The potential significance of Greg Mendell’s name:
We don’t want to spoil things that are coming up, but I will say that you’re not saying a name I haven’t heard before. I’m not going, like, “Oh, my God, there was a famous scientist [the founding father of genetics] named Gregor Mendel?”
Cora’s (Barbara Hershey) manipulative nature:
She certainly is manipulative isn’t she? I mean, not Barbara Hershey, she is delightful, but Cora, absolutely.
The scene in the car between Cora and Regina (Lana Parrilla) in which Cora so artfully manipulated Regina from pure hate to acceptance:
I’ve got to say those scenes, the scenes with her and Regina – particularly the exchange in the car that really sealed the deal – was some of the stuff I enjoyed writing the most in this episode. It's a tricky bit of writing; how do you turn Regina so quickly in so few scenes? It required some cleverness in the writing and I really enjoyed that challenge.
You can write the lines as well as you want, but if you don’t have an actress that can deliver them convincingly, it doesn’t matter and I thought both of them did an amazing job, sort of making that dance work for Regina. She was so certain of where she stood that she was going to get in that car in the middle of the night and go awake everybody up, and then to get from there to where they end up – that required some really strong thoughtful acting from both women.
Lana Parrilla as Regina:
She’s amazing. I mean, there is a weight to her acting. It’s like you feel the intelligence of the character and it never gets thoughtless. There’s always this presence to it.
The abundance of riches in strong female characters that populate Once Upon a Time:
One of the things about fairytales is that there are so many female characters, and so few male characters, that it really opened this up to have this show where the top of the call sheet is so densely populated with these marvelous actresses and so with Jennifer [Morrison], Ginny [Goodwin] and Lana all up there all working hard and turning in these great performances week after week... It’s so great to have these layers and layers of female characters, female actresses. It’s very rare. It’s kind of rare in TV and movies to have a scene with two actresses where they’re not just talking about an off-screen man and, our characters, they’ve got lots of stuff to talk about.
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Article comments
1 - NEEDACOKE
A great article, Barbara. I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much!
2 - barbara barnett
my pleasure! Jane is always fun to talk with.
3 - Lysh
Great article! Jane is becoming one of my faves.