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Jennifer Morrison is the audience's eyes in ‘Once Upon A Time’
Danielle Turchiano, LA TV Insider Examiner
October 21, 2011
ABC’s newest drama, Once Upon A Time, is a magical ride into a land that we may have imagined in our wildest dreams as children but most likely have grown too cynical to even think about these days. But don’t worry; the show itself has an answer to that! Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) is a real world woman with deeply ingrained fairy-tale roots-- roots about which she is not aware and once confronted with flat out disbelieves. She acts as a portal for the audience, in that way: a somewhat jaded realist who has seen too many dark parts of the world to suspend her disbelief towards something so fantastical.
Emma shows up in Storybrooke, Maine, the town in which so many fairy-tale characters have been cursed to stay, because a ten year old boy (Jared Gilmore) shows up on her doorstep, claiming to be the child she gave up for adoption. She heads back to town with him to make sure he gets home safely, but once there, she ends up staying for an extended period of time, though Morrison insists it is not because Emma slowly but surely starts to believe. In fact, she says quite the opposite is true and Emma will resist above and beyond when the audience should.
ABC’s newest drama, Once Upon A Time, is a magical ride into a land that we may have imagined in our wildest dreams as children but most likely have grown too cynical to even think about these days. But don’t worry; the show itself has an answer to that! Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) is a real world woman with deeply ingrained fairy-tale roots-- roots about which she is not aware and once confronted with flat out disbelieves. She acts as a portal for the audience, in that way: a somewhat jaded realist who has seen too many dark parts of the world to suspend her disbelief towards something so fantastical.
Emma shows up in Storybrooke, Maine, the town in which so many fairy-tale characters have been cursed to stay, because a ten year old boy (Jared Gilmore) shows up on her doorstep, claiming to be the child she gave up for adoption. She heads back to town with him to make sure he gets home safely, but once there, she ends up staying for an extended period of time, though Morrison insists it is not because Emma slowly but surely starts to believe. In fact, she says quite the opposite is true and Emma will resist above and beyond when the audience should.
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“She totally doesn’t believe. She doesn’t believe enough to stay; she stays to take care of her child, but she doesn’t believe at all, and I don’t know how or when that [shift in frame of mind] would happen,” Morrison admitted when LA TV Insider Examiner sat down with her on the Vancouver set of Once Upon A Time earlier this month.
“But she sees a child in distress, and the only way she’s been able to live with herself up until this point-- with the decision to give him up-- was by convincing herself that she did the right thing, that she was giving him a better life, because the circumstances under which he was born-- which you will find out someday-- made her, reasonably so, feel like she wasn’t the best person to take care of him. And when you’ve lived with that assumption for so long, and you find out that maybe he isn’t happy, or he isn’t doing so well, or he isn’t doing well at all, she’s not going to be able to go on with her life until she knows that he’s okay.”
As practical, logical, and yes, cynical as Emma may be, though, it doesn’t seem that she questions even for a second that this boy really is the son he proclaims himself to be. Though acknowledging that it’s “a lot of life” to land in a person’s lap, Morrison shared that the show will take its time exploring Henry’s origins-- the circumstances around his birth, who his father his, how hard it was for Emma to give him up, and maybe even how he found Emma in the first place. Instead, the focus is on Emma and the other mother figure in this boy’s life, his adopted mother Regina (Lana Parrilla), who in the fairy-tale world is the Evil Queen and the one responsible for the curse.
“The conflict between Regina and Emma is complicated because Emma doesn’t have the intentions of taking Henry away from her, and yet Regina feels like that could happen if Emma’s around for too long,” Morrison pointed out. “So I think Emma holds a tremendous amount of resentment because she was supposed to make her child’s life better, and it seems like that’s not happening. There are so many odd sides to this woman, and there are parts of her that are so frustrating and unsettling and I think that Emma feels that need to stick around and protect Henry and try to get to the bottom of this. Also, once again, as her maternal instincts kick in more, and she gets to know her son better and gets more and more connected to him, her connection to Regina only intensifies.”
And Regina should have a right to be worried about Emma, even if she doesn’t know the truth that Emma is still so obviously trying to fight-- a truth that would mean Emma is the key to breaking the curse and ultimately thwarting the Evil Queen’s plans. As Morrison put it, not only does Emma start to “fall for [her son] more,” but also because no one in town has a hold on her in any way.
“[Emma]’s not afraid of anyone. She doesn’t have the history that everyone has with Regina and Mr. Gold where everyone feels afraid of them, and you know, she’s grown up in such a rough situation: she’s been in seven foster homes; she’s been on the streets; she’s been in Juvie; she’s been in tough circumstances her whole life, so there’s no reason these people would be intimidating…She kind of takes some risks and oversteps some bounds that I think if she had more information or was really more aware of what she was getting involved in, she may not take,” Morrison explained.
Still, Emma intends to only stay in Storybrooke for a week, renting a room at Granny’s Bed and Breakfast. Soon, though, she learns that her stay will have to be extended, as she gets more and more immersed in the lives of the residents of the town, and moving in with a familiar, though perhaps unexpected, face.
“It’s a small town, and that’s kind of the fun of the storytelling, to reveal how all of these stories interconnect and why and how,” Morrison teased. “It’s interesting because for Emma, her first reaction to things is to resist getting involved because she’s been hurt so much in the past, so she kind of fights it and fights it and fights it, and then somehow against her better judgment ends up involved in it anyway. I was kind of joking a few episodes ago ‘What did this town do before Emma got here?’ She’s trying to save everybody and do everything for everybody all of the time, so it’s kind of funny that here’s this woman who’s so resistant, and yet her circumstances end up leading her to helping so often.”
But you shouldn’t fight Once Upon a Time! The pilot is completely enchanting on its own (you can read our full advance review here), and the subsequent episodes seem to be even more magical. See for yourself when the brand new take on some very old tales airs on ABC on Sunday nights at 8pm.
http://www.examiner.com/tv-insider-in-los-...e#ixzz1bS4QbiTT
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Once Upon a Time: Interview to Jennifer Morrison |
