We saw her a little bit on last week’s episode, but tonight, Brenda Strong’s Nia, Queen of the Ice Nation, begins a major role on The CW television series The 100. The episode is called “Watch The Thrones” and in it, Nia quickly comes in to challenge Lexa’s decisions and leadership.
Brenda Strong is possibly best known for playing the doomed Mary Alice on the ABC series Desperate Housewives; more recently, she was Ann Ewing, third wife to Bobby on TNT’s Dallas. We spoke with Brenda Strong earlier this week about this pivotal role that we’ll be seeing her in tonight’s show, which airs at 9PM ET/PT on The CW. Enjoy the interview!
KSITETV’s CRAIG BYRNE: What brings Queen Nia to the Grounder capital?
BRENDA STRONG: She is pretty ambitious, and if you start to understand the geography of what it might be like to live in an environment that doesn’t have as many resources, being drawn to a geography that has a lot more warmth and — this is all conjecture — ultimately she wants power, and she believes that Lexa has the power that she wants, so she wants to overtake Lexa.
I think whenever you are fighting for the survival of a nation that you see floundering because of whatever reason the Ice Nation has been floundering, they’re fierce warriors, but I think they wanted to take over a certain area so that they can thrive and survive, and that certainly happens to be currently inhabited by the Coalition.
Were you told much about how Nia came to power to begin with?
No. I wasn’t given a tremendous amount of back history on that by Jason [Rothenberg]. But I did mention in an earlier interview that one of the things that I love about playing her is that I have – unbeknownst to a lot of people – Native American blood, and one of the people in my particular history was a leader of a five stick Red Nation tribe, and there was actually a warrant out for his arrest, dead or alive, by Andrew Jackson. He was the only one of these five disparate Red Stick nations that could lead them against Jackson, so he wanted him dead.
So in a lot of ways, I think Nia’s rise to power is either by birth, because she is wanting to pass that leadership on to her son as well, or it’s because she was the fiercest bad-@$$ of the nation, and everyone just said “Okay. You take it!” [laughs] Because either way, she is definitely the one in power. There is no question about that. So whether it was by birth or by acquisition, she is the undisputable leader of the Ice Nation.
What kind of a relationship does Nia have with her son, Roan?
Right now, it’s a bit strained, but I think, ultimately, it’s one of respect. I think she is grooming him to become the leader that she knows he potentially could be. I think she believes that he still has some learning to do. I think she loves him fiercely, but she’s also not willing to put her personal feelings of love in front of her protection of her clan and her tribe. I think in that respect, she’s a very fierce and fearless leader, because she’s willing to do whatever it takes, including banishing her own son, to protect her tribe. So, I think she’s politically very, very calculating and astute. Ultimately, I think that she loves him and wants him to rule with her, or at least be the successor to her kingdom, eventually. She’s trying to teach him how to be that leader, and I think she loves him. Very much like any mother; you have deep, deep, deep, deep feelings of loyalty to your own. But she also doesn’t let it cloud her judgement when it comes to political manipulation and power.
Do you think she’s confident that her son could beat Lexa in a fight?
I’m not sure. I think she wants him to have the potential to be as strong of a leader as she sees herself to be, but I think she is not sure if he has that capacity. I think that’s where her doubt of him may sneak in, here and there.
How did you go about learning a different language to speak as Queen Nia?
Luckily, when I was in college, I actually fanatically learned how to speak five languages, because I was a voice major, and so, whenever you learn another language, you have to know what you’re saying, but you have to also have a good ear.
I think actually in a lot of respects, that’s what led me to doing as well as I did with Mary Alice [Desperate Housewives] narration. You could kind of hear when it’s right, and certainly that narration was very melodic and rhythmic, so it had kind of a musicality to it, and this language that was created [for The 100] is consistent, and it has a certain sound to it. It’s hard! You know, it’s hard to step into another language and memorize your lines, let alone the ones that you’re supposed to memorize in English. But the more I heard other people speaking the language, the more I heard the prep tapes that they provide for you, the more comfortable it became. I actually really enjoyed it. There’s something about speaking sounds that you feel like you can invest in physically, in a way that we sometimes forget to, unless we’re doing Shakespeare as actors.
