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oh but that’s the whole sad beauty of it – if Snow could’ve helped, she would’ve had none of it. She hasn’t directly caused any of it, yet some of her (sort of unintentional) actions led to this. The results of them are everything opposite to what she would’ve hoped but this is her fate and she can’t change it, as if to mock all her believes – in a way it reminds me of Greek tragedies.
i don’t think we’ve seen enough of Maleficent, to be honest. Maybe the writers could reintroduce her to the show but I think many of us have written her off when Emma killed the dragon.
here’s an interview with Lana Parrilla – it’s been published today but for the Australian website so bare in mind they are a bit behind with the episodes!
EVIL sometimes does pay. Just ask Lana Parrilla who dabbles in the dark side for Seven’s fantasy drama Once Upon A Time.
The face of Disney villainy is curled up in a Canadian hotel room in a fluffy robe. Lana Parrilla has just woken up, her throat is still hoarse from cheering on Barack Obama (“I screamed so loud I lost my voice for the night”) and she reveals she’s there for a “romantic little getaway” with boyfriend Fred Di Blasio.Wait. Fluffy robe? Once Upon A Time’s Evil Queen wears a fluffy robe?
“It’s cold,” she laughs sheepishly in a voice so devoid of trademark menace you wonder that she ever believably ripped out hearts and enacted dark curses on screen.
But wait five minutes and you hear it. The Brooklyn daughter of a Puerto Rican baseball star and a Sicilian painter has an impressive armament of vocal inflections, born out of 10 years of voice training. And, as she literally cackles as she recounts scaring a young Cinderella witless on Halloween, you can well picture the girl, and everyone else within a 50m radius, backed up into a corner, trembling.“You know I don’t LIKE little princesses,” she sneers menacingly as she recreates the scene, before turning on the honey. “But you do make a pretty one.”
She laughs heartily.
“People are afraid of me – some adults, some children,” Parrilla, 35, says with obvious relish. “But I think we’ve seen such a human side to this character, they’re more intrigued now. They want to get to know who I am outside of this character, which is kinda cool.”
The real Parrilla is a born performer, artistic, sporty – “it’s in my DNA” – and driven “I am very, very diligent and extremely hard working”.As a celebrity, she is one of the new breed – connected, accessible and social-media savvy. In her downtime, Parrilla often can be found tweeting her large global band of followers – the Evil Regals. In past months her tweets have been exhorting them to vote, support gay marriage, try the burgers at a Vancouver eatery and has been cheering on followers’ health kicks. She credits her fans for inspiring her to give up smoking.
She also is largely unfiltered. Parrilla famously posted a video of herself to the Evil Regals having just woken up, wearing no make-up, unselfconsciously rumpled. It was wildly popular.
But somehow under all that niceness lurks some fairly convincing evil. Or it certainly did last season on OUAT when Parrilla’s enraged Evil Queen Regina sent her enemies to Storybrooke, Maine, stripped of memories of their previous fairytale character lives.
Season two kicked off last week in Australia with the curse broken and everyone remembering their true identities again. Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and the “saviour” Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) have been sucked into another realm and meet new characters, including Captain Hook and Mulan.
Storybrooke’s angry citizens, meanwhile, have been less than impressed to discover their town’s leader for the past 28 years, Regina Mills, is really their former evil queen.
Parrilla plays three Reginas in OUAT – a sweet younger self; the closed-off, scheming mayor, and the Evil Queen, a mess of fiendish charm and wrath.
She has a particular process of getting into the head space of each of the women.“There are certain things that I do as young Regina,” Parrilla says. “I change my voice and give her a higher voice.
“There’s an (upcoming) episode where she’s transitioning and she’s just about to become the Evil Queen. So I chose certain lines to drop to a deeper resonance in my chest.
“I sometimes jump in the air when I am playing young Regina and I try to get a very light feeling.
“When I play the Evil Queen so much of it is guttural. I studied voice for 10 years so there’s a series of voice exercises I like to do that help ground me when I am about to play the Evil Queen.
“Regina as the mayor, there’s someone in my life that I have pulled stuff from – mannerisms, characteristics, body posture and how she walks, how she sits, and sometimes I’ll think of that person and take on their body. I think of them and maybe say a few things that they would say that talk me into character.”
Ask whether her friend knows they’re being modelled for the conniving mayor and she snaps back with a sardonic bark: “Absolutely not!”
Suggest you’re surprised her friend hasn’t recognised herself on screen yet and the response is playful: “Well,” she drawls, “Who says it’s a she….?”
She fills the air with a wicked laugh.So much of Regina’s personality is conveyed in the way Parrilla looks at people, often when they’re not watching. It was a deliberate choice to invest the mayor, in particular, with expressive eyes.
“I use my eyes quite a bit to tell her story, but it’s mainly because this character has so much going on and she has to really cover up a lot,” Parrilla says.
