SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for the series premiere “Orphan Black: Echoes,” now streaming on AMC+.
The series premiere of AMC and BBC America’s “Orphan Black: Echoes” offers just a few concrete things about Lucy, the enigmatic character played by Krysten Ritter.
At first, she’s naturally resourceful, which ends up coming in handy when she wakes up with no memory of who she is, with a kind but mysterious lady (Keeley Hawes) interrogating her about something she might know. After a violent response, she MacGyvers her way out of the containment facility where she’s being held and passes by some clues that suggest her origins may lie in a slimy vat of goo. But before Lucy can read it, she becomes a thief by night, reappearing two years later as an aide-de-camp living the quiet country life.
She rents a cell home on the farm from a single father named Jack (Avan Jogia), with whom she shares a deeply loving relationship that they keep secret from their deaf daughter, Charlie (Zariella Langford-Haughton). We learn that Lucy always has a gun locked and has the pathological behavior of avoiding any discussion about her past – she also loves SpaghettiOs straight from the can. That’s all we get, until things quickly get worse.
“I thought it was such an interesting performance challenge to tackle a project that has no backstory and no memories,” Ritter said. Selection. “She doesn’t feel the way she should, she doesn’t know who she is and she’s totally running away.”
This final half becomes very clear when a person arrives at her trailer and tries to subdue her. Lucy is more than capable of taking care of herself, it seems, but it’s a shot that saves her. Behind the trigger is Charlie, who came to her rescue with that gun that Lucy wants to hide better.
With blood on both their hands, Lucy makes everyone leave town to stay one step ahead of the people who found her. While in Boston, searching for whoever is monitoring her, she bumps into a teenage girl who looks a lot like the one she keeps seeing in flashes of memories. But when they are confronted by another trigger-happy person, Lucy takes the woman hostage to find answers.
Simultaneously with all this, we get some glimpses contained in the Addictive Foundation, a group of medical experts who print functional replicas of important organs. Run by Hawes’ anonymous wife in the opening sequence, the muse is the one who monitors Lucy, who was copied from DNA that didn’t have enough detail for memory recovery. In other words, it is a failure of the program and is a legal liability. In the final scene, the woman reveals herself to be Kira Manning, daughter of Sarah Manning, one of the many clones played by Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany on BBC America’s original series “Orphan Black.”
With the claim that it is a sequel series set 30 years after the original, Ritter spoke to Selection about why she likes playing “an experiment gone wrong” and what it’s like to act in the same vat of goo.
In addition to Lucy’s childhood eating decisions, how did you capture her tone and identity at the beginning of this show? Due to the nature of the story, her understanding of the character must be malleable enough to evolve as she learns more about herself.
I thought this was a very interesting performance challenge, to tackle a project that has no history or reminiscences. She doesn’t feel the way she should feel, she doesn’t know who she is and she’s totally running away. This was something I had never done before and it’s also something you don’t see often. That was interesting to me. I always imagined her as a living person with great emotions that she doesn’t know what to do with. That was always my reference point to come back to. There’s a lot going on with her, but she doesn’t know where to really put it and channel it.
In the opening moments of the premiere, we see how instinctively sensible she becomes when she leaves this box of containment. She goes straight to the lamp and manages to stop it by pinning her arm to the wall and opening the dead bolt. It was very spectacular.
She tries every option to get out of that room. The glass won’t break, but she sees a ray of sunlight in the gentle change. She recognizes the flaw in the design. She is very sensible.
“A flaw in design” is an apt phrase for this story because Lucy is considered a flaw in this show. Now, much of the episode takes place two years after her escape. Will we see what happened in those two years and how her escape led to the comments about drug abuse and homelessness?
We’ll see some of that and see what the last two years have been like for her in her relationship with Craig (Jonathan Whittaker) on the way home, and her relationship and love for Jack and Charlie. Let’s understand why she is trying to protect them, even the prices. She is defending the family unit she created for herself because she has no one else and she loves them. When she realizes that these people are after her, if she were alone, she would continue working. But to protect them, she understands that she needs to find out why they are after her and make them stop.
The problem with Lucy is that she is an experiment gone wrong. But because of the abilities she has in her DNA and where she comes from, which we’ll find out, this could make her a threat to go rogue and be dangerous. I thought it was really interesting to do an experiment that went wrong. She has no reminiscences; She has no emotions. She is simply alone on this planet. There can be a constant dialogue between nature and nurture about this. How deep does love go on a mobile level?
She really leans into nurturing part of that equation in the premiere. She built this relationship, however secret it might be, with Jack and Charlie.
That was so interesting to me – I really like that she has someone to like. As a mother, I liked that I was able to play that mother-daughter relationship between Lucy and Charlie, who she undoubtedly sees as a stepdaughter. This dynamic is something I certainly understand.
The final scene of the premiere confirms that it is a true sequel to “Orphan Black”. Was it daunting in any way to lead the next chapter of a well-loved series?
I recognize that this came with a built-in audience. Frankly, it’s already hard work to launch a gift. There are so many platforms and so many programs, and there are a lot of recent spinoffs and IPs. So, having that marquee title and a franchise present I thought would be sensible and great, but I really responded to it as a personal thing. We are not remaking the only one. It’s not the same construction. I’m not going to play eight versions of the same person like Tatiana Maslany did.
It’s completely different, and that was completely fundamental for me in the approach. I mean, I’m not trying to redo what she already did so well. This is a totally different factor.
The original series certainly leaned on this idea of a discovered family, but there was also the constant ethical discussion about whether this cloning should have been completed. It’s hard not to wonder why people haven’t learned their lesson in the 30 years since the original series — especially Kira, who saw this firsthand with her mother.
I think that’s important, and this series entirely poses the question: is this what we should do? Is it fair to print people out of thin air and then send them out into the world?
But once Lucy meets the younger version and the older version, they develop a kinship, a friendship, and a connection based on a lack of shared history. And what’s fun is that we can observe them and discover the similarities between them. It’s really exciting to play.
We get an idea of what Lucy’s birth process is, for all intents and purposes, in this episode. What was it like filming that scene?
Oh right, what goo! It was a very technical experience and a lot of cinematic magic. The goo, I believe, was all the product of glucose. It was so heavy. Oh, and you floated in it too! No joke, they had to build a 70 pound belt to go around my waist just to keep me down. Otherwise, you just float because there’s no gravity there. It’s wild! Too sticky, too thick. So they built me a bathroom right where I could rinse off – which was amazing. It took four or five people just to help me get there because of how slippery it was. I really like doing these things. It’s so fun, but it takes a lot to make that beautiful photo moment come out of the goo.
Indeed, you all made it look very cool and modern. Although no one would blame you if you panicked with that covering on your face underwater. Discuss claustrophobic!
Yeah, being down there with that thing on your face, it’s like, “Hurry up and call the movement.” But it helps inform the choices I make and the efficiency to make it feel genuine. So I’m always ready for a little discomfort and a little struggle like that, because that just helps make it real.
Do you really like SpaghettiOs?
I am not! They are disgusting. I haven’t had SpaghettiOs since I was a baby. However, they tasted the same as they had been since I it was a baby, were generally disgusting. So no, I’m not a fan!
This interview has been edited and condensed.