‘Once Upon a Time’ at San Diego Comic-Con: Jennifer Morrison and Colin O’Donoghue Talk about Season Five

At the end of last season on Once Upon a Time, Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) helps save a dying Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle), but pays the consequence of becoming “The Dark One.” This season’s iconic poster is of the “Black Swan,” which, undoubtedly is Emma in her new guise.

Taking on this new, darker persona is something about with Jennifer Morrison is very excited, to “shift into something totally different.” I caught up with Jennifer and Co-star Colin O’Donoghue at this week’s Comic-Con, and in a brief interview (at a table with several other journalists), the pair spoke briefly about what’s coming up for their characters.

Jennifer was impressed with the show’s creators to “always come up with new ideas,” whether for her character or the direction of the show. O’Donoghue, who plays Captain Hook (AKA Killian), and Emma’s love, quipped that he’d heard that Jennifer just wanted to “wear a lot of leather,” and be “more like me [on the show].”

With Emma Swan embodying “light magic,” the pull of the Dark One must provide for an intriguing mix. Jennifer noted that there is a lot of “push and pull. “The real Emma doesn’t want to give in to the darkness, but there the evil is all-consuming, so there is a real intense struggle that leads up to her surrender to the darkness.”

Killian will also have a hard time with this change. “She literally has just said ‘I love you,’ and then…” Pouf, she’s gone. After all this time trying to show Emma that he’s a changed man and become, finally, a good guy. Now “all of a sudden, she’s gone bad,” Colin lamented. “He’ll do whatever he can now to win her back.”

Jennifer was quite involved in the new look for the Black Swan. “Adam [Horowitz] and Eddy [Kitsis] and I spent a lot of time working on this [transformation],” She noted that the whole thing has “been a lot of fun. We’re creating a villain that’s never existed before. It’s really exciting to be able to collaborate with them and come up with something completely new.”

With the Camelot story entering the plot mix, Jennifer hopes to see more action, and perhaps, they’ll finally let her ride a horse, like so many of her castmates. “Yeah,” laughed Colin, “I have one hand, and they let me do it!”

Colin noted that the constant change of scenery: the Jolly Roger to palaces to Storybrooke; fighting a snow monster to swashbuckling, etc. make the entire enterprise so much fun for an actor.

Here’s the complete interview. Please forgive the background noise. The pressroom, as you might imagine, was chaotic and very, very loud.  I’ve cleaned it up best I can, so enjoy. Once Upon a Time returns to ABC in the fall.