Brittany Curran, The Magicians‘ newest series regular, graciously took some time out of her Disney World vacation to speak with OMFGTV and chat about her character on the popular Syfy series. Fen is the daughter of a knife maker in Fillory who married High King Eliot (Hale Appleman) and became pregnant, but was kidnapped by the fairies and taken to their realm where she gave birth to their child but had it taken from her. When season 3 begins, she’s back in Fillory, but she’s missing more than just a few toes.
“She gets so desperate at the end of Season 2,” Curran tell us. “She has this absent husband that doesn’t love her and basically ignores her. And then she lost her child. For Fen, the most important things to her are staying in Fillory and having her perfect little family, and she has neither of those things at then end of Season 2.”
Not having these things drives Fen to the point of psychosis. “In the beginning of Season 3, now that she’s lost pretty much everything, she dives into this state of just not believing anything she doesn’t want to believe. So she craves this idea of a perfect family, which she is far far from.”
In order to really get into Fen’s head, Brittany had a very creative idea for getting into character this season. “I called up my real therapist from LA and we did a Skype session, and we did a therapy session, but instead of for Brittany it was for Fen.
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“Exploring Fen’s trauma and her PTSD that she’s dealing with, it was really fascinating and eye-opening. And then on the show, I kinda tried to ride that line between honoring the actual difficulty of something like that, but also making it fun and making it The Magicians style. So it was really interesting for me to go through.”
When we first see Fen this season on The Magicians, she’s carrying around a log like it’s her child, and Brittany had a great time on set those days. “When I saw [the log], I was so excited just because it’s hilarious, and also because I love Baby Groot in real life, so I just sort of pretended Baby Groot’s soul was in that log, and then I didn’t even have to act.” She even carried it all over set with her that day while shooting! “I myself probably went a little crazy filming those scenes.”
Though Fen is a bit off her rocker most moments, she does begin to regain her sanity once reunited with her much older daughter, Fray (Madeleine Arthur), and Brittany credits that to getting her daughter back, but says that also feeds into her psychosis.
“Having her daughter figure come back into her life just feeds more into her psychosis of a perfect family, which it’s not,” Curran explains. “She lost the first 16 years of her daughter’s life, her husband still wants to leave her behind in the castle [even though the Muntjac was her idea!]. She just kind of ignores that, and so now that she has her daughter she feeds into this image that isn’t true.”
For this week’s all-new episode, “The Losses of Magic,” Brittany Curran teases what fans can expect for her character. “My favorite thing about episode 3 is that Fen and Fray and Eliot find themselves on an element of the adventure that’s more dangerous than they certainly weren’t expecting. It’s an element of pure whimsy and fantasy that people aways think about in movies, but when you’re actually being possibly attacked, all of a sudden it becomes scary.”
Be sure to catch The Magicians Wednesday at 9pm on Syfy to see what Fen’s up to!
