In the series finale of Evil, David (Mike Colter) worries the Entity won’t be able to protect Kristen (Katja Herbers) and questions their methods when they ignore Sister Andrea (Andrea Martin)’s warnings and make their move to stop the Sixty. When the Sixty grow impatient, Leland (Michael Emerson) decides to make a move of his own. Meanwhile, The Bouchard girls start a new game on their VR goggles that starts an ominous countdown that brings more trouble into their home. Then, as their time as assessors for the church has come to a close and they attempt to move on to their new jobs, the team gets an offer they never expected.

Recently, star Herbers spoke to SciFi Vision about the end of the series and the final episode, including filming some of the key scenes, what she thought of the final moments, whether she was satisfied with her character’s ending, the future of the series, and much more.

Read the full transcript below, but note there are spoilers. The entire series of Evil is available now to stream on Paramount Plus.

SCIFI VISION:   The first thing I wanted to talk about is when they talk about how they've changed. She says she's been humbled by Ben (Aasif Mandvi)’s knowledge and everything, but is there any other way that you think she's changed? Like, especially, do you think her faith – or lack of faith - at all, after all of this, has been affected or not? Because sometimes she seems like it has, other times she seems like it hasn't. I'm just curious of your take on it.

KATJA HERBERS:   I think, I mean, we've seen her throughout the show go slightly more towards believing, and then sort of back again, and I think the final moment of me seeing this demon child and then choosing optimism or amusement, or, I don't know, bafflement, or something in between all these things of ‘do I believe my eyes?’ I think will sort of always be Kristen. I don't think she will ever decide one way or the other: it's definitely all not real, or it's definitely real. She keeps trying to say nothing supernatural is real, and she keeps being told, “Maybe you're wrong,” and that struggle is where she lives, I think.

That was going to be my other question that you sort of answered. I wasn't sure what we were supposed to think by the end, whether it was more a possibility Timothy was actually evil. It just was kind of was left, as a lot of things, open and not really explained. So, you think that she has a demon child? I guess what is she going to do about it is the other question. [laughs]

Well, I don't know if she thinks she has a demon child. I think she sees something, and then she is like, “Did I really see that?” She looks again, and it's still there. I think [one] of the big themes of our show is nature versus nurture. I think that Kristen believes that she can nurture so well, or she will be able to love this child so well that even if it has demon quality to it, or it's an actual demon, she will just love it into being normal.

Well, it seems like it worked for her other daughter at this point anyway.

Yeah.

Speaking of her daughters, when they go into the virtual reality and she [follows them], obviously it was supposed to be fear being beamed into their brain or whatever, but was there anything to what she saw specifically? I assumed it was supposed to be their biggest fears, but it didn't actually say that. I just was curious if that's what [the writers] said to you, or what you thought about it, just about what she saw in particular, if there was anything other than that behind it?

I mean, yeah, I think we all saw our biggest fears. My children being taken away from me would be the absolute worst thing that could happen to Kristen, through it all, through everything that happened to her. Her children are the most important thing, and it's the reason she murdered, right? So, yeah. And I think the kids seeing me being murdered - and interestingly enough, you know, in a similar fashion to how I murdered, with that very specific way of hitting it on the head. We made sure that it was going to be the same sort of time sequence that the axe was in the skull and then taken out.

So, I also wanted to talk about the fight at the end with Leland. Obviously, what they did to him was partially because he deserved to suffer and partially for comedic effect, but do you think that they had stopped her so she wouldn't have to go through killing somebody again also?

Oh, yeah, I think killing would not be good for the soul in any situation. I think, whatever you believe or don't believe, and I think he definitely deserved, I think, to be out of her life, but I think her friends saved her from having to put her soul through that again and took care of it in a different way, where he is, in fact, gone now, but he's also in a cabinet.

[laughs] Yeah isn’t she worried at all?

Yeah, a cabinet could potentially open again, you know, but he's definitely in there. We've seen that cabinet before, and it's slimy. So, yeah.

Can you talk about filming that fight scene with Michael Emerson, the choking and everything?

Yeah. It was hard, to be honest, because, you know, obviously you don't really choke anyone. Nobody's actually putting any strain on body parts. So, it's a part of acting where you do have to create a lot of tension in your own body to make it look believable. That in itself can be very uncomfortable. I remember Michael and I, the next day, we said the next day we would just text each other a number of the amount of pain we were in, from from zero to ten. I think I texted him a seven and a half in the morning, and I think he texted me like a six. [laughs]

So you hurt more from the stunt. [laughs]

Yeah, he was on top of me.

