Natascha McElhone & Olive Gray – HALO

By: Jamie Steinberg

Q) Your characters are both different from video games and I want to ask what inspiration all for your versions of the characters.

Nastscha: I think, for me, I did take the template of Dr. Halsey in the game, but to bring her to TV and all of that entails, you needed to sort of, I guess, dig a few more trenches in order to find out what it is that makes her tick and where her impulses and ambition emanates from, and you need to go back a little further, as you do with any part that you play. You need to try and figure out what the component parts are that make the person into who there, and there’s tons of clues given by the game and then sort of fleshes out in the process of making the TV show.

Q) You play mother and daughter. How was it just exploring that dynamic throughout the course of the season and building upon that?

Olive: It was it’s such a complex relationship, but I don’t know that it’s any more complex than so many mother and daughter relationships all around the world throughout time. I think that there’s a kind of universality to the complexity and at times the real difficulty between them. I feel so grateful to have been able to explore that with Natascha. There were so many times that we would talk through that relationship and talk through it again and go over it again. And each new discovery that I had or that she had we would contend that…It’s a never ending discussion. And a that’s a real joy to be able to work in that way.

Natascha: Yeah, I think what made it really interesting as well is coming from our version of what a mother is and what a mother should be and social responsibility of that what we all believe, is sort of intrinsic and innate to a consideration of what happens if it’s no longer incumbent upon women…We don’t know how she had her. We don’t know anything actually just she’s called her mother. And I thought there was something quite interesting around this idea of upscaling those feelings – that love for her to save the human race is the kind of love of all human children, if you like. The billion future people that may no longer exist if she doesn’t stop the war and get Spartans to beat The Covenant that there’s these kind of moral and philosophical questions that arise that do take care of what’s right in front of you, or do you sort of almost like a soothsayer, see what’s around the corner and what might happen in your sacrifice what’s immediately in front of you for a sort of utilitarian aim, I guess. And so we have lots of chats about that stuff and who decides what’s bad and what’s good? And, yeah, what will be the moral universe in five hundred years time. Maybe what’s good and bad will be deemed completely different as it was five hundred years ago. So, the show and and the chance to put it on TV has given us all an opportunity to really kind of follow it and ask lots of interesting questions that I think are eternal.

Q) How have your families reacted when you told them, “Hey, I’m playing these two characters. We are playing these characters in the ‘Halo’ series?” Or, how have the gamers in your family reacted?

Natascha: It’s partially generational and actually it’s also not generational. What is curious about that as I have friends and my husband used to play assiduously. And then I’ll know some younger people, friends of mine, who are like, “What? What?” So, if you’re in you’re really in – that’s what I discovered about Halo. No one’s like, “I think I heard of that.” It’s either, “Oh, my God! You’re kidding me,” or it’s just a blank expression. Someone has no idea you’re talking about.

Olive: Yeah, my family and my friends, I think still haven’t gotten over it. I think there’s still…Ery time a new thing comes out. They’re like, “Oh, my gosh! Halo!” Like, yeah, we’ve been we’ve been doing this for a while now. But I think to take a game this iconic and this epic and, like Natascha said that is just played within so many generations, it’s a massive, it’s a big thing and it’s a big deal and it’s super exciting.

Q) We see in the first two episodes that both of your characters have misgivings about what’s going on in the UNSC in the marching orders they’ve been given. In a general sense do either of you think they might come together over that even though they’ve got a difficult relationship and say, “Hey, we both don’t feel okay about this. Maybe we’d be better working on it together?”

Natascha: Never.

Olive: [laughs]

Natascha: There’s no crossover in their ambitions or their thinking. And I don’t mean by definition, because they’re opposed to one another for the sake of being opposed to one another. They’re on entirely different trajectories. And, yeah, I don’t think that kind of collaboration…For Halsey, she wants to collaborate with Cortana. She wants to create a form of non biological intelligence that she believes will end up saving the human race. She’s not interested in interpersonal relationships, even if they’re genetic.

Olive: I think they both want change in equal parts, but in kind of opposite directions. And I think what drives them is entirely different. I think that they are quite similar in other ways. But I think, actually, what drives them is they’re very different people, I think.

Q) Natascha, what kind of backstory were you given between Halsey and Master Chief and the connection they share?

A) Natascha: Just, I mean, mostly (Olive referred to this earlier on actually) that even though we were schooled in the canon of Halo, and we did boot camp, and I hung out with some friends who really, really spent three years playing this game. I mean, non stop three years is how long they’ve spent in that game, so that they were very well versed in all the sort of vagaries and subtleties of it. But I think, irrespective of that, we went with what was on the page and in the script and tried to develop and grow that if you like, as much as possible, and keep it as open to interpretation. Because this is a much love game and these characters are well known to people. I like the idea of them being able to project a little of whatever it is they want onto this dynamic in this relationship to try and keep them guessing to keep it mysterious and sort of inscrutable- not to kind of lay it all out. I think this will be an intelligent audience that doesn’t need to be spoon fed.

*CONFERENCE CALL*