Transcript Episode 7: Comikaze 2014 — More Interview with Miracle Laurie
Angie: Welcome to Geek Out with Angie Fiedler Sutton, an ongoing discussion on geeky topics.
In this episode, we continue the coverage of Stan Lee’s Comikaze, 2014 Edition. In my last episode, I interviewed Miracle Laurie about her part in the webseries “Nobility.” While I had her on hand, we talked a little further about her work as an actress. I first asked her if she had done any preparation specific to her character on “Nobility.”
Miracle: Well, I actually had to do an English accent, which is exciting-slash-terrifying. And Darren Jacobs, who’s standing right here—not that you’ll be able to know that (laughs)—he is English and I panicked and he had a very stylized approach to our style of language, because again, we’re kind of an elevated race, we’re kind of the best genetically modified version of humans, is what the goal was for our race that we’re a part of.
And so, he wanted to create kind of a stylized way of speaking, just very elevated, so he worked on something and he sent us all recordings of it to practice so we could kind of have the same pattern and the same style of talking. And then, he sent me this amazing video of Emma Thompson and her Oscar speech, and he just said, “This is what I want. This is what you should do,” and I am forever grateful. And I listened to that thing 1000 times and I had it memorized and I just got in that pace.
So, for me, that was probably the most nerve-wracking part of the process, for this particular project, but that’s the kind of stuff actors love and it was great. And we shot on green screen, which is always a little tricky, but I didn’t have any crazy action stuff so it was fine. But as far as prepping, that was pretty much it, as far as the challenging stuff. Then, it was just diving in and doing character work that we love to do and getting to know everybody and taking with Darren and working on our relationship and E.J. and what my character’s doing now, what she’s gonna do in the future, and how that influences the scenes we were shooting. And that’s pretty much it!
Angie: This led to a discussion about female representation in science fiction, which naturally led to her work on “Dollhouse.” I asked her whether her character in “Nobility” would be a strong female character.
Miracle: This one I’m not so sure. She kind of has a small part in the pilot. But E.J., the creator, and I have talked about what her storyline’s gonna be in the future, and I think we decided that she is ultimately gonna become maybe a politician or something of that ilk in that universe, you know, 700 years in the future, whatever that looks like. I think, honestly, because of my stature, just my height alone, people get surprised by when they meet me, and I was very lucky that Tahmoh is 6’4″ so we made sense together on screen, which is nice. But I’ve had a lot of fans and fellow actors over the years but mostly fans over the years come up to me and just say, “Thank you for representing us on television.”
And Joss Whedon to his credit, everyone knows he loves women and loves strong women and he’s sick of that cliché and everybody is, too, but it’s true and it’s necessary. When I booked the show, he actually called me into his office, just the two of us, and he said, “I wanna talk to you about something.” I said, “Sure.” He goes, “What are you?” and at the time, I was a size 12 and I told him and he goes, “Okay, well, you need to not lose weight.” And I was the only actress probably in all of Los Angeles in my contract it said I could not lose weight, because he said, “I think you’re beautiful and you’re sexy and you’re strong, and most women are your size in this country, most women look like you, and there’s nothing wrong with that and there need to be more people representing that on television. So, that’s what we’re gonna do.” And obviously, I was like, “Sure, I’ll go home and have pizza later! Whatever, it’s great!” As an actress, it’s like, “Yeah, whatever you want, Mr. Whedon.”
But it was more than that. She was super complicated. I loved Mellie. I loved that part more than anything and she got to be silly and goofy and kind of lame and really sweet and tough when she got to do the switch, and as the doll, you got to be all different kinds of things, whatever they wanted for you. And going forward, I don’t know. I don’t know. It kind of depends on the creators, whether they have that similar vision and that similar state of mind. But it has been and will always be lovely to know that there are people in the world that felt represented on television, and it’s a very high place of honor for me.
Outro music.
And that’s Geek Out’s latest take on Stan Lee’s Comikaze, 2014 Edition. Next time, I talked with the people behind the new documentary “Cosplay Dreams 3D.” Stay tuned to Sci-Fi For Me for more coverage of the 2014 Comikaze Expo.
Thanks for listening to Geek Out with Angie Fiedler Sutton. The theme song is “Schoolyard Haze” by Jari Pitkanen, available via the Free Music Archive. The podcast is recorded in partnership with Sci-Fi For Me Radio and released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Links for more information on all this are available on angiefsutton.com.