Actress Alessandra Torresani says that for the upcoming SyFy series “Caprica” she will play up to five different versions of her character Zoe.
For those of you who don’t want to know details that could be SPOILERs, please turn back now.
In the series, Torresani plays Zoe, the daughter of Daniel and Amanda Graystone.
Daniel is a computer engineering genius and owns a large corporation that is spearheading the development of artificial intelligence. His unwavering professional pursuits are driven to extreme measures when personal tragedy strikes him and Amanda as Zoe, dies in a terrorist bombing fueled by an underground religious dogma. Unbeknownst to her parents, the teenager had also been dabbling in these radical teachings, which were secretly propagated by her school’s headmistress, Sister Clarice Willow.
“I’ve done a scene where I play three characters in one,” Torresani said. “Season 1.5, the second half, third episode into it. Besides just that, I get to play five completely different characters, which is not like any female 16-year-old show character that I’ve ever seen before in my life.”
Torresani tells SciFi Wire that there are five versions of Zoe that we’ll see as season one unfolds.
“Zoe 0 is the original Zoe, who’s the daughter of Amanda and Daniel Graystone,” Torresani said. “She’s the rebellious girl that’s trying to find the Soldiers of the One and is trying to find the One True God on Gemenon.”
“She creates the avatar, which lives in the virtual world. The avatar is the childlike version of herself, but when original Zoe’s in the V club, she’s this wild, crazy [girl], has tons of sex, drugs, does all this but now is trying to clean up her act and clean up the V world. Does that kind of make sense to you?”
The next is a Cylon version of Zoe. Her father will figure out a way to put the avatar version of Zoe into the Cylon in the pilot.
Torresani teases there are two more versions of the character, but that she doesn’t want to spill the beans on them yet.
It’s going to get really interesting, really interesting,” she said.
Torresani shared a little bit about her process for portraying the different versions of the character. “The avatar, it’s like a rebirth of a child,” Torresani said. “She’s a newborn. She’s touching things for the first time. She’s standing for the first time. She’s talking for the first time. It’s this innocence that is very bizarre to see come out of a 16-year-old’s body and mouth. I completely erase everything and just pretend that I’m this newborn child. You have to, but it’s very, very hard when you’re playing the Cylon as well and playing another character.”
The original Zoe is wise beyond her years. “Zoe Original is the 16-year-old girl that’s a brat, that’s just a spoiled, rich brat that’s rebelling against her family, but she believes in the One True God,” she said. “She’s a strong individual. She’s just fighting for what she believes in. She’s trapped in the 16-year-old-girl body, but she’s like a 45-year-old woman. She’s just mature. I just get it. I was that girl at a point in my life, so I understand it.”
rick says
Bull,
Zoe is just a spoiled rich 16 y.o. kid just like any other spoiled rich kid and doesn’t know anything about the real world. Why do you think the government takes the young to fight in wars, they are easily mislead and you can fill their heads with what ever you want. You can take a young mind and mold it to any figure you want it to be. If you were to try and get 50 to 70 year olds (lets say for one minute that their bodies are in great health and condition) to join the military. We would tell the Government to stick it up their ass. I am not going to kill or be killed for some politician. Especially the likes of George W Bush when he needed an army to kill Sadaam Hussain for some lame ass reason. And religion is another thing that they start with you when you are young and brainwash you with. Luckily I woke up, albiet just a little late to convince my father he was wasting his money before he died, but I saw the light, pun intended. Don’t get me wrong I rwally like the Caprica and can’t wait each week to see what is going to happen next.