Rachel Nichols & Simon Barry Talk Season 3 of Continuum

By Jamie Ruby

ContinuumFriday Syfy premiered season three of Continuum. The new episode picked up where the last left off, with Alec (Erik Knudsen) having gone back in time to try to save his girlfriend Emily (Magda Apanowicz). Star Rachel Nichols, who plays Kiera Cameron, and the creator and executive producer, Simon Barry, talked to the media about the new season.

In the first episode of the season, Kiera and Garza (Luvia Petersen) got to work together for the first time, and it made for some great moments. Barry told SciFi Vision, "We knew that we were tied to [Garza] having been captured by the freelancers in Season 2 and when we decided to have Kiera go back chasing Alec in time, there was a decision made about when she would go back and what was the configuration of the show at that point in time, and we realized, well, we're sending Kiera back roughly a week and what's the situation a week earlier? And we went back to our previous episodes and realized, well, this is just after Garza had been taken, and so we saw an opportunity there to take advantage of that, really, and also put Kiera in a situation where she could replay events of her escape and have them turn out differently, which I think was important for that first episode, this first episode, because when you do time travel you need touchstones of storytelling. And I think that the idea that within the episode itself we could see that happen in the context of Kiera and Garza, so we saw that something bad happened to Garza, and then after Kiera had time traveled she could prevent that.

Rachel Nichols"I think it was just a good example of the stakes of time travel and a mini example of ultimately what Alec was doing in the bigger picture and how the domino effect of making changes plays out.

"I think for Rachel, for Kiera, it was just a great opportunity for two characters who rarely get to be onscreen together."

Nichols agreed. "For me, when I read that, I was really excited about it. I was really excited about the idea of this weird potential. We're certainly not on the same side, but maybe we're not total enemies anymore kind of friendship to form, and my relationship with Garza really is interwoven throughout the season, and it does take a lot of twists and turns. It was something really, really fun to shoot as well. Luvia and I would have a great time together, and I like when we get to have that opportunity for uncertainty in a relationship which we do quite frequently, but this is the first time aside from the few times I had an alliance-ish with Kellog. This was the first time where I was given the opportunity to be in a situation where I have to build the trust of someone like Garza for a short period of time and then to see how that unravels through the rest of the season; the payoff is pretty great."

Garza was not the only person captured by the freelancers, other members of Liber8 were as well. Knowing that the freelancers can grab people from different times, is it possible that we could see someone return that was gone, like Travis (Roger Cross)? Barry told SciFi Vision, "If you're tracking the show and you know that Kiera has chased Alec back to a point prior to Emily's death, which is what we reveal in this first episode, then you can extrapolate from that that a lot of the characters who might have died in the Season 2 finale, those events just simply haven't happened in this timeline, therefore people who might have died may not be dead yet or their death may just be delayed, or things might just play out in the same way.

"I think for the fans it's going to be fun to see if time itself corrects itself or not."

Last season Kiera revealed to Carlos (Victor Webster) that she was from the future. Their relationship will continue to develop and change as the season progresses. Nichols told the site, "Kiera and Carlos, it's a very interesting relationship and in the episode last year, I think it was [Episode 6], when I said that. The line was "Carlos, I'm from the future." Essentially we had that conversation.

"...That was something where I initially thought, oh God, we're telling Carlos I'm from the future this quickly. Oh God, couldn't we save that for a little while, and then I realized, no, we can't. Kiera needs someone in the present day that knows her situation even if it costs her a lot to tell him, even if he may not believe it, even though he may struggle with it, she's going to have to be a support system sort of getting him through it. But it is extremely important that if she has someone on the inside, and he's the man that she trusts and in Season 1, I could say, "Well, it's complicated," or I had these little lines that I could say, and I was lying to my best friend.

"Essentially, between Alec and Carlos, those are Kiera's best friends in the present day, and it was an excruciating thing for Kiera to lie to her best friend every day, being Carlos.

"So she [let] him into this world. It's obviously something that takes him a while to deal with and he says, "You know what, everything seems impossible until it's not impossible anymore and, all right, I'm going to get on a ship with you," because Carlos is not stupid and we couldn't treat him like he was stupid for three seasons not telling him the truth.

"...Just the idea that we thought it was going to be difficult for Carlos to stomach that she was from the future. Well, how is Carlos going to stomach what he sees at the end of Episode 1? ...That's an even bigger obstacle for him, and their relationship this season totally is taken on that relationship because of that circumstance, and they...go through their ins and outs, but I think I can safely say that their relationship remains intact although forever changed in Season 3."

Syfy Conference Call
Continuum
Star Rachel Nichols and Creator/Executive Producer Simon Barry

April 2, 2014
1:00 pm ET

SCIFI VISION: Can you can both talk about Luvia Petersen being in the first episode of the season working with Kiera?

SIMON BARRY: Well, we knew that we were tied to Luvia having been captured by the freelancers in Season 2 and when we decided to have Kiera go back chasing Alec in time there was a decision made about when she would go back and what was the configuration of the show at that point in time, and we realized, well, we’re sending Kiera back roughly a week and what’s the situation a week earlier? And we went back to our previous episodes and realized, well, this is just after Garza had been taken, and so we saw an opportunity there to take advantage of that, really, and also put Kiera in a situation where she could replay events of her escape and have them turn out differently, which I think was important for that first episode, this first episode, because when you do time travel you need touchstones of storytelling. And I think that the idea that within the episode itself we could see that happen in the context of Kiera and Garza, so we saw that something bad happened to Garza, and then after Kiera had time traveled she could prevent that.

