‘Caprica’ countdown: Magda Apanowicz’s Lacy Rand may be the heart of the show
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The review is out, and we’re now in the final hours leading up to premiere of ‘Caprica’ on Syfy, which we’ll mark with another entry in our countdown. Today’s interviewee is Magda Apanowicz. If characters were emotions, hers, Lacy Rand, could be the heart of the series.
The old standby question: Were you a fan of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ before joining ‘Caprica?’
I made a conscientious decision not to watch it until after we filmed the pilot. I was one of those people that looked at it and said, ‘Eh, I’m not really a sci-fi fan,’ but holy! I went back and watched it and I’m like ‘Holy!’ How did I not know that this show existed in my life! It was unreal. I just recently watched the whole series again. It’s so good. I can’t believe that I was one of those people who said ‘I’m not really a sci-fi fan.’
I saw you at the screening of the ‘Battlestar’ finale at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences last year, talking to ‘Caprica’ [executive producer] Jane Espenson. What have you learned from working with her?
Yeah. You saw me bowing to her because I am a huge ‘Buffy’ fan, again from someone who said they weren’t into sci-fi. Though I’ve realized over the past few years that I am a massive sci-fi fan. Pretty much every one of my favorite movies is sci-fi. Everything I’ve worked on is sci-fi. And meeting Jane Espenson was just jaw-dropping, not talking just in awe. I was like ‘You’re Jane Espenson and you worked on ‘Buffy’ and how was that and that’s awesome and you’re awesome and this is awesome.’ There was more actual conversation once we got past that. I just felt really honored to meet her.
And now, after having worked with her?
I love having conversations on the phone with her about the characters cause we’re usually close and on the same page about it. I just think she’s a very talented lady.
Zoe and Lacy’s relationship transcends just hanging around in the Caprica City mall. Explain the before and after.
Well, without giving too much away, Lacy is the only one that knows that Zoe’s [avatar] in the Cylon body and Zoe tries to enlist Lacy to help her get to Gemenon to fulfill whatever mission she had before she was killed. So, it becomes a mission for Lacy to try to help her get to Gemenon in this robot’s body. … Everybody just keeps expecting these things from her, and she just can’t do it.
Can you explain who the Soldiers of the One are?
The SGO believes in the one true God. They’re a bit of an extremist group and they do acts in God’s name that aren’t so good, but the underlying belief of the SGO is the one true God and the love that He has for people. And for Lacy that’s what she believes, and she believes in the love. No matter all of the crazy stuff that happens in the world, all she knows is that at the bottom of it she believes in this God and she believes in the love of it. She was born with an innate sense of right and wrong.
The show has it all, and you get to help provide the teen angst part of it for high school as well.
I’ve always enjoyed the teen angst thing. I had a lot of teen angst as I was growing up, so I think I have a lot to say about it through characters before I have to move on. But I actually think that at a certain point it turns and it changes and becomes a little more worldly. I think that it goes a little beyond that for Lacy.
There’s a little ‘Big Love’ polygamy going on. How is Lacy taking that?
I think when Lacy comes into contact with Clarissa’s real life and sees what she is beyond just being a headmistress, she gets a little thrown back. I think that she knows about those things and she acts like she gets it, but she’s young and impressionable -- she doesn’t really understand things and she doesn’t really understand as much as she’d like to. She tries to play it off cool, but she’s thrown off by things like Polygamy.
‘Kyle XY.’ It was a small show but had a really loyal fan base. Is there anything that you can take from that experience to ‘Caprica?’
Ummm, well, if anything, like you said, the very loyal fan base. People always ask me if I’m nervous about the intense sci-fi fans. To me that doesn’t seem weird or scary. I get really intense about my favorite sci-fi shows, my favorite shows in general. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me about ‘Kyle XY’ and say, ‘Hey are you that girl?’ I say ‘Yeah!’ and some people take pictures with me. I think it’s really flattering. I’ve also gotten some really amazing letters because my character had cancer on the show … This one girl wrote me a letter that said that because my character let someone in romantically in her life, that she took a risk and did the same thing. Though she was really scared to do that because of the cancer, she said that it was the best thing she ever did and she was very grateful for my portrayal of Andy. I wrote her back and said, ‘No, you’re the amazing one.’ I find fans and people that feel so passionately about shows to be an amazing thing.
How much different is the youth society on ‘Caprica’ from our own?
It’s so much like our real world and how excessive our youth takes things, especially V World. A lot of that stuff happens in real life and you don’t even need virtual reality. I worry about future generations. That’s one thing I love about ‘Caprica,’ we get to make a statement about life and what we’re concerned about. I look at V World as Facebook and MySpace and the nightclub scene that you take to a whole new level. It’s kind of like Wii, with Facebook and MySpace all mixed together, and you get to experience everything physically and emotionally. You get to experience all of youR deepest secrets, all of your debauchery. And I think it’s dangerous to do that, especially the people that do it in V Club at such a young age, and you don’t really know what you’re doing yet. You’re exposed to all of these intense, dangerous things. In ‘Caprica,’ as in real life, parents don’t really understand it because they never had it. … Parents really don’t know how to talk to their kids anymore.
You’re reading the final episode now... Is where Lacy is now super different or super out-of-character from what you may have thought from the beginning?
Not super out-of-character, but I’d say it’s super different. If you follow the story, it makes sense where she ends up. She has a long path to go. A lot of crazy and insane things happen.
OK, how about Magda? Where does she come from and what brought her to this role?
I’ve gotten asked that a lot and I never know quite how to answer or where to pinpoint when or why I got into it. I’ve always felt kind of disconnected from life. I never really fit in growing up. I got made fun of a lot of the time in high school. People never liked me and I was always the new kid. I wore hand-me-down clothes, we didn’t have much money … I just always found this sanctuary in television and in movies and this kind of magic and this kind of thing that just made me feel alive and that I was part of something that when I’d watch, I had something to say or a place to go. I feel so lucky that I ended up in it, and I don’t know how I did, but I just feel like it’s the right thing -- it was the place I needed to go. I feel like I have things to say about the world, and this is the way that it seems to work for me to say it, through metaphors and in characters.
-- Jevon Phillips
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