“>’Once Upon a Time’ Star Ginnifer Goodwin on Snow’s Latest Quest
Actress spills on ABC fantasy-drama’s third season

This Sunday night, before the world says goodbye to Walter White forever, at least we can take comfort in the knowledge that our favorite fairy-tale characters aren’t going anywhere. That night, Once Upon a Time returning for its third season on ABC.

For those who need a quick refresher: last we saw Snow White, Prince Charming, Rumplestiltskin, the Evil Queen, Captain Hook and Snow and Charming’s real-world-raised daughter, Emma Swan, they were departing Storybrooke, Maine on a magical ship to retrieve Emma’s son, Henry, from Neverland. Why is Henry in Neverland you ask? Two disgruntled humans who have personal vendettas against Enchanted Forest immigrants kidnapped him. As you do.

Ginnifer Goodwin, who has previously charmed in Big Love, Mona Lisa Smile and Walk the Line, has seamlessly embodied the dual role of Snow White and her Storybrooke counterpart, Mary Margaret Blanchard, since OUAT’s premiere two years ago. But despite this being a Disney-approved series, her Snow White is a way darker, more nuanced character than the one-dimensional angel of innocence we’ve come to know from the classic 1937 animated version. For example, this Snow is handy with a bow and arrow, and she’s killed people – namely Cora, the wicked mother of Snow’s nemesis, the Evil Queen Regina.

As the second season wrapped up, Snow’s heart was literally beginning to blacken following Cora’s murder (those with magical abilities have the power to rip the hearts out of still-living bodies in the OUAT universe, FYI). She was engaged in a constant inner battle between good and evil – though, as Goodwin tells Rolling Stone, if you’re capable of evil, it doesn’t mean you are evil. “Goodness is a choice,” she says. “You’re only truly light if you’re capable of dark. And don’t you have to have both extremes to be a full human? You have to choose light.”

Still, just because Goodwin recognizes the struggle in balancing good and evil, it doesn’t mean she thinks Regina’s misdeeds should be swept under the rug. “I find myself very defensive when, [at] panels talking to fans or doing a Twitter Q&A, people will start getting on me because I called the Evil Queen a murderer,” she says. “And I was like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, how are you getting past the fact that she has not only murdered hundreds upon hundreds of people, and also has tried to murder my character several times? There’s no way I’m not going to feel defensive about this!’ I cannot sympathize with this character because I inhabit another character that she has tried to kill on occasion. So it’s funny how these stories can manipulate in that way and really blur the lines.”

But now that Snow and Regina must team up for the common goal of saving Henry, the apple-loving princess has a multitude of new challenges this season. She must work alongside her enemy, deal with the guilt she feels over killing Regina’s mother and figure out how to balance her past as Snow White and the 28 years she spent as average American schoolteacher Mary Margaret in Storybrooke. “This season, for me,” says Goodwin, “I think is going to be about [creating] a character that can make it all work. Because clearly, I’m going to have to let go of certain qualities in order for my character to achieve what she needs to achieve. So it’s not going to be that I can keep blending everything together, it’s that I’m going to have to start picking and choosing who this person is, so she can rise above what she did with Cora.”

It’s a good thing Snow’s got a band of merry men and women to help her in her quest. “She still is not able to let go of the guilt,” says Goodwin. “At the end of last season, it was about trying to heal her heart, and I think we’re going in this direction that her working on her relationships with other people is what’s going to make that happen. It can’t just be a solo journey.”

Taken From http://www.givememyremote.com/remote/2013/09/28/once-upon-a-time-adam-horowitz-and-eddy-kitsis-on-going-to-neverland-and-having-a-split-season-plus-teases-for-the-first-two-episodes-of-season-3/
ONCE UPON A TIME: Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis on Going to Neverland and Having a Split Season. Plus, Teases for the First Two Episodes of Season 3!
ONCE UPON A TIME has shifted its storytelling with every season so far (year one introduced us to Storybrooke, season 2 had several characters in present-day fairytale land), and season 3 will be no different: the new season has many of the show’s main characters are on their way to Neverland to save Henry.

“We always wanted to go to Neverland, and we really wanted to focus on the core characters,” ONCE UPON A TIME co-creator Eddy Kitsis told reporters last week. “And Neverland is a place where you don’t grow up and you have to confront your past…so what we did was these characters will return to who they were before the curse in order to kind of achieve this. And at the same time, we wanted to have them dig deeper into what everything means.”