I think it was just a good example of the stakes of time travel and a mini example of ultimately what Alec was doing in the bigger picture and how the domino effect of making changes plays out.

I think for Rachel, for Kiera, it was just a great opportunity for two characters who rarely get to be onscreen together.

RACHEL NICHOLS: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. For me, when I read that, I was really excited about it. I was really excited about the idea of this weird potential. We’re certainly not on the same side, but maybe we’re not total enemies anymore kind of friendship to form, and my relationship with Garza really is interwoven throughout the season, and it does take a lot of twists and turns. It was something really, really fun to shoot as well. Luvia and I would have a great time together, and I like when we get to have that opportunity for uncertainty in a relationship which we do quite frequently, but this is the first time aside from the few times I had an alliance-ish with Kellog. This was the first time where I was given the opportunity to be in a situation where I have to build the trust of someone like Garza for a short period of time and then to see how that unravels through the rest of the season; the payoff is pretty great.

SCIFI VISION: Those really are great scenes.

Simon, this is more for you. Obviously we see that they can pull people out of time, the freelancers, even if they’ve been dead. Is there a chance that there's anybody else we’re going to see come back? Because it looked like, and I don’t know for sure, maybe I’m just hoping, but it looked like Travis was in that one tank at one point when they showed a really quick glimpse.

RACHEL NICHOLS: Ew Simon, how are you going to answer this one?

SIMON BARRY: If you’re tracking the show and you know that Kiera has chased Alec back to a point prior to Emily’s death, which is what we reveal in this first episode, then you can extrapolate from that that a lot of the characters who might have died in the Season 2 finale, those events just simply haven’t happened in this timeline, therefore people who might have died may not be dead yet or their death may just be delayed, or things might just play out in the same way.

I think for the fans it’s going to be fun to see if time itself corrects itself or not.

QUESTION: If you could describe this season what would you say that it’s about, like what is the overall theme?

SIMON BARRY: I think the overall theme...

RACHEL NICHOLS: I want to start with that one!

SIMON BARRY: Yes, go! Go Rachel.

RACHEL NICHOLS: I want to start with this one because I have my own - I am very proud of myself because I assess the season - it’s when we started doing press and Simon can speak to the theme of the whole show but for me the theme for Kiera this season [is] really for the greater good and in Season 1 it was very much about getting home, getting home, getting home, I have to get home. Season 2 it was still about getting home but it was about taking responsibility and knowing that my actions or Liber8 the actions or Alec’s actions in the present day was going to affect the future that I come from.

Season 2 was about taking responsibility for that and acknowledging the changes that we put in effect from little actions and from big actions and then season three is very much about the idea of Kiera’s coming to realize that the future that she came from, although yes her husband and her son are in it, is not a very good future. It’s not a very happy future. The world is not a great place where she comes from and Season 3 is, like I said, for the greater good for Kiera, it’s about understanding that if she were to try to maintain the future that she came from just to get back to her husband and son rather than try to effect change to make the future that she came from a better place should she ever get back, to help basically all of humanity.

If she choose just to save two people that’s quite a selfish move on her part so I think Season 3 for Kiera, for me, has been very much about the idea that although I love my husband and I miss my son and I would like to get back to them, the better thing to do was to stay in this time and to try to change things to make the future that I come from not exist at the risk of sacrificing my husband and son for the greater good.

SIMON BARRY: I disagree with Rachel completely! No, I’m kidding. No, she’s absolutely right. I think that that’s one very specific way of looking at it. We’re trying to take the idea of sacrifice which is think is exactly what Rachel is talking about, is to make the hard decisions but we’re trying to take sacrifice and strip it down to its more personal (fix) and I think this season what we’re trying to do with all of our characters is look at sacrifice as a theme and play out various permutations of sacrifice in a way that essentially works on a personal level, on a very intimate, character intimate, level but also plays out on the scale of the stakes of the show which as Rachel just eloquently put is really about looking forward and making decisions that have more to do with altruistic as opposed to selfish and I think the way that plays - it’s easy to say that but the complexities of those decisions, because there are personal stakes and larger global stakes, makes them less than simple when you exercise them. They can be quite complicated and, of course, they involve the relationships that you already have and so things like betrayal and sacrifice are definitely big themes that we’re working with this season.

QUESTION: This season seemed to have a lot more time travel in it. Do you ever get confused trying to remember all the details and how do you manage to keep everything straight?

SIMON BARRY: Rachel, you go first. We just had this conversation.