“She wears a mask in front of those around her; the audience really gets to see what’s going on inside. I am really conscious in using my eyes to tell that story.”
She also made the conscious decision to change the length of her hair as the season went on.“It was a bit shorter when I started the pilot episode in the first season but I wanted to have more of a politician look,” she explains, “a very kind of classic haircut. That was more mayoral than the ’70s do Trina Decker (who Parrilla played in Swingtown) had. It was intentional.”One of the most challenging things has been to make a famously cartoonish villain multi-layered. Parrilla does it by working out what drives Regina, and who she is underneath her damning title.
“I think she has evil tendencies, but I don’t think she is evil,” she says. “I try to never label her and just try to figure out why she does the things she does. I don’t feel I can give her any negative attributes to describe the character.
“I think she is somewhat psychopathic, I think she is on the cusp of insanity on some level, and that goes back to pinning Snow White for death of Daniel.”In season one, what drove Regina to evil was finally revealed as her secret fiance, stable boy Daniel (Noah Bean), having his heart literally crushed by her social-climbing mother, Cora (Barbara Hershey), so Regina would be free to marry a king.
However many fans were left scratching their heads when Regina’s rage was not directed at her murderous mother but the king’s small daughter, Snow White, who broke a promise and revealed the couple’s secret affair to Cora.
“I remember reading this going ‘God, this doesn’t make any sense to me’,” Parrilla admits with a chuckle. “Like, ‘That’s all? It’s all about a broken promise?’
“Then I had to really dig deep and go ‘Why would she go there and what does that all mean?’ I realised she’s slightly off in her thinking, the way she sees things, her reality is off. “And that’s where we differ, blaming someone for the death of a loved one when Regina saw her mother rip the heart out. If she was to go after anyone specifically it would have been her mother, but she didn’t at first.
“For me that indicates a lot of psychological issues. That becomes a whole other research for me – what kind of crazy is she, how does it happen, was she born (like that)?
“I don’t think she’s evil, I think she’s definitely misunderstood on many levels. But then I think there are some psychological issues and she’s revengeful.”
It’s not a concept Parrilla personally agrees with.
“I’m not one to take revenge,” she says, sounding perplexed at the very idea. “If someone does something wrong to me I leave it in the hands of the universe to take care of that person. “But Regina’s so devastated and she feels like everything’s been taken away from her. I can understand why she wants to retaliate and get back at others.”
Since the curse has broken, Regina has put her once ferocious desire for revenge aside, with her focus now on redeeming herself to win back her angry adopted son, Henry.
“You’re going to see a very different Regina,” Parrilla says. “She is actually becoming more sane. And she’s becoming more reasonable and more human, really. She’s really trying to do the right thing and I love that about her. She’s very vulnerable.”
This season Regina also comes to understand that she cannot force her 10-year-old son to love her – and he won’t love her until she has redeemed herself first. That begs an interesting question: Can any redemption be genuine if the mayor is just doing it to get back her son?
“I think it’s a start,” Parrilla says of Regina’s laser focus on that goal. “It’s an incentive getting Henry back for her. I do think it’s a real redemption.
“Any kind of effort towards self-improvement and being a better person, trying to do the right things and taking responsibility is a step in the right direction.
“It’s not like he’s just some kid. He’s her child,” Parrilla adds vehemently. “And that’s how I’ve always seen it. Her blood’s not pumping in his veins but that doesn’t really make any difference. Changing his diapers since he was a baby, it is her son – so I think if her redemption is to get Henry back, that’s just the first step.”
The second step is facing who she was and the evil she has perpetrated, which included killing her own father in order to enact the curse.
“She has to confront everything she’s ever done,” Parrilla says. “And that is where the true redemption is in my opinion. She has to really do a lot of soul searching and really looking at herself in the mirror and go ‘Who am I, what have I done?’
“He (Henry) is the incentive, but you’ll see throughout the second season as she moves forward, she really does take responsibility for what she’s done and that is the true redemption.”
Redemption probably also means not trying to feed her son’s birth mother, Sheriff Emma Swan, any more poisoned apple turnovers as she did in season one.
Of course, where baked goods failed at removing Regina’s most troublesome nemesis, season two has now seen a body-sucking portal do the job nicely for her – whisking away Swan and her mother, Snow, to a new realm.The irony is not lost on Parrilla that Regina finally has accidentally rid herself of her two most hated enemies in one fell swoop – right when she doesn’t actually want them gone.
“I think she tried so hard to get rid of Emma and, now, in the first episode of the second season it really is an accident they get sucked into the portal,” she says.
“She kinda wants to celebrate a bit because ‘Whoa that was easy’,” she adds with an evil laugh. “But there’s also a part of her that knows she needs Emma to have Henry back in her life.
