“Van Helsing” Exclusive: Jennifer Cheon Garcia Talks Working During the Pandemic, How it Relates to the Show
Like many shows this season, production on Syfy’s Van Helsing was up in the air for a while due to COVID. Luckily, the cast and crew were able to safely return to filming and finish their final season. Jennifer Cheon Garcia (Ivory) was very grateful to be back at work on the fantasy/horror drama, though things were definitely different due to the pandemic.
“Acting is such an intimate thing that you do,” Jennifer tells PopWire in an exclusive interview. “Not just actor to actor, but the crew — they’re all right there with you. As intimate as a scene is between you and your scene partner, the camera guy and the boom guy, they’re all right there with you. So it was definitely on our minds, we were trying to stay distant, trying to minimize the time we were close, rehearsing through masks on.”
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“I never realized how much I loved rehearsing, to feel the words in my mouth, which you can’t really do with a mask on. But that’s the small price we had to pay in order to get back to it and give the fans a good show to watch during the last little bit of the pandemic… It definitely had its challenges, but it was worth it.”
We’ve seen several characters facing their own darkness in this final season of Van Helsing, and for Jennifer’s character, Ivory, it is no different. She committed a lot of atrocities as a vampire that she must now face. The actress says it’s time for Ivory to begin, “righting her wrongs.” Jennifer relates her character’s journey on realizing how important human connection is to all of us living through the COVID-19 pandemic right now.
“I know it’s a vampire apocalypse, but we’ve all been going through this pandemic and losing people and being away from people, and just realizing how important that connection is,” she explains of the importance of humanity. “And now that we’re getting those things back, and how to rebuild that, it’s sort of like that same journey, but in a vampire apocalypse.
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On the topic of Ivory and the Sisterhood, and finding out what humanity is and what it means to them, the British Columbia-native asks, what’s the point of fighting? “What are we actually fighting for?” Ivory knew the Van Helsing’s were trying to help, so she made sure she was going to help them however she could. But what’s next after that? “And that ‘what’s next,’ is going to be really exciting for everybody to see.”
Part of that exciting bit takes place in tonight’s episode, “Graveyard Smash.” Jennifer Cheon Garcia leaves us with this rousing tease: “For all my Sisterhood sisters out there who found a home with us, we’re calling you,” she says. “We’re calling you loud and proud, so I hope you hear us.”
Van Helsing airs Fridays at 10pm on Syfy.