WonderCon: “Siren” Cast & Producers on Show’s Authentic Feel, Environmental Issues, Sirens’ Song & More
Freeform’s Siren made a big splash this past weekend at WonderCon 2018. In addition to screening Part 1 of the 2-hour series premiere to a very enthusiastic crowd, the series’ cast and executive producers came on stage to share details of what viewers can expect when the show premieres this Thursday. OMFGTV was on the scene, and below we’ve compiled the best scoop from the panel.
Though the show has a supernatural element to it, Executive Producer Eric Wald wanted the show to feel grounded and as much scientific fact as possible so it would play very real and authentic. “We wanted the show to take place in the real world,” Wald says. “The show takes place in the Pacific Northwest. We shot it up in Vancouver so we were really in those environments.”
He shares that when we see the actors diving in the water, they’re not doing it in some man-made tank, they’re actually going in the ocean, giving it a “very authentic feel.” He explains that marrying that with the scientific aspect really creates that feeling of reality and the fact that we don’t really know what’s out there. “We know much less about the ocean than we do about outer space,” he says. “And there’s this possibility of ‘What if?’ You know, we don’t know what really could be down there.”
So what brings a sea creature from the deep depths below to the surface? Actress Rena Owen (Helen) explains the reason is due to a very real and really important environmental issue. “What brings the mermaids to the surface is the fact that the seabeds have been stripped of their supply of food,” Owen explains, “so it’s forcing the mermaids to have to come swim closer to the surface in order to find food and that’s how one gets caught. That’s what initially brings the mermaids to the surface is the whole very relevant environmental issue.”
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Fortunately for Ryn, she doesn’t get captured when she makes her way to shore. However, even though she hasn’t been caught, she still experiences a very big disconnect between herself and everyone she comes in contact with. “Ryn has never been on land before, so she has no notion of how humans interact,” Eline Powell (Ryn) says. “I’m positive there’s a whole social system etiquette down there, but no awareness of the human ones. So when Ryn does want to find a connection with people, it is a mix of trial and error, or goodness and downright inappropriateness, from an outsider’s point of view.
“But she’s pure, so there is no malintent there,” she continues. “There is nothing disturbing about it because she’s just a creature trying to go for that connection with someone and she sees what other humans do so she maybe tries some of those things but ultimately she’s going off of what she does know so there’s a mix of her own ways and the ways she’s learning and in her mind, too.” As for attraction, Powell says “it’s a non-binary question. [Ryn] sees souls rather than gender of whatever. There’s no box for mermaids. I think they’re very much connected to what’s behind their name tags, which is beautiful.”
What’s also beautiful is the siren song the mermaids sing. In the series premiere, Ben gets sirened and is put under a spellbinding lull. Alex Roe, who plays Ben, says that in regards to what the siren song actually does and how it works is surrounded by a lot of ambiguity to it, which he finds really cool.
“We start finding out different bits about what it actually does as the season progresses,” Roe reveals. “But for me to play that was really cool. How I imagined it is that it’s something very similar to falling in love and how that can drive you a little bit crazy and can sometimes alter the things that you do. So it’s kind of similar to that for my character, but for other characters who have been sirened in more of a defensive way, it affects them and drives them a little more stir crazy. It’s definitely a very, very powerful effect that it has on the people that get sirened.”
“It definitely plays a huge role in season one,” EP Eric Wald adds. “It’s a tool they use to draw humans in. Ryn doesn’t have the ability to communicate with words yet, yet there’s already a connection between [Ryn and Ben], so she uses the one tool at her disposal to sort of connect and draw him in. That said, a knife can be used to prepare a beautiful meal or it can be used as a weapon, so our siren song gets used in both ways this season.”
Casting the mermaid drama for Freeform, Executive Producers Wald and Emily Whitesell went into the process thinking of what people in the Pacific Northwest would look like. And when the actors came in to read for their parts, all of that just disappeared. “It just came about in the most natural way,” Whitesell says of the casting. “The best actors got the jobs, and then they were on the screen, and whatever we had thought originally about what anyone would look like just went away, which is kind of the hope I think we all have for the world as well, so it just worked out perfectly!”
Siren premieres Thursday at 8pm on Freeform.