RACHEL NICHOLS: Yes we did. I had a very funny conversation, Alec asks me a question in the third episode and I’m with what we call - there’s Alec, there’s regular Alec and then there’s scar Alec, the one who traveled travel back in time to save Emily and I’m with regular Alec and he asks me a question, did you know X, Y and Z? And in the moment as Rachel playing Kiera I’m thinking in my head, okay, this Alec doesn’t know that I know that the answer to that question is yes. But the other Alec knows that I know the answer to that question is yes. And the other me... I had to go through this process of which Alec knows and how to cover best this lie that I’m about to tell in a split second and I just started laughing in the middle of the take and I went, okay, let me start again, let me get this straight in my head because it’s one of the more fun parts of my job and sometimes it’s one of the more boggling parts of my job to remember what I know in which timeline and what everybody else knows and then I can always call Simon if I have a question because he has to know everything.

SIMON BARRY: It’s true. We realized that we didn’t want to get into a jam with multiple timelines in a way that would, A, just complicate the show and B, be confusing to the audience. So, for those who have watched the first episode, we went to great lengths, I think, to establish for this season a general structure that would not allow the science of time travel and the consequences of time travel mathematically, if you will, to interfere with a lot of the storytelling.

And we didn’t shy away from it, we just tried to resolve it in short order so that we could say, hey, we are adhering to rules of time travel that are based in what we set up and we’re trying to be true to those rules that we set up from day one. At the same time, you never want that to bog down the storytelling of the show or the entertainment value. And we love it internal, the writers and I are probably more excited sometimes about these complications than we should be and we have to temper our nerd-gasms of the possibilities and bring it back down to earth a lot of times.

Rachel NicholsSo I think we were successful in saying, hey, this is a big subject, time travel, there’s so many spiraling scenarios that come out of it but what we wanted to do was really bear down on one storyline that kept everything in context in a way that I think opens the door to the time travel universe but keeps it contained that we can tell a focused story.

And I say that and a lot of people will come back and say, oh, but it’s so much more complicated than that and the truth is, we try to make sure that the things that are important are front and center and that the audience knows that. But we always try to acknowledge that it’s a big world, time travel, when you break it down and it’s a mythology that has been practiced many times.

So we try to honor all of those things and at the same time be true to ourselves and be as concise as we can be.

QUESTION: Since Quinn Archer’s “Dark Places” video is going to feature multiple stars from the show, I’m wondering if you can reveal whether it will include the cast via show clips or will they be appearing in an original context not involving [scenes] from whatever episode the song’s featured in?

RACHEL NICHOLS: That’s actually a question for Simon because I don’t know what I’m allowed to say here.

SIMON BARRY: Well, we’re not going to say who’s going to appear in Quinn’s video but I can tell you that the characters, the actors from the show, that are in the video will be in the video itself as new content. We won’t be using clips from the show.

RACHEL NICHOLS: Okay, good. I didn’t know that either Simon.

QUESTION: And congratulations Rachel on the Kickstarter Campaign almost doubling its pledge goal so far.

RACHEL NICHOLS: Thank you. Thank you! That’s a testament to Quinn’s music and her voice and the fans of the show and the fans of her music and (Jackie Gould) who’s coming into direct who started this whole thing in motion so she’s sort of the beginning of this. After she met (Juliette) she was wanting to be involved and wanting to direct the video and it’s good.

Anybody who follows me on Twitter or who knows me personally, (Juliette)’s my best friend in the entire world so what (Jackie)’s done has been phenomenal and amazing and very inspiring. So we’re all very much looking forward to it so the success of the campaign, it blew us all away and I can’t thank everybody enough. I was at Comic-Con this past weekend in Seattle and so many people were so proud to come up to me and just say, I donated to the Kickstarter campaign or I got a signed DVD in the Kickstarter campaign and it’s just one of those things that I get almost choked up every time someone tells me how excited they were to donate because it means a lot to me and it means the world to my best friend. So thank you, I really appreciate that.

QUESTION: Yeah, its super cool and I’m sure your fans are there to support you however you need.

RACHEL NICHOLS: I have awesome fans, I’m not going to lie.

SIMON BARRY: Yeah, she does.

QUESTION: And Simon, I understand that Carlos and Betty wound up at Julian Randol’s farm in the Season 2 finale due to viewers votes. Of the two outcomes that fans could have voted on back then, where you leaning for one over the other and is that the one that aired?

SIMON BARRY: Yeah, I actually - I was with the fans on that one. I was very happy that they chose the ending that had been teed up and the one that we used. The alternate ending to that scene was essentially Betty deciding that she had to redeem herself by essentially turning Carlos in and making sure he didn’t walk away from the situation. Which was definitely my second choice.

So, yeah, it worked out in a way that I thought was satisfying and it was a fun experiment to engage the fans in that way.

QUESTION: Time travel is kind of an esoteric theme, I was wondering if it’s like the new vampire? You know, we went through a hundred million shows with vampires and werewolves and now we’re starting to see this thematically - time travel moving back and forth and I just was wondering is there potential there, do you see it more and is this the new thing, is pop culture ready to just get on board or what do you think?

SIMON BARRY: Wow, that’s quite the question. I don’t know, Rachel, do you have an opinion about this while I think of my answer?

RACHEL NICHOLS: Are you going to send me into it? Yeah. It’s actually something that I haven’t really thought of before. I find that time travel is an extremely interesting genre to choose to base a story on and it’s also a very difficult one because when you’re establishing a show - whether it’s our show or a different show - that involves time travel, you have to establish rules for time travel and then you have to adhere to them because the fans are the first ones to say, no, that doesn’t make sense. You were allowed to time travel this way in this time and then you went to this timeline and that doesn’t make sense because this should be... So it’s very, very complex.