“I think Emma and Regina’s relationship is a very complicated one and I think they have more in common than they are probably willing to admit to themselves or each other.
“There’s a common ground they share. They both have been abandoned and betrayed by their parents. That is something that we’ve never touched upon but it’s something I have investigated a bit. They probably understand each other more than any other character does.” The relationship between the pair is a tricky one – birth mother pitted against adoptive mother. There is so much baggage in the tug-of-war over the affections of Henry, it makes one wonder what the threatened mayor might have thought of Emma if he wasn’t between them. What if the blonde had simply ambled into Storybrooke without anything to instantly set them at odds – what would Regina have made of her then?
“Probably nothing,” Parrilla says with certainty. “I probably wouldn’t even acknowledge her. Regina is so self-absorbed. She really only invested in relationships if she can get something out of it. “If Emma had something she wanted or Emma could do something for her then she would probably acknowledge her and give her the time of day. But if Emma was just strolling through … she wouldn’t.”
Parrilla also does not necessarily subscribe to the theory there is anything more going on between the pair than hatred. A sizeable chunk of Parrilla’s overwhelmingly female fanbase are “Swan Queen” advocates who argue there is some love-hate in that fiery hate-hate relationship.Among the evidence they cite is a scene in season one outside a collapsed mine where Regina suddenly steps so far inside Emma’s space, nose to nose, that many fans swear they look about to kiss.
What Regina was playing at in that moment is a popular discussion on fan forum boards.
“It was a trick – I needed her to help me,” Parrilla says after taking a moment to recall the scene. “I was letting her see a more vulnerable human side to the character.
“I know the Swan Queen (fans) wish that I’m really a lesbian,” she adds with a chuckle. “This talk about the Swan Queen, they’re always saying that Emma and Regina are a love thing, that they think we’re gay, but that was never a choice of mine.
“It was more I was just kind of letting her see the character and letting Emma see Regina could be genuine (in the mine scene) and really needed her help. That was it; there wasn’t anything sexual behind it.”
Swan Queen is not a topic foreign to the actress. Her Twitter feed lights up constantly with questions from fans, wondering about the relationship and it’s further fuelled whenever her scheming Mayor Mills offers amusing double entendre-laden lines such as “Keep my shirt, that’s all you’re getting”; or “How to get the saviour to taste my forbidden fruit?”. “When you said Swan Queen – people ask all the time,” Parrilla muses. “I just don’t see the two characters going in that direction. I have no idea what the writers are going to write but, at this stage, I don’t think there’s a romance between the two women,” she says her voice rising in question as she considers it. “But if it happens, it happens.”And if it did happen? If a script landed in front of her and she discovered she would soon be romancing Storybrooke’s sheriff? She laughs for a long moment and then falls silent. “I would not be opposed to it,” she states. “If that’s where the writers are going with the story then I’m going to tell that story. I don’t see that happening,” she fades to silence. “But I don’t see these two women…” she stops again, thinking. “There’s so much hatred between them. I don’t think they’ve even hugged each other!” she exclaims with a burst of laughter.
She clears her throat.
“Come season five, six – who knows, who knows where it goes? I am never opposed to any sort of same-sex relationships. I think I’ve proven that this year giving a speech at the HRC (Human Rights Coalition) gala – I have been very vocal about my views on same-sex marriage and equality. I’m all in favour of that.”
Wherever the character is going, Parrilla is one focused actress. She considers, in depth, her character’s motivations, studies them for hours, scribbles vast notes across her scripts. It helps her navigate the dark, difficult places, like anguish, grief and fury, she often must tap into as Regina.
“I do a lot of work on this character, a tonne of work and I think that helps a lot, really digging into her past, who she is, what she is feeling, her relationships with all the characters,” she says. “So much is available for me that I don’t have to pull (motivation) from other places. The character really does give me a lot to play with.
“Then I just go the extra mile. It’s kind of my way of working. I am very, very diligent and extremely hard working – that’s kind of always been my thing.
“I think being up in Vancouver and away from home really affords me the time to stay focused and dedicate many, many hours to this character. There aren’t as many distractions. “I have a very different life in Vancouver than I would in LA or New York – I don’t really have a lot of friends or anything so I am not as easily distracted. I don’t really go out much.”
She stops when she realises how that sounds, offering a faintly rueful laugh.
“I mean I HAVE friends in my life, obviously, but a lot of my good friends are at home, right?” she says. Another thing being in Vancouver has done is shaken up her more active lifestyle.
“I used to be more of a sporty girl,” she says with the tiniest of sighs. “I love outdoor activities. I haven’t been doing much since living in Vancouver. I have my routines down in LA. “I haven’t been getting out as much as I’d like.”
She is proud of her late baseball star father, Sam Parrilla, and says genetics help make her a quick learner when it comes to new sports and physical activities.
