I wanted to ask what you really took away from that experience?  

 

A) I had been wanting to shadow for a while now and I just never really did it. It was awesome.  Acting is my first love first and foremost, for sure.  But I also have always wanted to produce and write and maybe direct.  So, this felt like the first opportunity to do that.  One of our executive producers, David Reed (he’s a writer and EP on the show) was going to be directing his first episode of television.  I was like, “Oh, this is perfect because I am also good friends with him in real life.”  David does all of the things that I want to do.  He’s a writer and a producer and he’s also a director now and that’s one of the things I was figuring out in that line of the industry.

It was so cool.  I was there throughout all of the prep for the episode.  There are weeks of just pre-production in the writer’s office that the actors are not a part of, and we do not see.  Just actually working on the episode in and of itself weeks before that that we are not a part of, because we don’t need to be.  There are so many things that we don’t know that are going on.  Obviously, I know a lot goes into it, but I mean it is so detailed.  The directors, the writers and the producers, sometimes you’ll be like, “Do they remember that storyline?”  They remember everything.  They are, first of all, highly intelligent people.  They are like the first line of the storytelling.  They are the ones who are creating these characters and these worlds.  They have so much love for it and so much passion for it.  As actors you are on set and you are living in these worlds and there is just so much that goes into it.  It’s so meticulously planned while also leaving room for spontaneity.  That’s how Fen became a series regular.  Fen was originally supposed to be much smaller and less significant than what they ended up making her.  So, they are also very malleable.

I learned so much.  I learned a lot more technical stuff.  The meetings that they have and the stuff they talk about. They just know so much more than anyone realizes that they know.  It was fascinating.  It was really cool.  I had so much fun.  It’s funny with Hollywood and filmmaking, there is this perception that it is this cushy, glamorous job, and it’s like some days maybe, but it is not.  Actors alone will work like sixteen hours, but the director, even though he or she is not on set the whole time, they are working for like twenty hours some days.  It is crazy how intensive these schedules are and I really respect that.  And David killed that episode.  I loved his episode and he was just so much fun to work with.

 

Q) Fen was asked to share her best memories to make and create this new world, and I wanted to ask, what have been some of yours of your time being on “The Magicians?”

 

A) I have so many, I have so many good memories of being on “The Magicians.”  By the way, I loved that scene.  That was one of my favorite scenes.  I was like, “Yes, Fen gives her big speech and gets to be a hero!” When I first read that bit and that whole scene, I was so excited.

Thinking emotionally what comes to mind first, the first time that I walked onto the throne room set.  I love castles in real life so much.  So, the first time (which was oh my gosh like almost five years ago now) walking on to the throne room set and I was literally wearing a princess dress and I am walking into the interior of a castle of a TV show I am on.  I was just thinking, this is the most magical thing ever.  This is going to be my job for at least a few months.  Especially in the beginning, I used to during lunch when people weren’t on the set, I would walk through the halls of Castle Whitespire in my white big long dress.  I would pretend that I was really living in this world or really living in some fantasy world.  I would pretend I was on “The Tudors,” if I am being completely honest. [laughs] So, just living in the magic of the show and really the magic of the place.  Margot Ready, our production designer, she’s absolutely brilliant.  I love her.  She’s a big part of why the show looks like it does.  Obviously, it’s a concerted effort, but she’s a really, really big part of it.

Meeting everyone for the first time in Vancouver at this delicious restaurant. I remember seeing Hale for the first time and I just yelled across the table. I had never met this man before in my life and I said, “Husband!”  And he yelled back to me, “Wife!”  And that’s how I met Hale.  When I was at the table I was sitting in between Jason Ralph’s wife Rachel Brosnahan and Jade Tailor and I just became friends with them.  Obviously, really, really good friends with Jade.  I remember Jade and I just bonded so hard during that first dinner.  Jade and Hale were the first two people that I became really close with on the show.

Our production office is up in Vancouver and then our writer’s office is down in LA. That’s where obviously our writers are and the vast majority of our producers and the assistants, and I just love them.  It really is just a big, happy, crazy, perverted family.  And I love it so much.  I really miss going to the writer’s office.  They have this Boys Night like every Thursday night where John McNamara’s son comes over and we play Four Square outside.  We were in Raleigh Studio. I think I can say that now.  They actually had a whole huge patio area that was a part of their production offices.  They would do Four Square every week and we would eat pizza or burgers and we would watch “Rick and Morty” and it was just so fun.

 

Q) The show is set around this incredible series of books, and normally at the end of the season viewers feel like where the situations we leave the characters off in really sets up the next season and is a bookmark for the show.  The finale this time though felt like it was more a book end.  How did it feel for you?