So I think it takes a very smart story writing, very smart planning and a very smart set of rules to make it work. So, it may bode very well if time travel is the new vampire because it’s a highly intelligent genre to be able to keep track of it and to keep honest with it and for everybody that watches it to stay extremely involved because it is complex.

So, I think it’s quite a cool idea that something so complex has become the new vampire because it speaks well to the sci-fi genre in general. Just the intelligence of the viewers and the fans and how involved they are and like to be and will continue to be even if you’re making a show that’s extremely, extremely complicated.

SIMON BARRY: Yeah, I agree with Rachel.

QUESTION: It does take a smarter fan, right, to follow along and keep track as far as continuity goes and all that so...

SIMON BARRY: Yeah, it’s complicated.

RACHEL NICHOLS: Yeah, it’s always complicated and I’m sure Simon can say more about it.

SIMON BARRY: Well, I think one of the things that maybe they have in common is there’s a certain romanticism attached to time travel and with vampires I guess one of the same qualities is that there’s this, whether it’s eternal life or eternal pain or unrequited love, a lot of these vampire stories tend to romanticism the situation and I think with time travel there’s a built-in romanticism because when you think about the ability to go back and change things that conjures all kinds of, I think, romantic notions of how we can manipulate our own lives and manipulate the world around us.
I think, obviously with vampires and things like that it’s much more straightforward, it’s much more character-based and with time travel you really do need a mythology to hold it all together. You need rules and you need a history that you can build on so that the stakes of time travel have context.

And I don’t know if that’s something that necessarily will spread or not, I hope it does. I think there’s lots of opportunities in time travel that even Continuum doesn’t get to exploit but I know that when you look at stories like the Terminator series of movies and the TV show and even Back to the Future or even H.G. Wells, when it works well it usually involves the personal journey and the personal stakes of time travel and that usually involves relationships and love and things like that.

So, they’re not so far apart but one definitely requires a little bit more math, which was never my strong suit.

QUESTION: Rachel, folks really seem to connect to her and relate to her and that is wonderful that they can, but how do you play her? Because she’s making a lot of really morally ambiguous choices and so how do you keep her grounded in a place where people love her and can connect to her choices and understand her choices?

RACHEL NICHOLS: I think, Kiera and I and it now being Season 3 we’re one in the same. I’ve learned from her, she’s learned from me. I think what Kiera does best and the show does best is show that in Season 1 for Kiera when she’s in 2077 and her world is very black and white. There are good guys and there are bad guys and she’s a good guy, Liber8 are the bad guys and as she comes back to the present day and she begins living in the present day her idea of what is good and bad, it starts to change. There’s a metamorphosis there and slowly but surely she starts asking herself questions that she never would have asked herself in 2077 but she’s seeing what the world is like today and she’s comparing it to her future and slowly but surely as Season 1 and Season 2 roll out, although yes, she’s desperate to get home to her son and her husband, she starts to understand Liber8 in a way that I think nobody ever thought she would. But she starts to understand them at the same rate that people watching the show start to understand them because in 2077 in the beginning they are bad, she is good, it’s very black and white.

So her moral compass changes almost as much or at the same time as the audience is learning about Liber8 and Kiera comes to the realization that although she may not support Liber8’s tactics maybe their endgame makes sense, maybe their goal makes sense because starting their grassroots campaign 65 years in the past may bring about a future 2077, a far better future than where she came from.
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So, she’s got a learning curve and I’m proud of her, I’m proud of the writing for letting her gradually figure that out and gradually roll out with the questions about her future and was it such a good place and what was corrupt and what wasn’t and who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. So she does have to take that journey and she makes some decisions that Kiera from 2077 would never have believed she would make and I think that speaks to her changing as a person and adapting to this new world and understanding that maybe there’s a better world to be made through open-mindedness and a lot of those (seeds) are very much laid out in Season 3.

QUESTION: I really like that she’s coming around to things at the same time as the audience, that’s probably the thing, the connection, I think. So that’s really interesting

RACHEL NICHOLS: Yeah, thank you. Oh, awesome, well thank you.

QUESTION: Rachel, I’m curious to hear your thoughts a little bit about the Kiera/Kellog relationship which has been all over the map certainly in the first couple of seasons. Do you have a thought on where that might be going or how you approach playing it? Because on any given day you seem to either be aligned with him or very much disdainful towards him?

RACHEL NICHOLS: I think the scenes between Kiera and Kellog are - she goes into them very much knowing that, yeah, if she goes in letting Kellog think he’s charming her she’ll probably get what she wants but she goes in giving him a pretty hard time. She also might get what she wants as well. Kellog is a very interesting Liber8 member because he’s the one who in Season 1 when everybody was trying to get back in time he said, no, I’m not going! I’m not interested. I’m going to stay here. I want these meats, these cheeses, I love it, he can play the future, the stock market, he can become a rich man, he doesn’t want to go back and everybody wants to go back.

