Touring Toronto: The 'Orphan Black' Clones Brave the Cold

On a Wednesday afternoon in January, Toronto is positively balmy. Orphan Black stars Tatiana Maslany and Maria Doyle Kennedy are in T-shirts and light pants as they film a bright scene for the drama's third season. The sun shining in the windows is so bright it's almost blinding.

Of course, this is all taking place on an indoor TV set at Pinewood Toronto Studios that's been constructed and lit to resemble a warm Mexican cantina. Ten feet away, however, anyone who isn't on camera is huddled in sweaters and coats, since the harsh winter air keeps sneaking inside whenever anyone enters the television studio. But regardless of the temperature, everyone on the crew is rapt as Maslany — done up as her volatile clone character Helena — shovels food into her mouth in a way that is simultaneously adorable and menacing.

The third season of Orphan Black doesn't debut until April, but production has been underway for months. Specific details about the new episodes are hard to come by — nobody wants to be the one to spill the beans about what's next for Helena and the approximately 500 other characters Maslany plays. Heck, when asked, almost everyone remains vague on exactly which episode they're working on ("Sixish, maybe? Or maybe seven?" says one publicist). What is for sure is that actor Ari Millen is back, taking on the roles of a whole new set of male clones to complicate matters for everyone involved.

But even with the top-secret tone of the production, the cast and producers are open about their love for the production's home base. "What's great about Toronto is that there's a huge wealth of talent," says Millen, who's also guest-starred on several other shows that shoot in Toronto, including SyFy's 12 Monkeys and The CW's Reign. "I sometimes see the same people, but more often than not, it's new faces every time."

And Orphan Black is one of the few TV shows filmed in Toronto that's actually (sort of) set in Toronto. While 12 Monkeys is set in Phillidelphia and Baltimore, and USA's Suits and FX's The Strain are set in New York, on Orphan Black, Toronto actually gets to be itself for once — the show features familiar landmarks, Canadian signage, and neighboring suburbs. Of course, to those unfamiliar with the city's appearance and geography, the show could easily take place in any major North American city. It's not Toronto, but it's not not Toronto.

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"It's that kind of thing of, like, Americans want it to be not Canada, and the Canadians want it to be not America, so you kind of end up in this zone of kind of trying to be North Generica," says co-creator John Fawcett of Orphan, which is a co-production between BBC America and Canada's Bell Media. "Most Americans know we're a Canadian show now. So I don't think we're trying to hide anything anymore."

Maslany, meanwhile, thinks the vagueness of the setting actually worked in favor of Orphan Black's unique premise. "There's something about the story that exists outside of this world. It feels to me like a Gotham-type thing," she says. "I love that we show Toronto and we're not pretending it's New York. We have such great architecture; it's so bizarre and kind of different. We have great landmarks and alleyways and cool factories and stuff."

The flipside of Toronto's "cool" atmosphere, though, is Toronto's actual cool factor. Orphan Black typically films starting in autumn and throughout the harsh Canadian winter — and even by January, with at least two months to go before the temperatures rise, everyone is already tired of the cold weather. "It's really hard to shoot when the camera's freezing, so you just don't do it," says Maslany. "But then you lose all sense of the world outside when you're shooting in the studio all day, because you never see the sun."

Adds Fawcett, "[The filming schedule] is just dictated by air dates and by the network. Believe me, I wish it was different. As it gets colder, you just don't want to go outside anymore. It just gets ugly. You don't want to shoot outdoors anymore. Mostly our show starts outside and then it starts to go inside towards the end of the season." Fawcett hopes that fans will be forgiving of the noticeable change in weather on the show. "The end of Season 2 is, like, full-on winter, and then at the beginning of Season 3, we have to pick up right where we left off, but we've started filming in September so it looks warmer," he says, laughing. "Hopefully, people just forget that it was winter at the end of Season 2."

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The quickly dropping temperatures also create challenges when production has to return to a scene later for reshoots, says Millen. "We were dressed a certain way the first day, so we had to be dressed that way again on the cold day, and it was not appropriate for the weather. You could see our breath coming out," he explains. "I was sick all weekend and not ready to get out of bed the next week." That said, he adds, "But there's no complaints. I'm having the time of my life."

Orphan Black premieres Saturdya, April 18 on BBC America.