BBC America
The BBC America drama returns April 14.
As the face of Orphan Black, Tatiana Maslany has captured high ratings playing a cast of clones, each grappling with personal crises and vulnerabilities.
Ahead of the fourth season debut April 14, Maslany opened up about how she juggles a dozen, and counting, different characters in the popular drama on BBC America and Space in Canada. It's all about staying in the moment.
"The plot is very dense and my brain isn't a plotty brain," Maslany told The Hollywood Reporter in Toronto about endless plot twists to produce fourth-season surprises like Delphine's possible return and Kira's (Skyler Wexler) backstory.
"It's an in-the-moment, impulse and instinctual thing. It's how does a person feel about the situation they're in. How does it make them react," she said.
If there's a manual on how to play multiple characters beyond help from wig and makeup artists, it's in Maslany's dressing room.
"Sometimes I get lost in the plot a little bit. For me, I have to stay in the present moment and not think too much about where we're going, or what's controlling events," Maslany explained.
She admits to sometimes being as confused as her audience about which clone is who, under whose guidance, and who's not who they say they are. "It's not a big issue if I'm lost. I can play into that. They're all discovering in the moment, piecing things together. If I'm doing the same, it's helpful for me," Maslany said.
After Orphan Black producer Temple Street Productions cloned another 10 episodes for 2016, the buzz is building around Sarah Manning (Maslany) fighting her way through the factions to follow Beth’s (Maslany) footsteps.
"It [the fourth season] reflects back to what Sarah learnt in the first season, to questions she had then, things she was discovering, and we definitely will understand better what was going on," Maslany promised. Sarah, Mrs. S, Kendall and Kira apparently will be forced back on the run in the fourth cycle, fleeing a new and faceless enemy with insidious power.
"We mostly go back with Sarah. In her investigation, and in her probing of what's going on with the truth and this mystery, she ends up going back to places we've been before, but we didn't know why we were there," Maslany explained. Sarah's journey will bring some answers for members of the so-called Clone Club.
"When Sarah started, she had no idea about clones, about her true nature, about other characters, so she's really fallen down the rabbit hole, and she can't come back from that," Maslany said. Sarah's recent sanctuary in Iceland with her daughter? "That was never going to last. She's constantly searching and her search will go back to the questions she's always had," she added.
International Orphan Black