And I think there was something intriguing in that and then at the end of Season 2 Kellog approaches Kiera before she’s going to see Alec in the (antimatter) lab where he’s like, no, I’m going with you. He changed his mind and he’s going to go back.

So they do this back and forth, they do this dance like he is essentially a conduit in many ways between Liber8 and Kiera and that’s a vicarious position to be in but sometimes for Kiera there’s no option there and he’s the go-between and he knows it.

There’s always the question of did they or didn’t they and I love it when the fans are speculating about what really happened that night on the boat. I have my own ideas, everybody else has their own ideas, I usually try to keep them to myself but the Kiera/Kellog, relationship, I think, will continue to grow and to become complex and I really hope in this weird way that at one point Kellog really needs Kiera and she actually really wants to help him but I don’t know if that’s happening yet. So you’ll have to ask Simon about that.

SIMON BARRY: I’ll never tell.

RACHEL NICHOLS: I know.

QUESTION: I just saw the Season 2 DVD bonus features and as a fellow New Englander it was great to see you wearing your Patriots jacket.

RACHEL NICHOLS: Oh, well thank you. I’m a big Pats fan, I’ve always been a Pats fan. I’m not a fair-weather Pats fan, I was a fan when they were the worst in the league for about ten years so when they started getting good I was thrilled. So now that I live in Vancouver full time, I’m a Pats fan but I have an agreement that once the Pats are out for the season I cheer for the Seahawks. So last year worked out great for me.

QUESTION: Simon, a question for you. Back on the first media call that we did, you talked about how one of the important things that you had worked with the writers with, certainly when you folks got started, was that you knew where the show would end and I’m curious now that you’re a couple of seasons in and the natural flow of the show, certain actors really become important, certain ideas come in that weren’t there before, I’m wondering how much that may or may not have changed?

SIMON BARRY: Well, plotting out the seasons of TV is kind of like planning a road trip from one city to another, you know where you’re going to end your journey and you hope that you make it there but the roads that you take to get there can be varied and you can surprise yourself along the way. And I’d probably use that analogy for Continuum. We’ve really had a great, even in Season 3, surprises that are, I guess, part of the natural process of trying to fill that road trip, if you will, with as many side adventures as possible and sometimes those small things that you never imagined would be small become larger detours and so while we’ve never really deviated from where we’re heading the surprises are constant when it comes to how the show evolves and the stories that we start to tell within that journey. So it’s very rewarding to know that we can have the clarity of direction work that we know where we want the show to go and we know the big moments in the season that I want to see play out and at the same time be open enough to explore storylines, character developments, relationships that you can’t conceive of that, all of those, details in the first season, that’s just impossible to have that much clarity of detail I think.

So it’s a great balance I think for us. I hope the audience feels the same way but we are always encouraged by the foundation of characters that we’ve created and the various storylines that we can mind those for sometimes more than we thought, sometimes less but everything - as long as it feels like it’s all part of a larger journey, I have no problem with slightly deviating from the freeway or the interstate and going on some side roads for a little bit because those are the roads that usually provide the most memorable moments on the trip.

QUESTION: Simon, every season there seems to be other characters that emerge from the background and into the front of the stage. Could you talk about some of the characters that you wanted to explore this season and give a new spotlight?

SIMON BARRY: Yeah, we have an overabundance of great actors on the show and for a show that is as dense as Continuum is in terms of the stories that you try to tell and the number of threads that we’re trying to service, it’s always a challenge for us to pick a single one and bring it into the spotlight. This year I think I can safely say that we’re getting back into our core group of characters and exploring a little bit more of what I think makes the show tick from a character point of view. Also, with Kiera always, there’s always opportunities with Kiera to show a new side of her, to show a new experience that will show a side of her that we haven’t seen before and we’re taking that back with almost all of our, I would say, our central characters whether they be from Liber8 or whether they be the police department.

There are side stories that involve Dillon, that involve Betty, that involve Travis, that involve Sonya - for me we really looked inward this season in terms of pulling stories out that we felt would allow the series, not the series, the season to coalesce at the end in a way that you felt like you had gotten all of the information that you needed to earn the moment that we’re planning for the end of the season. And so for us it was really an opportunity to take what is already a great resource, which is our amazing central cast and take a deeper look at them.

QUESTION: Rachel, Season 2 you got to really explore a lot of the emotions that have been building within Kiera and been able to exercise that out. [Do we] see more of that in Season 3 or do we feel like we’ve gone beyond that and now it’s much more focused and more cast driven?

RACHEL NICHOLS: That’s an interesting question and, yeah, Season 2 the first episode that comes to mind is the Episode 5 in Continuum where she said goodbye to my son which is probably the hardest thing that I ever had to shoot and I don’t even have a son, I don’t even have a child, I couldn’t imagine how excruciating that would be if it was actually a real-life scenario.

There are always parts of Kiera that will be emotional and torn and she’s a bit of a bird with a broken wing having been transported back 65 years in time and there will never, I don’t believe, no matter how many seasons they go, they don’t believe there will ever come a time where she becomes all business, no emotion, terminator-style unless Liber8 takes over her brain again.

But I think this season brings on a new emotionality, there is the idea of sacrifice which Simon talked about and then an answer to another question and I call it for the greater good, the idea that Kiera wants to make a better future than the one that she came from and in doing that it may cost her a lot, it may cost her everything that she actually knows from 2077.

