“Van Helsing” Exclusive: Jennifer Cheon Garcia Talks Ivory, Fighting for Who She Is, & Working With Co-Star Nicole Muñoz
In honor of pride month, PopWire had the pleasure of speaking with Van Helsing‘s Jennifer Cheon Garcia, who plays Ivory on the Syfy series. Here she discusses how her character’s story relates to her own, and praises the generosity of her co-star.
When we were first introduced to Ivory, she was fierce vampire member of The Sisterhood. Last season, she had her own encounter with a Van Helsing bite that turned her human after centuries of being driven by the need for blood and violence. Though Jennifer thoroughly enjoyed playing with blood and screaming and getting her demons out, Jennifer most enjoyed Ivory’s transition to being a human woman again, and equated it to her journey to womanhood.
“Her becoming human is kind of like what I would relate to becoming a woman and becoming a woman with our generation,” Jennifer tells us. “It’s like this younger generation has so many options, and the world is more understanding, opposed to when you’re growing up.” Born in 1995, she says there were expectations of how a woman is supposed to be: “how she’s supposed to look, how she’s supposed to smell, how she’s supposed to walk and talk and what she’s supposed to wear. And it’s taken a long time for me to know how to fight.”
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The BC born-and-raised actress has always, in a sense, been fighting for who she is. “I fight to be who I am,” she says. “I’m fluid. I’m attracted to energy and people’s souls and their hearts and what they want to be about. Opposed to like, gender specific. Growing up being that way was always like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no. You can’t do that. You have to like boys.’” The expectations she grew up with drove her crazy.
The whole point, she says, was Ivory’s transition and how she’s like becoming human again and realizing this new world. “It kind of played hand in hand with my realization of what it is to be a woman now, what it is to find my femininity and my masculinity, and where they all live together, says Garcia. “That was really meaningful for me. But I appreciate all that blood, though. It was a lot of fun to yell and scream.”
Ivory is now the only member of the Sisterhood that is left, she must figure out how to live and survive without her Sisters by her side. She must now find her place and figure out what her new purpose in life is. “This season is all about finding her place,” she explains. “And I think you’re going to get to a certain point of the season where she makes a decision where she knows what her purpose is. Right now she’s just sort of like, ‘Okay, I was under that — for lack of a better term — spell, with the Sisterhood.’ But with the Sisterhood, the essence of that was a good thing. I think that’s what she’s trying to restore, and that’s what she’s trying to make up for.”
Ivory and Jack’s relationship has been a pleasant surprise and highlight to come out of the last two seasons of the show. Jennifer and her co-star Nicole Muñoz wanted to make sure their relationship felt authentic and real, and not done for the wrong reasons. “I’m bi, and I hate when people exploit my story, or our story just for entertainment value.”
Garcia also loved working with Muñoz because she made her feel safe. “She’s so giving as an actor, and she always makes you feel you’re safe in that moment,” she says. “I was so lucky that I had her to connect with, because sometimes when you have to get on set and you have to connect with somebody, it’s like, ‘Holy crap. I really don’t like you, but here we go.’ So I was so happy that she also values that story just as much as I did, which just made it so much easier to do. It made it so much more honest.”
Van Helsing airs Fridays at 10pm on Syfy.