If she could just get a word out! I felt for her because she couldn't finish a sentence and no one would listen to her. For the first three episodes she keeps getting interrupted, actually. The scene at the end of episode 3, we'd been shooting that one scene for 14 hours that day, and it's basically the first time that we hear her reveal what's going on and she keeps getting interrupted. In some takes, she'd really snap and then pull it back. It was written the way it was, but we had been shooting that scene for so long and I had started to play with it. I think we were shooting episode 7 or 8 when I brought it up with Jonathan, the director, and Warren, and they were like, "Oh, yeah!" I was already several episodes in, so I was like, "We're doing this now! We're committed." Every character has their own range of voices, their own register, and I really enjoy playing with that. I don't even know if I ever talked about it. As she starts to get more in touch with the Katherine side of her and heal the wound, her voice starts to come back. So it was thinking about what would that do to her voice? As the season goes on, the energy of Katherine comes back, so then it's how you try to merge those things. She's also trying to hide because she doesn't want anyone to know she survived. She's also totally cloaking herself too, so her voice is affected by every aspect: She's sweet and she's kind, but she experiences this trauma so her voice probably shoots up into her throat. When you really start to imagine what that feels like and the trauma… Josh I talked about just what her life was like between that and moment and becoming Doris. She's chained to a truck by people she loves and trusts, dragged through a field, and left for dead. When you think about what happened to her - before she was very in her body, and a dancer, and the king of the gang ring and outspoken and unbridled, and then she has this horrible thing happen to her. It's so interesting because we never talked about it. To me, it's part of my larger plight to bring life to these complex humans so we get to make more of them. I keep saying, "A vote for Doris is a vote for all women!" If you watch Reprisal, if you go on Doris' journey, then we get to make more shows about complicated, intelligent, archetype-breaking, human women.
I felt like it was important that 10 years ago this part would've been written for a man. I felt like it was an important project for the moment, for the time. For me, I was looking for a departure from anything I'd done before. I felt like I understood what was underneath, what he was trying to do, and I loved the era ambiguity. I grew up watching old movies, classic movies, and I just got Josh's vision on the page.
I'd had some time away so I was little bit more open, and I read it that day and I just got it. Then I woke up to an offer and they wanted to meet with me that day. The day that it got officially canceled, but got picked up to do a movie, I was flying back from London and was super-jet-lagged. I was technically available - Timeless was hanging in the balance. This is good I'm going to want to do it." But I was just so tired. I was like, "Wow, this looks and sounds really great," and then I read the first five pages and I was like, "Yeah, no, I'm not doing this." I was like, "I can't take the lead of another show.
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ABIGAIL SPENCER: I had just finished Timeless season 2 - like, literally had just wrapped it - and my team had sent me the script and said, "They're very interested in you for this series by The Handmaid's Tale producers." I'm a huge fan of Warren Littlefield and his company, Fargo, and everything that he'd done.