Her relationship with Alec this season is also something that creates a new emotionality given, you know, and I’m not speaking out of turn, there are two Alec Sadlers in the first episode of Season 3 and they come to be two very different Alec Sadlers and yet for Kiera they’re both Alec Sadler and they’re both this genius kid brother that she’s had for three seasons and that relationship between Kiera and Alec who travels back to save Emily and Kiera and Alec who didn’t travel back to save Emily is very complicated and that’s a real emotional strain on her this season.

There is the idea that, you know, her relationship with Carlos becomes very strained as well and in many ways, Season 3 is very, very lonely for Kiera because she’s gone rogue, she’s lost a couple of friends, who knows if she can trust freelancers or not and she’s very much a lone wolf and is something that we’ve seen before but emotionally I think there’s been an opportunity for Kiera to stretch in every season and for Rachel to stretch and for Kiera to learn; it’s something that I think is very important to the show and even yesterday shooting a scene I’m not even saying goodbye to a character, I’m saying, I’m counting on it and I can’t help welling up.

I say thank you to Carlos in one scene and I can’t help welling up. This season definitely took its toll on a lot of Kiera’s relationships and a lot of the emotionality that you see this season will be derived from those situations and the changes that are brought about in those relationships.

QUESTION: Rachel, with everything that Kiera’s been through and you talked about that she will continue to go through this season, where does she find the strength to keep going and keep pressing forward to make this a better future?

RACHEL NICHOLS: I think she finds the strength a lot in the - when she arrived in 2012 in Season 1 she comes back 65 years in time and when she left 2077 it was very black and white, there was good and there was evil. She was good, Liber8 were evil, that’s it and as she comes back and she starts spending time in the present day and she sees what is offered in the present day and she begins in Season 1 and Season 2 to learn how rough her future is, I think a lot of her strength comes from the idea that - her sadness comes from not getting back to her family; there’s that problem that’s always hanging over her head but her strength comes from the idea and the lessons that take her, you know, the first two and the beginning part of three seasons to learn, she has the opportunity here to make a better future for everyone and although it may cost her significantly in reuniting with her husband and son meaning that that may never happen, she derives her strength, I believe, from knowing that she can exact change and she may have to form alliances and she may have questionable relationships with people that she once was trying to put to death but there is the opportunity here to enact change that will make 2077 a much better place and I think knowing that for her at the back of her head somewhere even when she’s completely alone and at odds with Alec and at odds with Carlos and (very) confused about who the freelancers are. I think in her moment of darkness the idea that she can, she has the power, while collaborating with other people to make a better world for essentially all of humanity. I would say she derives her strength from there.

QUESTION: You talk about a third season and that’s what a lot of SyFy shows don’t get nowadays, there’s a lot of really good SyFy shows so they’re going to have a tough time getting a second season at this point, why do you think most people are connecting with you and your cast mates and your characters and these storylines as opposed to some other shows where there’s a disconnect?

RACHEL NICHOLS: I think - well, not only because we’re on the phone with Simon Barry am I going to say this but I think it has a lot to do with the writing but I will tell you why. I think that what makes our show very interesting is, first, you have your time travel element which allows for a very large number of stories to be told and provided that you create a mythology of time travel for your show when you’re writing a show and you stick to it, it’s a suspension of disbelief. If you do it right and you follow the rules of your own time travel mechanism then it’s easily believable and people expect it from the beginning.

Rachel NicholsThen you go to the characters in the show. Now, we have at the beginning, you’ve got the CPS from the future, you’ve got Liber8, you quickly learn about Alec Sadler and then you get in the VPD from the present day and there are so many characters that there’s a little something for everyone, everybody that watches the show, even someone that wants a procedural show can tune in every week and we do solve a problem. But the interesting thing is in the beginning when you start to think, okay, Liber8’s bad, Kiera is good and then we travel back in time and then as Kiera starts questioning how good is her version of good and how bad is her version of bad and she starts asking herself a lot of moral questions about was I completely wrong in the future, was I completely blind? Has it taken me to travel back in time 65 years to wake up? She has these realizations much at the same time the audience does and since they become connected to these relationships because whether it’s her relationship with Alec or her relationship with Carlos, her relationship with Kellog, her relationship with Garza in the first episode, there are all these opportunities for growth and alliances and the idea of trying to make a better future than the one that she came from.

So, I’d like to think that there’s something, there’s one character that every audience member can relate to and then there are various relationships that every audience member can relate to and keeping in with the mythology I think is a very important part of the show as well. And so we have our set of rules and we stick to our set of rules and then people keep tuning in every week because they know that they’re not going to be disappointed and, I mean, I hope I’m right. If I’m wrong I don’t know.

SCIFI VISION: You started to talk about Kiera and Carlos this season a bit. Carlos now knows what's going on with Kiera, can you talk about how that will continue to change their relationship over the season?

RACHEL NICHOLS: Kiera and Carlos, it’s a very interesting relationship and in the episode last year, I think it was Episode 8 when I said that. The line was "Carlos, I’m from the future." Essentially we had that conversation.

SIMON BARRY: That was six.