So, were you satisfied with her ending? Were you happy with it in the end?

Yeah, I am. I mean, we all would have loved to have made more, and we still hold out some hope that that could potentially happen, but watching the finale myself, I was in awe of what the Kings were able to achieve within that hour, and how it's both - you do get a sense of where everyone is, and there is a potential for resurrecting, because, you know, evil isn't out of this world yet. And actually, I was on an interview with Michelle and Robert before, and Michelle said that the only reason not to want to make more Evil would be if there was no evil in the world. So, we will take either one. [laughs]

If it were up to you, where do you see Kristen’s future, other than what we see at the end of the episode? Is there anything you imagine in her future?

Well, I'll tell you that the Kings imagination for this character has just been so beyond anything that I could dream up as an actor of what I would want to do. I mean, I've been given such an incredible arc, and I feel like I've played so many different characters within the same person. She has so many faces, and so I've never expressed wishes to the Kings in terms of what I wanted to play, aside from, “let's involve the climate crisis as much as we can,” because I think they're just actually brilliant. They're brilliant people. So, I wouldn't dare to inject, you know, my little writer idea. I'm there to take what they come up with and give it a beating heart, and I love doing that.

We talked earlier about how they don't really always commit completely one way or the other with the show. Obviously, that's a lot of what this show is, you have to make up your own mind. Does that make it harder as an actress, though, to know what side to play? Do you kind of decide on in your head what you're playing, or do you think about the fact that you kind of have to play it both ways?

I think, in general, aside from the Kings or this show, it is always more interesting if things are multi interpretable when you're watching a performance, when the viewer is intellectually and emotionally engaged with whatever somebody's doing. I think there was a great director I worked with very early on in my career, a theater director, who during rehearsal while playing one character, he said to me, “Yeah, okay, I've seen that part of her. Now let let's have something entirely different for this next scene, and the viewer will make up who this person is.” I find that really exciting as an actor, to make somebody as multifaceted as humans are. We aren't just one thing. We change constantly, and we change due to the circumstances we're under. Or we change around different people. We're different people. So, I always look for however many layers I can put into something; I'll try to put them in.

Did you then enjoy getting to play kind of, literally, different versions of her, the doppelgängers? Was that a fun thing to be able to do?

That was fun, that was really fun, but that was actually a different character [whereas when I play] Demon Kristen, she was a character that was sort of more a caricature of an idea of Kristen in David's mind, but I still felt she was connected to Kristen in some way. I felt like this person was just an entirely different person. And I know that the Kings wanted those doppelgängers to be a little closer to who we are in real life or something. You know, I am from the Netherlands, and I come from a family of musicians, and it was funny to me watching it, because I got a screener for this episode, and I thought it was quite funny to see Kristen watching this doppel. And I really did believe that Kristen did not speak any Dutch, and I was like, “Well, of course I do,” [laughs] but she truly looks kind of clueless as to what it all meant.

I asked you early about how Kristen’s changed. How have you changed since starting this journey? How have you either been altered or just learned something about yourself, just anything like that?

Well, I think Kristen and I to some degree, you know, aside from the murder and some other major things, [laughs] we have become close to each other, because also the way the Kings write is to the people who are playing it. So, there's some some real life overlap in her and me, and I would like to take some of her qualities and pretend they're my own. [laughs] Just some, just a few. I think she's incredibly resilient and is able to see the light in in dark situations, pretty much always. I mean, even at the very end, when she sees a demon baby, she feel like, “Okay, well, I guess I'll deal with that next. I guess that's next.” And, yeah, maybe not dissimilar to how my life is sometimes in terms of chaos and just keeping at it or something. Yeah.

Obviously, a lot of crazy stuff happens on the show, but what's something in her journey specifically that surprised you when you first read the script for it or whatever, just something that they did for her that you didn't expect, because you said they sort of write to you to some extent. Well, aside from maybe the murder, I guess. [laughs]

Well, the murder, I mean, I don't know if that surprised me that much, because I did understand it very much out of a maternal point of view, like this person was seriously threatening to kill her children. Nobody was doing anything. And I think what I love about that moment, and sort of what it meant to viewers as well, or what I'm hearing, and what Robert and Michelle were a little worried about in the beginning is, you know, is a murderer going to lose sympathy? And I think she gained sympathy, actually, to be honest. [laughs] I sometimes read things from people, you know, fan videos or whatever, and it's always like, “I support women's rights, but I most support, you know, Kristen's right to beat some other shit up.” [laughs]

[laughs] I had forgotten about that grocery store thing that was awesome.

