Caprica's 'Zoe' offers a sneak peek at her human/Cylon role

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Caprica's 'Zoe' offers a sneak peek at her human/Cylon role

Alessandra Torresani, who plays Zoe Graystone in SCI FI's Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica, told SCI FI Wire that she wasn't worried when she read that her character dies in the opening minutes of the series pilot. (Spoilers ahead!)

"I took it as, 'OK, it's just going to be a miniseries; I die in the first half, and that's OK,'" Torresani said in an exclusive telephone interview last Friday in Pasadena, Calif. "Then I come back as a Cylon, and it's not really me, and that will be the end of the show. So it was a huge surprise when we got picked up for the 20 episodes, and now I'm really scared to see where my character goes."

Torresani plays Zoe, the daughter of a technology mogul (Eric Stoltz), who transfers Zoe's spirit into what becomes the first sentient Cylon. Torresani said that in the upcoming series she will play multiple versions of Zoe, including the Cylon. "I talked to Jane [Espenson], one of our writers, and I found out there's going to be a bunch of flashback scenes, and I am going to be a Cylon, and I'm having to take miming classes, because they want me to wear the little dots on my face and actually be miming as a Cylon."

Torresani spoke exclusively to SCI FI Wire about Caprica via telephone in conjunction with an ongoing charity auction in which paraphernalia and props from Battlestar Galactica are on sale. The following is an edited version of that interview. The two-hour pilot of Caprica is now available on DVD and the Web; Caprica kicks off on SCI FI next year.

How tough was it to define Zoe in just a few scenes and then go back and present her as a "version" of herself that isn't quite complete?
Torresani: I took it as twins. That's how I kind of [saw] the characters, as Zoe and Zoe-A. They are basically the same person, but they are also completely opposite. That's how I feel twins are: People look at them and think they are the same, but they always have different personalities. I took Zoe as just a hardass: She's a brat, she knows who she is, and she doesn't understand why no one else believes in her except for her best friend and her boyfriend. She doesn't understand why her mother and father don't get her.

But she takes life for granted because she has all of this money, and she can do whatever she wants, so she basically says, "F--k you guys, I'm going to do my own thing." Then I took Zoe-A, or avatar Zoe, as the sweet child or innocent [version] of what the original Zoe was earlier in her life. She is more naïve, because thinking is brand-new to her, so she's a brand-new, newborn baby. So her eyes just light up when she sees certain things, but she's deeply, deeply scared, and she is the innocent of the original Zoe. So the two of them, they make a perfect whole.

It seems like that bratty, kind of rebellious attitude is essentially the foundation for the Cylons. When you shot the pilot, were you thinking at all about the fact that your character is the nucleus for what the Cylons become?

Torresani: I kind of took it as my own character, so I took it as completely different. I'd never seen Battlestar before, and I know that a lot of Battlestar fans are kind of mad at me about that. I had no idea what Battlestar was; I thought it was a '70s TV show before I was born. I knew it existed in the years prior [to Caprica], but I didn't know anything about it. So to me, Caprica is a completely different show, because we're 57 years before, so a Cylon is what I create in 50 years after that, and it doesn't reflect my character.

I created a form of me acting rebellious and all this, but it had nothing to do with what I thought it was going to be in the future. Some people, I'm sure, are going to disagree with me, thinking this is how the Cylons originally were, so they must have been rebellious from the beginning and they must have known they were going to hate humans. But I think it's just a lost girl who is rebelling and wants her point to come across, and it happens to come across that there's a Cylon that her father created, and it's her only way to escape, because it's her only reality.

When I first read the script, I didn't relate it in any way to what's happening now, but it's open to interpretation, what people believe. That's not how I originally played the character, but now, watching Battlestar and being familiar with it, I kind of see that I unintentionally related it in some sense. ...