RACHEL NICHOLS: That was six, oh, thank you Simon. You know, that was something where I initially thought, oh God, we’re telling Carlos I’m from the future this quickly. Oh God, couldn’t we save that for a little while, and then I realized, no, we can’t. Kiera needs someone in the present day that knows her situation even if it costs her a lot to tell him, even if he may not believe it, even though he may struggle with it, she’s going to have to be a support system sort of getting him through it. But it is extremely important that if she has someone on the inside, and he’s the man that she trusts and in Season 1, I could say, "Well, it’s complicated," or I had these little lines that I could say, and I was lying to my best friend.

Essentially, between Alec and Carlos, those are Kiera’s best friends in the present day, and it was an excruciating thing for Kiera to lie to her best friend every day, being Carlos.

So she (left) him into this world. It’s obviously something that takes him a while to deal with and he says, "You know what, everything seems impossible until it’s not impossible anymore and, all right, I’m going to get on a ship with you," because Carlos is not stupid and we couldn’t treat him like he was stupid for three seasons not telling him the truth.

...Just the idea that we thought it was going to be difficult for Carlos to stomach that she was from the future. Well, how is Carlos going to stomach what he sees at the end of Episode 1? That’s me getting around not saying what happened at the end of Episode 1, that’s an even bigger obstacle for him, and their relationship this season totally is taken on that relationship because of that circumstance, and they end up - you know, we’re shooting the finale now and they go through their ins and outs, but I think I can safely say that their relationship remains intact although forever changed in Season 3.

QUESTION: The last couple episodes of Season 2 really put Kiera through the wringer physically and I know you enjoy doing the majority of your own stunts so I’m just curious if you were injured anytime during those final episodes of Season 2?

RACHEL NICHOLS: I love this question. I (love doing any and every) stunt that I can. I can’t swim underwater without plugging my nose so if Kiera’s ever swimming underwater you know it’s not me but, yes, there’s this (epic) fight scene at the end of Season 2 between Kiera and Travis - and Roger Cross is one of my favorite people in the world and he hates when I tell this story, but we were shooting that huge fight sequence at the end and we were getting ready to - we had been shooting all day and he has this thing where he’s grabbing my face and slamming me down on the ground. At the beginning of the day I looked at Roger’s hand, the one that he was slamming into the face and I thought, wow, wardrobe really put a gigantic ring on him, I hope I don’t get dinged with that. And then, of course, at the end of the sequence his hand lands wrong and I just get dummied by the ring on his hand, it’s my upper temple, I see stars for the first time in my life. I actually get a bit of a welt which then ends up being placed perfectly because we used it in the end of the episode.

But I’ve never been horribly injured. I bruise incredibly easily which is always really fun for Michael, my almost husband, because I hate the word fiancé, he likes to make me wear long sleeves everywhere so he doesn’t have to explain the reason I’m covered with bruises.

But knock on wood, luckily I’ve never been seriously injured and I do so enjoy the physical part of the role that I wouldn’t change any of the bruises or the little scars that I have for anything. I think they’re all badges of honor.

QUESTION: Yeah, those last couple of episodes of Season 2 were pretty tough for you it looked like?

RACHEL NICHOLS: Yeah, they were aggressive, they were very tough. Obviously no, I did not get thrown into the glass cabinet, that was (Atland) one of my amazing jump people. There are certain things I’m not allowed to do nor would I want to, but, yeah, and I like that we go full throttle because (unintelligible) has been our stunt coordinator for all three seasons is amazing and I love when his talent shows up on the screen because every fight scene he choreographs so it’s always nice when we get to actually shoot a fight scene to its fullest and it comes out on screen and it looks fantastic.

QUESTION: I winced a lot when you (build) after that time travel device when the ball was rolling down and you were falling left and right.

RACHEL NICHOLS: Oh wow, (Roger Sugar). Isn’t that it, (Roger Sugar), am I not supposed to say that, oh God, I’m annoyed.

SIMON BARRY: That’s right, yeah. That was right, that was (Roger Sugar), (Amanda) (unintelligible).

RACHEL NICHOLS: Oh yes. You actually went there on your own (Tim), that’s a terrible idea.

QUESTION: It just looked brutal. Simon, now having worked with Rachel, Erik and Victor for just about three full seasons what qualities about them personally and professionally have surprised you the most and surpassed your initial expectations since you got all of that started?

SIMON BARRY: Oh wow, well, I guess the most obvious thing about all three of them is how just insanely talented they are and how really we just have to put a camera at them and let them go. There’s really very little, I think all the directors would agree, myself included, that these are actors who are so prepared, have done so much homework when it comes to showing up on set. I don’t just mean things like learning their lines, I really feel like all of the actors on the show have thought things through to a point where the nuance of their performance, the understanding of what they’re doing is just - it’s just right there and we just have to turn on the camera and catch it and that’s probably the best thing that you could ever ask for with a collaborative cast is that they do as much as you do in terms of prep and showing up and being not only super professional people but just a pleasant people too; nice, really genuinely goodhearted, generous and respectful personalities that make your day just that much more of a pleasure.