Yeah, so, yeah, she's free in that sense. But what surprised me was the second season, which was maybe personally like as an actor, for me, the most crazy journey and most complicated and difficult work to get right and entirely gratifying to - you know, she has now murdered, and then she starts to sort of lose her mind, or aka becomes possessed, however you want to look at it. You know, it's either whatever happened after the murder, or what would potentially happen to a sane person having had having done that, and then all the way to the confession to David, and then turning that into something romantic. That scene, when I read that scene, I was like, “Holy moly, this is incredible.” And I did not expect our first kiss to come out of me confessing murder to a priest [laughs]

Yeah, it's hard sometimes, because I feel like you obviously want the two of them together, but also you understand why it can't happen. So, let me ask, about being surprised, though, obviously this show changed in tone a lot from what it originally was. At the very beginning, it was a lot darker, not so comedic. Did you ever worry that it was so different that people wouldn't necessarily gravitate towards it? I mean, was that ever a concern, or did you just know they were great scripts so you went with it?

No, I went with it. I think we were marketed very much as horror, and maybe that was more…also because the Kings later started to write more to the actors, once they started to know them a little better. Like our dynamic on set is very light and very goofy, and maybe some of the lightness seeped into the characters more. But I also think that they…hired actors who have that lightness. I know that that's what they wanted for these parts, to make the horror not just that. And when I watched the finale, I feel like it's quintessentially sort of the King's sense of humor, and their brilliance is it's on full display. I think that is who they [are]. Yeah, maybe that can go in the history books as, like [what kind of show the Kings made], [laughs] how funny they are within all this horror. I think that episode does a very good job. I mean, when the demon is muted, and they're like, “You're muted. Norm.” [laughs] Who comes up with that kind of stuff?

[laughs] Yeah, you never know what you're going to get with this show, which I love. Speaking of, I think my favorite scene from the episode though, was when you tasered Michael Emerson and knocked him out. [laughs] That was great.

Well those are kind of scenes where, you know, that's written, and then I sort of tried to lean into the comedy of that, and Robert really enjoys that. Whenever Robert directs, and I come up with a bunch of goofy stuff, the way that she zaps him…And if I get a laugh from Robert, I'm like, “Okay, I'm on the right track.” So, it becomes a bit more funny, I think, when Robert directs.

You said you guys are goofy on set. Do you ever play pranks on each other or anything like that? Are you breaking up a lot, that kind of thing?

Well, we try not to break up too much, because we have to keep things going. But off camera, we are constantly, constantly joking. There is no joke left untold. It's just constant. Yeah, one of the things that we had this season was a game of marshmallows, which is a hand clap game that I learned from my girls, the four daughters, and that then sort of went around the set as a wildfire, and in the very end, Michelle also played it.

Is there anything that you either were given or took, like a prop, a costume, that kind of thing, to remember the show by?

I did, yes. I got a bunch of Kristen's wonderful wardrobe, and I was given the painting that was hanging in my bedroom, the one with the red coat.

Somebody on social media asked if there is anything people can do specifically to try to get the show to come back? Obviously, I know it's up to the network and everything else, but is there anything we can do specifically to try to get more?

It’s so nice. I mean, people have been making wonderful fan edits, and people are tweeting, and we see it all, and we appreciate the fans so much. I think the success of the show is sort of starting to speak for itself, because we've been in this top ten forever now, and that's because people are watching, and some people are even rewatching or putting it on at work. I think our numbers being high, that's really where it's at. So, if you like the show, and you want to tell your friends about the show and keep it alive, in that sense, our other seasons at a certain point are also coming to Netflix. So, that'll be great. And it's not over till it's over.

Yeah, maybe there'll be something more, we hope. Do you have anything else right now that you're you're working on promoting?

No, I'm currently in London, because I was here for a screen test. I don't know if that's going to work out or not yet. So, I'm looking for things, but I'm also super duper picky, because I've been on such a wonderful show, and I love complicated writing and interesting, characters, female characters, and so I'm going to hold off working until I have something that I'm very, very, very excited about, and I'll just do my climate activism work to keep busy. But in terms of acting, I'm going to not just take whatever.

Let me ask you then, other than, obviously, the people you work with, what are you going to miss the most about working on the show?

The character, the quality of the writing. It's truly astonishing. I mean, I don't know many female led shows that have the depth of Kristen Bouchard as a lead. Not a lot.