“So we wanted to have time to reflect on what happened and what it means,” ONCE UPON A TIME co-creator Adam Horowitz added. “Yeah, Emma looks at Mary Margaret as her mom, but does she actually think of her as her mom? In the first two episodes we were really trying to use Neverland [for things like that,] and we continue to do this as the season progresses: [use Neverland] as a prism for which we can see these characters more clearly.”

And Neverland isn’t the only new thing in store for ONCE UPON A TIME fans this season — the drama is one of the shows ABC will run on a split schedule, with the first 11 episodes airing this fall, and the second 11 episodes airing this spring.

“It is impacting [the show], we hope, in a really positive way,” Horowitz said. “In addition to two 11-episode arcs, the scheduling of running them more or less uninterrupted allows us to gain story momentum and really look at them as two mini-seasons that are hopefully thematically connected and building to one big finish. But it allows us to tell what we’re calling the ‘Neverland arc’ in the first half and the second half tell the ‘blank arc’ — no spoilers yet [as to what we’re calling it] — that can grow out of where you see the first one end. As writers it has been both challenging and really kind of freeing in a way, which has allowed us to give a complete experience in the fall and a complete experience in the spring.”

“It’s also really hard as a writer to do 22 episodes of one story in today’s world, you know?” Kitsis added. “I think television is changing, habits change, and things do 10 to 12 episode seasons. And for us, we get to do [essentially] two seasons this year; we’re trying to do all killer, no filler, and so I think for us, personally, it’s fun, because it allows us to tell contained stories that we want to tell without being like, ‘How are we going to stretch this one idea [to fill an entire season]?’”

After watching the first two episodes of the season, it seems the creators weren’t wrong that getting to craft more condensed arcs will lead to stronger stories. So how about a few teases for the first two episodes?

•  Viewers knew Peter Pan wasn’t a good guy, but his manipulation of several key characters is just brutal.
• At least one character we know won’t survive long in Neverland.
• Emma, Regina, Hook, Mary Margaret, David, and Gold may start off the journey together, but one of them quickly decides splitting up would be more beneficial.
• There’s a long-overdue knock-down, drag-out fight. It’s so elaborate that one character has to take very drastic measures to try and stop it.
• The Emma/Neal/Hook triangle takes an interesting turn as Hook and Emma mourn the loss of Neal (together), while Neal (in the present-day fairytale land) makes it clear on where he stands with his feelings towards Emma.
• There is a very important (and possibly foreshadowing?) Hook and Regina talk.
• Belle might not be with them in Neverland, but she is certainly not far from Gold’s mind.
• We see Emma at her most vulnerable. (In more ways than one.)

ONCE UPON A TIME returns Sunday, September 29th at 8 PM on ABC.

Taken From http://www.thetvaddict.com/2013/09/29/once-upon-a-time-scoop%C2%A0showrunners-adam-horowitz-and-eddy-kitsis-tease-a-trip-to-neverland-uncovers-mermaids-lost-boys-creepy-dolls-more/
ONCE UPON A TIME Scoop: Showrunners Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis Tease a Trip to Neverland Uncovers Mermaids, Lost Boys, Creepy Dolls & More!
When the fairytale series ONCE UPON A TIME first debuted it was lauded to be from LOST writers Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis.  Surprisingly, by season 3, there is a lot more in common between the two shows than one would have initially suspected.  In Season 1, there was Regina’s Storybrooke curse which at first glance seemed to resemble LOST’s smoke-monster as it was unleashed.  Then in Season 3, there is an actual mystical island filled with all kinds of supernatural and unexpected things.  There’s “lost boys” which remind us distinctly of LOST’s “the others,” lots of lush tropical foliage that seems to go in circles and is constantly rustling with foreboding danger, and but all accounts from everyone who goes there, it is equivalent to purgatory itself. Plus, there’s Peter Pan, who definitely feels very other-worldly.  Even Hook describes Peter Pan as, “He may look like a boy, but he’s a bloody demon.”  Peter Pan is Neverland’s a non-benevolent being that gives everyone nightmares; even Rumplestiltskin shudders at the thought of encountering him.

ONCE UPON A TIME’s journey to Neverland is anything but a peaceful journey to a world of constant delight. It is a place everyone seeks to avoid at all costs.  Thus, when Greg and Tamara kidnapped Henry and took him off to Neverland at the behest of Home Office, little did they suspect what was really going on.  Right away, they will see how naive they were to believe that this was a trip to eliminate magic.