Is there anything you're most looking forward to sinking your teeth into?
Torresani: Well, it's great, because I'm playing the original Zoe in flashbacks. I'm playing avatar Zoe, and we're going to have a few more avatar Zoes in the club. I know I'm going to be blond in one of them, maybe I'll have pink hair in another one, and then I'm also going to be playing the Cylon. So who knows when the Cylon's going to come through? The Cylon could magically turn into a human-form Cylon. I mean, that's me hoping that's where it's going to come to—I don't know about that—but that's the way I think it would eventually turn out to become. I'm just hoping to play as many people as I possibly can, and I'm up for the challenge—the emotional and comedic challenge behind it.

sci-fi wire...

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Enjoy The Prologue From My Upcoming Book.. "Strolok"............by R.Goldberg

"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR RACE WAS TARGETED FOR EXTINCTION?"

The Sun is a powerful force in our Universe. It brings us light, warmth and a promise of a galaxy beyond the stars. Often we associate massive flashes of light with the reflection of our Sun's light bouncing off of another surface.

This is not always the case though, especially if you believe that we are truly not alone in the Universe. When we witness things that we can't readily explain we sometimes turn our heads and shrug our shoulders in a display of apathy.

A display such as this occurred on Friday January 29, 1982 at the Crater Lake National Park just outside of Chemult, Oregon. The snow had been falling steadily for a period of four days. The winds had been whisking about at 40 miles per hour.
Then there was one of those unnatural flashes of light. This created an eerie silence as a lanky boy, just nine years old, seemed to appear from out of that flash. If he had walked to this point there would have been a distinct trail in the newly fallen snow.
There was no trail and as a matter of fact the only tracks in the snow were the ones that outlined his feet where he was standing.

He began to trudge through the snow wearing what could only be described as dark brown long johns. He seemed dazed yet, at the same time, very clear about the direction that he was travelling. This boy with no identity or name seemed to be on a mission that would take him to places he had never been before.
His main goal was to reach Chemult, Oregon and he had no intention of stopping until he accomplished this. As strange as it seems the extreme cold seemed to have little or no effect on him at all.

Why Chemult? What was so special about this town located at an elevation of 4,758 feet above sea level in a frozen winter wilderness in Oregon?

The town of Chemult was first opened to the local traffic in 1926 and here in 1982, with its population of only 241, offered little in the way of comfort for a nine year old boy who was all alone. This journey, although prompted by something deep inside of him, did not provide a feeling of comfort and yet he had hoped that he would at least experience a feeling of accomplishment once he reached the town.

The wind was getting stronger and he noticed a small piece of yellow paper tattered and torn from whipping about in the snow. He only stopped long enough to
pick up this paper..........it read:

.....With the winter season here there was a lot of fun to have. Travelling miles of open trails on snow mobiles skiing or simply hiking, but there are dangers of doing so. Please remember safety first. Do not travel alone and be sure someone knows where you are and where you are going before travelling our trails, and please read the safety rules and codes of ethics before hiking the trails...

Nightfall was near and he had already walked 38 of the 40 miles needed to reach Chemult. He was just off of Route 97 when he spotted an old barn just about 200 feet NE of his present location. Making his way to the barn he went in and found it to be totally deserted, it was a perfect place to rest for the night.

Morning had arrived and once awake the boy started to look around the barn in the daylight light to see if there was anything that was lying in the barn that he could use to assist him on his trek.

Over in the far corner of the barn he found an old metal locked box that had long been forgotten. It was all rusted out and the key was nowhere to be found. After several failed attempts to open the box the young boy closed his eyes, sat back on his tired limbs and placed the palm of his right hand on top of the box. All of a sudden a dull red glow appeared from his right palm and the box lid flew open. Strangely enough once the red glow disappeared all that remained was a faint thin black outline where the outside of the red mark had appeared on his palm. Inside of the box he found several items all of which were unfamiliar to him and it was obvious that they had been there
for a very long time.

The contents included a tattered passport with the picture missing, a pocket knife, a compass, an antique pocket watch with a broken crystal, a time-worn souvenir porcelain coffee mug with the words; "Atlanta, Georgia, The Peach State, A Perfect Place to Live", on it and a frayed map of the Metro Atlanta Area It was difficult to make out the name on the passport but with a couple of light brushes with his fingers he saw the name Jason Tredmore. This is now who this boy would become.

Sci-Fi Blast

Wednesday, May 13, 2009