Interview: Once Upon A Time’s Jennifer Morrison Talks About Resisting Hook’s Charms

Last night on Once Upon A Time, Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) had to face who she truly was in order to get a lead on where to find her son, Henry. Emma and her allies are searching for Henry in a dangerous place — Neverland — where they have so far been tormented by Peter Pan and his Lost Boys.

Once Upon A Time provides audiences with adventure, but there are others who tune in for another purpose: romance. Specifically, the group of “Captain Swan” “shippers” who want to see Emma hooking up with Killian Jones, better known to the audience as Captain Hook. Hook is trying really hard to get Emma’s attention — will he soon have any success? We spoke with Jennifer Morrison at the Vancouver studio of Once Upon A Time to get answers.

“He is trying really hard,” she confirms. “It takes her a while, surprisingly, to notice that he is trying really hard. The audience is in on it more than Emma, because the audience gets those lovely close-ups with the little glints in his eye, and extra looks that she doesn’t know! Actually, when we were live tweeting during the premiere episode, I said something like ‘oh! Hook looks really relieved I didn’t die!’ I didn’t know that happened! I was busy not dying! So I had no idea that he had that moment! So, the audience is a little more in on that than Emma is, initially.”

“What I’ve always said about Hook and Emma is that they are kindred spirits,” she continues. “They’re survivors. Emma is a pirate in her own way. She’s had to sort of go from one family to the next, or one group of people to the next, and find her own way to survive, and her own way to not let life get the best of her. So they’re definitely kindred spirits, and I think what Emma finds surprising on the island is that he exceeds her expectations in terms of his kindness and his help. She is someone who makes very educated decisions on people’s previous behavior. For example, she has to team up with Regina because she knows that Regina wants to save Henry too. So, she has to sort of brush under the rug the fact that she tried to kill her whole family, and her, and has killed thousands of other people and all of those other things, and just deal with the fact that she really does want to save Henry, and start from that common ground, but still make educated decisions from that point forward. With Hook, she knows what he is capable of, but he continues to surprise her by doing something different from what she expects. That is an interesting dynamic, that does play out,” she reveals.

Ultimately, it is Henry that is Emma’s top priority in Neverland, and a love life is not on the list of Emma’s priorities at this time. “She’s in an interesting situation in Neverland, because really, all she cares about is getting her son back,” Morrison says. “Ultimately, that is the forethought in her mind, is ‘how do I save Henry’ and ‘how do I make sure that he’s okay?’ And then what’s coming around that is that she hasn’t had a time to deal with what she believes is Neal’s death. She’s not processing the idea of romance when her son’s life is in danger. There are a lot of different things coming at her while she’s trying to stay focused on getting to Henry. There will definitely be some interesting ups and downs,” she hints.

Once Upon A Time is new Sundays at 8PM on ABC. Come back to KSiteTV soon for more Once interviews and be sure to drop by our Once Upon A Time forum for more about the show!