Simultaneous to Greg, Tamara and Henry’s journey to Neverland, hot on their heels are wrathful and protective team of Regina, Emma, Snow, Charming, Gold and Hook.  With their magical powers restored, both Regina and Gold are itching for the chance to demonstrate their newfound abilities.  In addition, while their goals may be temporarily aligned in recovering Henry, none are too anxious to spend too much time together.  Though Hook seems only too happy to aid in Emma’s quest now that he thinks the path to heart may be clear with Neal out of the picture.

Yet no one should be so quick to dismiss Neal.  He is Rumplestiltskin’s son after all, and he quickly learns “that which does not kill you, makes you stronger.”  Learning he has a family to fight for and return to has inspired Neal to embrace a bit of his own destiny.

Season 3 of ONCE UPON A TIME is all about “belief.”  Who do we believe we are?  The season will take each of the characters on a journey through their own pasts to help shed light on who they each are and why.  Creators and executive producers Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz explain that only by remembering their pasts and learning from those experiences will each of the characters be saved from repeating it.  So in exploring the theme of “belief” we will see the impact it has on each character — whether they believe, what they believe and whether they should believe.  For Neverland runs on “belief.”

In a recent press Q&A, Eddy and Adam candidly shared a few teasers on what Season 3 holds in store for our Storybrooke heroes:

Neverland
ADAM:  “Neverland is a prism through which we can see the characters hopefully more clearly, and as you saw in these first couple of episodes, we’re peeling back the layers for all of them — and hopefully that is what we’ll continue to do as we move forward.”

Peter Pan
EDDY:  “For us, our characters are all looking for a happy ending.  They’re looking for love.  It’s just what choices do you use to get them. ”
ADAM:  “What we said before on the show in Season 1 is that ‘evil isn’t born, it’s made’ and I think that applies to all the villains, including Peter Pan.”
EDDY:  “But he is a sick, twisted kid. You saw that Rumplestiltskin, who up until this point has been the nastiest of our villains and the most clever, when he says it’s someone he’s frightened of — I’m frightened of him. . . He gets in your head and says, ‘Oh, what are you most insecure about? I’m really going to exploit that.’  . . For us, it came from a character place which is somebody who refuses to grow has to have a lot of problems.”

Lost Boys
EDDY:“The Lost Boys kind of have a Lord of the Flies situation going on.”

Henry
ADAM:  “Henry is a very resourceful and independent boy who his now going to be thrown into a situation where that will not only be tested, but not just deal with as we have seen him deal with before in finding a way to escape, he’s now dealing with a psychological test — ’cause Pan as we’ve seen likes to mess with your head. What’s going to happen when Henry is face to face with the ultimate manipulator?”
EDDY:  “The thing that makes Henry so great is his belief.  He believed enough in a book to get on a bus, to go to Boston and convince this woman who gave him up for adoption in a prison in Phoenix, to come back because Snow White and Charming needed to remember who they were — and it worked.  So this is a world where belief is going to be used against him.”

Captain Swan: Hook and Emma
ADAM: “The whole relationship ‘ship’ thing is an awesome thing that the fans bring to the experience in the show, but the story we’re telling encompasses both the relationships between all the characters and potential romances, and the bigger emotional story as well.”
EDDY:  “Obviously, they think Neal is dead. Obviously, Hook is a man that likes ladies, and as we saw last year when they climbed the bean stalk, Emma certainly has captured his heart a little bit. But at the same respect, Neal is fighting like hell to get a second chance with her. And right now Emma is focused on getting Henry. She’s not somebody who likes to let her walls down. Her heart has been broken too many times to be worried about dating right now.”

Storybrooke
EDDY: “We’re not going to see it for awhile.”
ADAM:  “It’s going to be a little while before we’re actually in Storybrooke.  But in this first half of this season, it will be limited to flashbacks or (SPOILER) as we saw in the second episode.”

Mermaids
EDDY: “In the Peter Pan book they were only nice to Peter and they were saucy, and we like our mermaids saucy! When we were coming up with this, we just loved the idea that this was who they were attacked by and that was kind of symbolic of Neverland — it’s not what we think it is.”

Ariel
Eddy describes her as, “the spirit of somebody who wants to see the world and wants to experience things outside of what they know.”  Look for Joanna Garcia to appear as Ariel in Episode 306 entitled “Ariel.”

Tinkerbell
ADAM:  “We’ll be seeing her very soon in Episode 303.”

The Darlings
ADAM:  “They are so integral to the Peter Pan story. We have not forgotten about them.  There is a connection and a tie in to what we’re doing that will catch up with them as well.”

