The new CW series Cult premieres in just two days, on Tuesday, February 19, and continuing our roll-out of interviews from the show’s Vancouver set, we have Alona Tal, who plays “Kelly” on the show-within-in-a-show that is also called Cult as well as “Marti,” the actress that plays Kelly on Cult.
As Jeff (Matt Davis) and Skye (Jessica Lucas) investigate what is going on in the “outside world,” Kelly is looking into solving the mysteries and taking down Billy Grimm on the “inside show.” In many ways, Kelly’s character and her journey on the show reflects a bit on what Skye is going through on the outside. If you watch the show, you will be rewarded with seeing the interactions and similarities between the two worlds.
As for differentiating between playing Kelly or Marti, Alona told us that “visually” the characters are very different. “Kelly is very much Kelly, and you’ll see [what Marti is like],” she promised. “It’s also not making the actress character [Skye] the cliché of an actress, and really trying to put in [how] this actress who’s playing this kind of an obsessive role, and how would she react in these situations,” she said. She did say that too much popping into Marti “takes you a little bit out of the mystery sometimes,” so it has been a challenge to keep her scenes in the same tone without taking it out of the urgency of other scenes.
Does Marti the actress know there is some weirdness with her show? “You’ll get a sense,” she said. “We don’t want to give too much too soon. It’s more interesting to see everybody learn about it. You start the show with Mari being very wary; she’s nervous, she’s a little guarded with fans. But she doesn’t really know in the beginning, she’s not aware of the extent. So we’ll grow with that,” she promised.
Many of Tal’s scenes team her up with Robert Knepper, the actor best known for some very intense roles on shows like Prison Break and Heroes. Billy Grimm is also very intense, but as an actor, Tal enjoys working with her co-star. “The thing with Robert is that he’s very real and that’s something that I really like,” she said. “I like somebody to do something…I like it when he surprises me. He’s unexpected and unpredictable in the scenes even though I know exactly where the scene is going. He always has that little look in his eyes like ‘you don’t know what I’m about to do’. And that makes me nervous and makes for good scenes. It also plays in to what we’re supposed to be doing, because Kelly doesn’t know what Billy Grimm is going to do at any moment. He’s playing his role very well. And very charming,” she told us.
Cult premieres Tuesday night at 9PM (ET) on The CW. Check out some of our other interviews from the show and enjoy another clip below:
Disclaimer: Travel arrangements for our Vancouver trip were provided by Warner Bros. Television.
