Jennifer Morrison became known to millions with her role as Dr. Allison Cameron in the first six seasons of FOX’s House. Now, Morrison is headed to ABC and a place called Storybrooke as the series lead, Emma Swan, in the new series Once Upon A Time.
Once premieres next week on Sunday, October 23 (read the series description here). Earlier this month, we visited the Once Upon A Time sets in Vancouver, British Columbia and have come back with interviews with most of the cast. A new interview will be rolled out every day this week on KSiteTV, so keep coming back; previous interviews can be found here.
And who is Emma Swan? Emma is a bail bondsperson in the big city who – despite being very good at what she does – is a bit lonely. She never knew her parents and grew up alone. She had a son, Henry, at a young age, and – hoping for a better life for him – she put him up for adoption. In the series pilot, Henry re-enters her life, and in bringing him home, Emma finds her way to Storybrooke. And then what? That’s why you need to tune in to find out.
Until then, enjoy this interview!
Please do not reproduce this interview onto other websites. Instead, just place a link to KSiteTV! Questions to Ms. Morrison are posted in bold; her answers are not.
Most of the characters on Once Upon A Time have alternate, Fairy Tale counterparts. Is there a part of you that wishes you could have one too?
I used to say no to that, until I started seeing pictures of everybody in the forest in their pretty costumes. It’s like, “really?” Nobody prints pictures of Emma. Everybody’s printing pictures of these grand, glorious fairy tale moments in the forest. I was like “Man. That’s pretty cool.”
There’s some contention between Emma and Regina, especially as Regina (the Evil Queen) is Henry’s adoptive mother. Can you talk about their relationship?
Obviously the conflict between Regina and Emma is complicated because Emma does not have the intentions of taking Henry away from her, and yet Regina feels like that could happen if Emma’s around for long. I think Emma holds a tremendous amount of resentment towards this woman because she feels like she was supposed to make her child’s life better, and it seems like that’s not happening, and there seem to be so many odd sides of this woman. So many parts of her that are so unsettling and so frustrating, and I think Emma definitely feels that need to stick around to protect Henry and try to figure out how to get to the bottom of all of this.
Also, as her maternal instincts kick in more, she gets to know her son better, and gets more and more connected to him, her conflict with Regina only intensifies.
Is there going to be interaction between Emma and “John Doe” when he comes out of his coma?
Yes. Eventually. Once he wakes up. It’s a small town, and that’s kind of the fun of the storytelling, is to reveal how all of these peoples’ lives start to interconnect, and why, and how.
How much of Emma’s instinct is to turn her work side on and look into these people?
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 judgement, ends up involved in it anyway. I was kind of joking a few episodes in. I was like “What did this town do before Emma got here?” She’s trying to save everybody and do everything for everybody all the time. It’s kind of funny, that here’s this woman who’s so resistant to helping, and yet her circumstances end up leading her to helping so often.
Is romance in the cards for her? She has some chemistry with the sheriff in the pilot.
Ahh. Interesting. Yeah, I think eventually. I mean, Emma’s a full-blooded woman, and the sheriff is a very handsome man. That Jamie Dornan, man. I don’t think you get much more handsome than that.
Would you consider him a wolfy kind of guy, maybe?
What exactly do you mean by that? [Laughs] I don’t know. I think that he’s foxy.
Where does Emma end up living? Does she stay in Granny’s house?
She briefly is there, and then is asked to leave, and ends up taking a roommate in town. So, one of the cast members does allow her to stay in their home.
Is there a fairy tale character from a story that you grew up with that you’d love to see on the show?
Ginny and I were talking about this. We both love the Little Mermaid. It’s the only Disney musical I know all of the words to all of the songs [from], because we’d listen to it so many times in the car as a kid, that it’s just ingrained in me.
So you are saying you’d like for Ariel to be part of that world?
Yes, exactly. [Laughs]
How it adjusting between doing different types of television, going from House to a fantasy series like this?
For me, it hasn’t felt like a major adjustment, in a sense that the storytelling is so grounded – at least the relationships within the storytelling is so grounded in reality. So the approach, for all of us, has just been to treat it as if it’s very real and very grounded. There’s no sense of “Oh, we’re in a fairy tale!” It’s been really important for us to really keep its feet on the ground that way. So, by approaching it that way, and also that Emma is the one character that is grounded in reality and doesn’t buy any of this fairy tale stuff and thinks it’s just this child who is trying to deal with his emotions by having this fantasy idea… from that perspective, it’s just all about digging into those relationships and figuring out the root of all of those things. I’ve just been loving that the writing has been so rich with that stuff. Every time I put down a script, I’m so blown away by how specific and different Emma’s relationships are with each other character in front of her.
Whereas on House, I served a very specific function, and Cameron was always going to have certain limits of how much she could do and how much she could offer, because she had to provide a very specific service to that show. And on this show, there’s just been this incredible freedom to be able to go “Wow. My relationship with Mary-Margaret is completely different from my relationship with Regina, which is completely different than my relationship with Henry, which is completely different my relationship with the Sheriff. It’s almost like getting to do several different things all at once. So I’ve just been enjoying the fact that the writing has that kind of depth and those kind of layers in the storytelling.
Come back to KSiteTV all this week for more Once Upon A Time interviews and be sure to watch the series premiere on October 23! Here are more treats associated with the series that you may enjoy: Once Upon A Time forum – Once Upon A Time Hub @ KSiteTV – Image Gallery – Steve Pearlman (Producer) Interview – Lana Parrilla (Evil Queen) Interview – Jennifer Morrison (Emma Swan) Interview – Josh Dallas (Prince Charming) Interview – Jared Gilmore (Henry) Interview