“I have it in my DNA,” she declares with authority. “In my second lesson in skiing the instructor said ‘You’re an intermediary now’. I pick up everything very quickly.
“It’s a blessing and it’s a curse. Sometimes I won’t invest at the time to really get good at it because (I think) ‘Oh I can pull this off, I can play this’. That’s happened to me a couple of times. I think that’s probably why I am an artist not a softball player or something.”
Her outdoorsy activities are somewhat curtailed in rainy Vancouver, especially when she works long hours on set. Parrilla sees the positives, though.
“When you’re away filming I think acting really serves you and I am taking advantage of the time that I have to really dedicate to the character and developing her emotional side, physical side, mental. On so many levels.
“Bobby Carlyle (Mr Gold/Rumpelstiltskin) the other day saw one of my scripts and he goes ‘Oh my god, you should auction that off!’ and I said, ‘Are you kidding? They’d lock me up if they read my script with all my notes’ because they had literally more notes on the page than words that were scripted.
“But I love working that hard. Regina, she deserves that – I want to tell that story. She has a great story to tell.”
She’s even gone so far as to acquire a ring to help ground her character in her head.
“It’s something I bought, a prop that I purchased early on for the pilot, and I was doing a lot of research for the character and exploring the dark side,” she explains, adding there is no significance as to which finger she wears it on. (It shifts from hand to hand occasionally.)
“What I found was that an emerald is Satan’s stone. And it’s green like the curse. I felt I needed something – a link between Fairytale land and Storybrooke.
“(The ring) represented the dark side to her, holding on to that. Then it kind of morphed into other things; it was linked to Daniel at some point. Sometimes I think maybe it’s time to take it off – but I’m just not ready for that yet.”
One of the confronting aspects of being an actress is always being outside one’s comfort zone. At least it’s confronting for outsiders watching thespians tear themselves apart to portray emotional truths. But Parrilla seems genuinely amused at the suggestion all of this must be terribly difficult.
“Uh, I’m kind of used to it,” she chuckles. “It’s become the comfort zone. It’s just my zone, all around, turning myself inside out and being very vulnerable, it’s something I’m very comfortable with now.
“There’s something I really love about being able to show these very human emotions. And I feel that in life, when I can be that free, it allows other people to be the same. It’s like saying it’s OK to be human.
“To be vulnerable, to be raw, to virtually expose your guts, I like doing that. I don’t think people are courageous enough to show what’s going on. I mean it’s great that I get to do it as the character but I find, in order to be successful, you have to be able to do it in life.”
But her biggest challenge may be more physical – specifically those stunning Evil Queen costumes, with plunging cleavages, voluminous skirts and tight corsets.
“That’s not my comfort zone!” she declares with a bark of laughter.
Suggest that the Evil Queen’s outfits must make it both hard to breathe and keep co-stars’ eyes on her face and she laughs long and hard.
“Yes that was intentional,” she says drolly. “ ‘BOOBS!! She needs to have bigger boobs’!” she suddenly exclaims, as if quoting some imaginary director eyeballing her cleavage with dissatisfaction.
“It’s very difficult to breathe in those things,” she continues. “I once ate a quarter of a cheeseburger and it got stuck – stuck in the middle of my chest. I couldn’t even swallow it. I had to remove the corset in order to swallow it and then, that was it – I went on a liquid diet. “It’s very, very challenging not only to eat but to go to the bathroom is probably the most challenging thing. Which, again, results in not eating, not drinking, so you’re dehydrated by the end of the day. I have no nutrition in this body whatsoever!
“And the other day, I am in the middle of the forest in pouring rain in Vancouver and I’m on a horse hunting Snow White down and I have to go to the bathroom but I’m in this huge gown. Where do I go?
“I have to walk down through the forest and go into this porta-potty deal. I need two people to help me go to the bathroom. That is definitely NOT my comfort zone. I’d rather be alone when I go to the bathroom!”
She laughs again at how preposterous it all sounds – two people and an Evil Queen squeezed into a Vancouver forest portaloo. You have to ask whether she’s joking.
“No,” she enunciates with dry amusement in her most precise Mayor Mills tones. “I’m not.”Apparently evil does come with a price. But, when you get to play Disney’s most iconic villain, it’s one Parrilla seems more than happy to pay.
Couldn’t be Regina’s fault because Charming’s mum died because of King’s George actions (him attacking the cottage and poisoning Snow) and Charming bad luck for saving Kathrine’s beloved but killing the lady of the lake at the same time. As it happens, Regina, chasing Snow or not, had nothing to do with it.
Also, the scene with Snow finding Red in the wolf hidden place – things just don’t add up. Even Granny was able to smell/sense the rioters from blocks away when they wanted to kill Ruby in SB but then the (much younger and so with better senses) wolves didn’t sense Snow until she was walking down the stairs AND nobody sensed the queen’s men???? COME ON…