It was a treat for me. I really loved it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Learning another language like that is very refreshing, because it really makes you get specific about what your intentions are.
Can you talk about the makeup process and the costume that they used to have you become the Ice Queen?
I would just say, first and foremost, the costume department and the makeup department are A-plus. They had a very clear vision of what Jason wanted, and at the same time, it was an exploration, so it was a building process. We would start with a certain look, and then as Jason would see where we were going, both with the makeup and the costume, he would say “I want a little bit more of that and a little bit less of that.” I think he had an idea of what he wanted to see, but didn’t quite know how to explain it until he saw it.
We went through about 32 hours of makeup tests. I have this great kind of evolution on my iPhone, with pictures of where we started to where we ended up, and it’s kind of a fascinating evolution. Same thing with the wardrobe. The costume was very much indicative of a woman who would be in a colder climate, so I had, like, ice picks clamped on my pants, and leather lace-ups on my boots, and a lot of fur, so you can imagine that we do a lot of trapping and picking. In those colder icier climates in order to survive, you have to learn how to hunt the things that are available to you. So, the costume reflected the country that I’m from, and the more fur we added on and the more leather we added on, the more it started to designate how I walked and how I moved. It was really a lot of what dictated how I felt as Nia, from the inside out, and it was a pleasure to work with both of those departments to create her.
Is this the first science fiction series you’ve done in a while?
The last science fiction series that I did, I did a guest as Rashella of Aldea on Star Trek: The Next Generation. A little known fact is I had tested in my twenties for Stargate. I’m a huge sci-fi nerd. It’s a secret that William Shatner knows that I have a 26 stitch scar on my leg because I was pretending to be Captain Kirk when I was six years old. So I’m a little bit of a sci-fi geek. [Laughs]
So, to be able to be part of a world that is so well thought out, and so complex in its structure, both geographically and with the epic nature of the world that Jason has created, the huge scope…. it was such a pleasure. It’s a very ambitious world, that I feel like they’ve really maintained a lot of integrity as the storylines have developed. It’s not easy! It’s a very ambitious thing to do for a eight-day shoot for a television network viewership. Most people would feel daunted to do this on a major feature film, but they manage to really maintain the quality and production values beautifully.
While you were shooting in Vancouver, did you run into your former TV husband Mitch Pileggi [Dallas]?
Actually, yes we did! I texted him and I said “hey, are you up here doing X-Files?” And we ended up going to dinner a few times, and going on some walks… we still have a very nice friendship, and it was nice to be able to share my time up here while he was here shooting as well.
What are you excited for people to see from your character on The 100?
I’m excited for people to not recognize me, actually! I want people to go “Oh. Who’s that?” And to search, and then go “Oh my gosh!” [Laughs] I love the fact that because of the costume, because of the nature of the dynamicness of the character, that I may not be recognizable to people as myself. That was really exciting. I loved playing Mary Alice, but after eight years of being in beige, I felt like I was in costume purgatory, because when you die in a costume, you end up having to wear it every time you’re in a flashback. So, I was so excited to be unrecognizable to my fans, and also to play something a lot more raw than I normally get allowed or cast as. A lot of times, I play women of strength and character and integrity, but not that kind of raw complexity, and I was really happy that Jason felt that I could bring that to the table, and I would love to do more of it. I just feel like I just got the biggest tease of my life; I want to do so many more sci-fi productions and costume pieces, and be part of these more complex, epic worlds. Definitely, my appetite is whetted for more.
You can see Brenda Strong and a whole lot more TONIGHT on The 100. 9PM ET/PT on The CW; photos can be found here.
