Orphan Black: Echoes’ Krysten Ritter Talks ‘Terrifying’ Challenge of Playing an Amnesiac in Spinoff’s Premiere
When Krysten Ritter is ready for a new role, she typically looks for lush backstories to pull from. Some semblance of history that can help her understand a character’s intentions, quirks, motivations, etc. But in the case of AMC’s Orphan Black: Echoes, she instead opted for a “terrifying, yet exciting challenge”: a character with absolutely no memory of who she is. A completely mysterious identity. A fresh piece of clay to mold.
“It was really hard,” the actress admits to TVLine. “That was something that felt appealing and exciting because I’m always looking for characters with a rich backstory. For example, Jessica Jones, who I played for so many years, there was always so much to draw upon because her backstory is so rich and so full and informs every step she takes, every word that she says. This was a completely unique opportunity that hasn’t come my way before and I thought, ‘Well, that’s f–king interesting. How do you do that?'”
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Orphan Black: Echoes (which premiered Sunday) follows Ritter’s Lucy, a woman who wakes up locked inside what looks like an apartment, only she can’t remember how she got there or who she even is. “It’s a story of identity and somebody desperately trying to figure out who she is,” Ritter says. “I thought it was such a dynamic role and such an exciting opportunity to do the science fiction, on-the-run stuff that is sexy and plot twisty.”
In the series opener, Lucy is told by a scientist that she was created from a “high-resolution scan using a very complex process.” She was printed, in fact. It’s 2052, and science has created a four-dimensional process of recreating human tissue. That’s all she has to hear before she panics and escapes the confines of the printing press (lab, whatever) to find freedom. When we next see her, she’s formed a whole new life for herself, including a boyfriend and a young child who she’s a mother-figure for.
“What drew me to the story the most was the relationships,” adds Ritter. “She’s lonely. She’s completely alone in the world. She meets Jack, falls in love and creates a whole new life for herself. She’s mothering his [deaf] daughter [Charlie], learning ASL, running a farm, driving a big truck that she’s converted herself to be electric. She’s rigged a completely electric farm. She’s doing it, and she’s done it pretty fast. I think she’s madly in love with her life and grateful to have somebody and something.”
When she’s accidentally struck by a vehicle and brought to a hospital, she’s back on the grid and thus, findable. It puts her in immediate danger because the people who created her are after her. But what sinister plans do they have once they track her down?
“When the bad guys come after her, I think that if it was just her, she would probably just keep running,” says Ritter. “But to protect what she’s built for herself, to protect her new family, she knows that she has to find out what’s going on and who’s after her and make them stop, as a choice to protect the people that she’s grown to love.”
And thus begins Lucy’s journey down the rabbit hole of cloning, print-outs and conspiracies, an experience which is both similar to Sarah Manning’s in the original Orphan Black, but also fresh. To make matters more difficult, Charlie shoots and kills a man who’s attacking Lucy at home, which means Jack and his daughter must flee as well, and there’s a lot more on the line for Lucy than just her own life.
Two security thugs, Tom and Emily, update the scientist lady about what happened on Lucy’s farm, including the fact that their crony is now dead. They say Lucy is “violent and unstable,” but the scientist appears to have empathy and maybe even love for her creation. More on that to come.
Using her attacker’s phone and SIM card, Lucy tracks down where he was before the incident. When she sees a teenage girl outside his office building, she has a memory of the girl looking in a mirror. She then realizes that the girl has the exact same scar on her arm as she does. Realizing they’re both being followed, Lucy abducts the teen at gunpoint. “She’s the same, isn’t she?” Lucy asks yet another security guard. “She’s the same as me.” Lucy tosses the girl into a truck and hightails it out of there.
In the final scene, the scientist makes a phone call to “Aunt Cosima,” and is revealed to be a grown-up Kira Manning. And she’s worried that she’s done something terrible. The camera pans down to photos on Kira’s desk showing Cosima, Mrs. S, Felix and her mother, Sarah.
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