So, for that reason I think of all three of them as not only great actors but also just great people and happy, very proud, to call all of them friends. And I think the surprise for me, if I had to be surprised at anything, would be the depth of talent. I think that just in terms of what we’ve asked Rachel, Victor and Erik to do, the places that they would never have guessed the show would go when they originally signed on and the character changes that we’ve - and the (paces) we’ve put them through, they’ve really never shied away, never been anything other than completely aggressive and embracing of these choices and decisions and it’s just been a great collaboration. In that sense it’s really a team effort because when you know you can take Erik to a place and he’ll deliver, you write that way accordingly and the same with Rachel and the same with Victor. We’re not shy about what we can do with them in the writers room and that just translates on the set and that’s great, that’s the kind of freedom, I think, any show runner dreams of because you just want to be able to stretch as a creative person and you want the people around you to stretch with you and that’s certainly the case in this show.

QUESTION: Rachel, I know it’s a very collaborative process that you folks have talked about as far as what you bring to Kiera and what gets written for it. Is there anything that you’re working hard to get the writers to do for her that she hasn’t been able to do yet?

RACHEL NICHOLS: Oh gosh, well that’s an interesting question. I always liken it to my experience on Alias where I wait to get the script, I like to be on a need-to-know basis, I get the scripts and then I just plow through them as quickly as I can because I want to see what happens next. I don’t what to know in advance of the season what’s supposed to happen with Kiera, what may or may not happen with Kiera, what they want, I’m on a need-to-know basis and I like to keep it that way because I like to be surprised, I like the idea of getting scripts and not knowing what’s going to happen and then say, oh no he isn’t, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that! Just imagining what the audience will feel when the episodes are on the screen and they’re watching these major things happen.

I have never suggested any storyline be written for my character and I’ve also never been disappointed by any storyline written for my character. I do like the idea that we’ve been working on for three seasons now about how Kiera becomes very aware that it may be - that the future that she came from wasn’t that great and maybe all that sparkles is not gold if you take her from 2077 where there’s a very different idea of black and white, good versus evil, and as soon as she steps back in time 65 years her belief system slowly but surely begins to change and the fact that she’s allowed, as a character, to change her moral code and her belief system and her ideas of where she came from is also a testament to the writing because it’s a brave choice to make for her to have her world completely rocked and reassess what’s going to happen.

But as far as going in, suggesting things, I’ve always wanted to play a gun-slinging (baddie) but I don’t think they’re going to turn me completely evil. I could be entirely wrong but I’ve been so satisfied and challenged by everything that’s been given me thus far. I’m a strong believer of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, so I’ll just let them do their job and get it on the page and then I’ll do my job and take it from the page to the screen and I’m happy to just sign up for that part.

And who knows, in seasons to come maybe they’ll be something that I want but as of right now my acting needs Rachel and my character needs it’s Kiera are completely faceted.

QUESTION: Simon, going back to those Season 2 DVD feature, you were talking about how when you were shooting the Season 1 finale, that’s when you got the idea for how you were going to open Season 2. I’m wondering now that you’re coming up to the end of Season 3 filming, do you know where Season 4 is going to begin?

SIMON BARRY: Well I definitely know where it’s going to begin, where it ends might be a bit of a mystery. We tend to try and think of our seasons like chapters in the writers room and because we have a consistency of writers coming back again and again, there’s a - it’s hard to not have conversations about where the next season will go and what we are teeing up.

And essentially we start every season the same way in the writers room, which is to look back and say, what have we accomplished, what have we earned and how - we know some of the benchmarks that we want to make in terms of moving the story forward and we want to make sure that we’ve done all of the work that we’ve needed to do to allow the audience to believe that we’ve earned the right to get to that next market.

And so this season as with all of the seasons in the room we try to think about the end game as early as possible and usually by midseason we are starting to think about the following season and where that endgame takes us. So we’ve had a lot of conversations, very lively conversations about where Season 4 will end.

Rachel NicholsWe absolutely are tied into where it begins because we’ve built the end of Season 3 towards that point and I know, in this day and age, it’s always risky to do that because you never know when your last season is going to be sometimes but we’ve been fairly aggressive about that in the past and we don’t really want to stop doing that until somebody calls us and says, if that ever happens, which it will happen one day, they’ll give us the heads up and say, oh, you’ve got two left and you should wrap it up.

That hasn’t happened yet so we’re approaching it as if we are going to go on and on and on and that’s a great way to start to tell stories because then you feel like you can take your time and I think what Rachel has said a couple of times today is true, we feel a great deal of, you know, we’re lucky. We feel very lucky that we have the time to tell stories in a way that we do to not rush through character development, to not rush through certain story points and allow characters to grow in a much more natural, believable way and that’s one of the great things about TV right now is that you can do that, you can really take advantage of that almost novel-like approach to storytelling and really think of things in terms of chapters or even books.

And so, to answer your question, we have a plan and we definitely know where we’re going to be starting Season 4. I think one of the big parts of the job is walking into the room and define what you think is going to happen with better ideas from people who have a different take on it than you do and that’s one of the best parts of my job is working with a really imaginative, talented group of writers and putting them all in a position to prove me wrong or even to one-up me as much as they can creatively and I love that. I love that these writers do that and I love that they’re as invested in the show as I am and want it to be as good as it can be.

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