The Charmings
ADAM:  “They are an unusual family in that there’s this odd age thing going on between them.  They are the same age and they have been separated for many, many years and now they’re thrown together on a mission and really for the first time in an enclosed kind of space they are able to deal with and sort out so many of these issues they really haven’t had a chance to address yet.”
EDDY:  “For Snow and Charming, they realize at this moment that their daughter doesn’t really look to them for parental guidance and that’s something that’s hard to get. They are realizing in a lot of ways that they need to earn it. . . What is hard for the Charmings is realizing that their daughter grew up without hope and that they have to instill it back in her — and how do you do that when her son is kidnapped and you’re in a place that is making you confront your past.  ‘Cause she has more in common with the Lost Boys than she does with Snow and Charming.”
ADAM:  “We tried to crystalize it at the start of the premiere with that scene where from Emma’s point of view, ‘Since I’ve been back, your lives have sucked,’ but from Mary-Margaret and David’s point of view, ‘No, it’s been great. We’re back and we’re a family.’  And now they have these challenges to overcome in order to be together and be a family.”

Neal
EDDY:  “Come hell or high water, Neal is going to find a way to get back to Neverland.”

Rumplestiltskin’s Father
ADAM:  “Whatever happened to Rumplestiltskin in his past is really kind of creating a lot of the problems he’s dealing with today.”
EDDY:  “It’s something we’re going to see this year… This is a man who wants to break the cycle of his past.  He wants to be a good father.  But it’s like that quote:  ‘I can resist everything but temptation.’  That’s also his weakness.”
ADAM:  “He keeps getting drawn into doing terrible things.”
EDDY:  “He’s a difficult man to love, as he said.  So when you begin to love him, he does something so awful that you go, ‘ah man.’”
ADAM:  That’s the think with Rumple, he may love his son or his grandson — yet like with (SPOILER), he still rips her heart out.”

Rumple’s Prophecy
EDDY:  “There was a prophecy and the prophecy said that the boy would be his undoing.  So it seems to me that [Rumple] left determined to do the right thing, but he was offered a deal — he is offered many temptations and now he doesn’t even have to kill the boy.  He just has to leave an island.”
ADAM:  “The little character posters we have been releasing and the Rumple one says:  ‘Believe you can change fate.’ Whether you can or can’t, that is kind of a core dilemma for him.  He is being whipped back and forth by this prophecy which tells that the boy will be his undoing and the fact that the boy is his blood.  What are his priorities? What’s he going to do?  How will he wiggle his way out of this?  Can he wiggle his way out of it?”

Robin Hood
EDDY:  “We’re very excited to have Sean [Maguire].  As you saw, he’s a great Robin Hood.  He has a great take on it, and Robin Hood’s story is just kind of beginning.  You’re going to get a little of him at the start of this year and we’re definitely going to get a lot of him in the second half. He’s a character we’re really excited about ’cause he’s a thief, but he’s a thief with honor.  Sean really just brings a great sense of honor and code to him, but a sense of playfulness which we think Robin Hood needs.”

Camelot
EDDY:  “It’s a world that’s part of the ONCE UPON A TIME universe, but there’s no immediate plans to delve deep into it.”
ADAM:  “It’s not a world that we see as off-limits.  We have Merlin in our closet.”

Belief
ADAM:  “I would say that belief is really kind of the theme of the season so far and we’re seeing how belief impacts on each one of our characters.”
EDDY:  “For us, belief is so important in everything.  You need to believe in magic.  You need to believe in yourself.  You need to believe in family.  And Neverland runs on belief.  So for us that was the uber-theme.”
ADAM:  “We’ve tried to make a hopeful show about belief with all the obstacles that come from disbelievers and cynics in the world and all those things that tell you to not believe in magic and the world is a terrible, terrible place.  We want to try to find a way to find that light.”
EDDY:  “For us, this is a show for believers — and that is a show about hope.”

One final thought-provoking question is posed in Season 3 of ONCE UPON A TIME is posed by Regina when she asks Hook: “Villains don’t get happy endings?” and he says, “I hope that’s not true or what is the point of living.”  Everyone needs hope that they can change their fate — that they are not doomed to live their lives alone, without love and unredeemed.  It’s that power of belief and hope that compels them to try to be better and to seek out love.  These are things that Season 3 offers for heroes and villains alike.  A very curious quest and an adventure worth living

From the Rolling Stone interview:

Remember that theory that Peter Pan is also the Pied Piper?! Well, I think this might prove that theory true!

Oh haven’t seen this yet. This reminds me of the “Playful Pan”, one of the Silly Symphony videos, in which the Greek god Pan use his flute very Pied-Piper-like.