 

A) I know when the writers wrote the finale, they didn’t know that it was going to be the end.  You know, when you’re making a TV show there is always the possibility that the show will end. I think when they wrote it, they wrote it so that it could be open ended.  But they also wanted to make sure there was some really good closure there.  I loved it.  I love when TV shows and movies end on a note where you are reminded that the story goes on and everything is just done or definitively closed.  Loose ends are tied off, that’s really important in storytelling.  But it also suggests that they keep living.  I also just loved that there is closure for Fen.  She’s getting more respect from her friends and Fen literally is the birth mother of the new world, which is the best possible thing for Fen because she just really wanted to be a mom so badly and she loved her home Fillory.  I think the fact that Fen created this new world, I was so happy.  I was so happy with that ending and that Fen was literally the birth mother.  And, she is the humblest person ever giving up ruling the land to somebody else, which I think, “Wow! She is the humblest person ever.”  She certainly makes incredibly humble decisions.  I loved it.

That was such a magical day filming.  The few of us that were stuck up in new Fillory, up there on I think it was White Rock in British Columbia.  It was the perfect day. It was so beautiful.  We ate so much pizza.  It was great.

 

Q) Fen got a knife tree of in her creation, personally is there something you would want a tree of if you had the ability to create your own?

 

A) First of all, the knife tree, thank you for bringing that up.  They actually did build a knife tree; it just didn’t make the cut.  There was a real tree at the park we were at and our amazing props department went and took these fake knives that look real and built them into parts of branches. Then, on the day they connected the fake branches to the real branches so that I could actually pluck knives from the tree.  So, there was actually a tree with like fifty knives hanging out of it and then several were rigged for me to pluck them like you would an apple.  The original scene started with me plucking the knife out of the tree and then starting to the walk ascending up to my friends.  I am sure it was cut for time.  I hung out so much at that knife tree.  I took so many selfies with that knife tree and sent them to our producers and writers back in LA and told them how much I loved the knife tree.

If I could have trees similar to that…Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) has her bacon and Josh (Trevor Einhorn) has his pizza….I would probably have a coffee tree with the most perfect cappuccino that’s ever been made.  Always pluckable.  The cappuccino has to be in a very, very cute mug no matter what.  That sounds perfect.  I am going to go with a cappuccino tree where every mug is cute but different.  At least half the mugs have to be Disney themed!

 

Q) No one really got to say goodbye to Eliot. The others end up on the shore, but Eliot is alone back at Brakebills.  What would Fen have said to him?

 

A) The way that I see it, is that we all will see each other again.  This obviously has nothing to do with the writers, this is just my own personal take on it.  I think we will all see each other again.  I would imagine if the show kept going, by the way I do not know this and none of the writers have told me this, I would imagine that we would have created this new world and brought the Fillorians back to the new world and then gone back and then found them.  I feel like on “The Magicians” we always end up finding our way back to each other.  I mean we have been on so many different worlds and Julia (Stella Maeve) found her way back to Brakebills in the very beginning, even when it was scorned from her memory. So, I think we absolutely would have found each other.

But I have to say, because I know some people were sad that Eliot wasn’t with his friends at the end, it’s not the end.  It’s just the end of this show.  When you have characters that are in television or literature, characters live on.  I think they all would have met up.  Also, I feel like Eliot in a way…In a way that I see it, it shows that Eliot has grown.  He is in this independent strong man and he doesn’t need a crutch.  He doesn’t need like one friend as a crutch.  He is incredibly powerful and incredibly good and has learned so much.  I think Eliot deserved to find a good man. I had heard early on during filming into the season that he was going to be with Charlton (Spencer Daniels) and I was really excited.  I also didn’t understand because Charlton wasn’t as developed of a character then.  But as we got to know Charlton I was like, “This is a good person.  This is a good person that just understands life because he has been through so much and Eliot has been through so much and he understands life in a really like dark, but beautiful way.”  I thought it was kind of nice.  Eliot is a strong man.  He can be on his own for a little bit and he can fend for himself and have this relationship that he has always deserved to have.  I think Eliot and Charlton were so good together.  Their chemistry was really lovely.

 

Q)  I loved that throughout Charlton really helped Eliot be so grounded and steadfastly focused. It made a lot of sense.

 

A) You’re absolutely right, that’s a really good point.  He really did keep him focused.  Good point!  I love that.

 

Q)  Is there anything else that you would like to touch on that really encapsulates the show that we didn’t talk about or say to fans?

 

A) I would just like to say to fans thank you so much for welcoming Fen.  First of all, for those fans who read the books, Fen was a much smaller and a much different character.  So, it must have been a little weird to see the show’s version of Fen, my version of Fen.  Then, of course, being in an arranged marriage with their beloved Eliot would have been weird, and I just love how they accepted Fen and loved Fen and made me feel like Fen was really special.  I love Fen.  Without the fans watching and loving our characters and loving our show, we wouldn’t have had these five amazing seasons.  I see people now getting all nostalgic.  I go online and read comments on Instagram, Twitter and Reddit. I really like Reddit and sometimes I go on there and I see people being like I really did not except Fen to become this character that I loved.  I didn’t expect her to become who she became either.  When I got on the show, I was booked for seven episodes and she was this sidekick, submissive quiet one who didn’t really have her own agency about her at all, which in and of itself was interesting to play.  But I was just so proud of her that she became who she is. I have never been so connected to a character before, so I just feel very proud of Fen.  I am just very happy that fans have embraced her like they have. It’s really an honor.