Van Helsing Exclusive: Rukiya Bernard Talks the Challenges of Playing a Vampire & Human; Teases Episode 10!

“Heart-wrenching bloody excitement!” That’s how Rukiya Bernard describes her current show, Syfy’s Van Helsing.

OMFGTV was lucky enough to chat with Rukiya about the complexities of playing a character who has been both vampire and human, as well as getting a little teaser of tonight’s all-new episode!

Doc is a very complex character who starts the series off as a vampire, but gets changed back to human in the third episode. We asked Rukiya what challenges she faced as an actor playing two very different sides to a character.

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“As an actor it was very exciting and scary at first,” Rukiya admits. “You just want to get it right, but at the same time, it’s a brand new show, brand new characters, and you don’t know where things are supposed to lie, so it was a really organic process.”

She also added that she wanted to figure out who Doc was like pre-vampire so she could figure out what her “vampire-isms” would be.

Rukiya had the challenging job of trying to make sure Doc as a vampire acted just like any other vampire would even though Rukiya did not have any scenes with other vampires. She credits the continuity between vampires to the director of the first three episodes, who really guided her and helped her shape the character.

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“I didn’t have any scenes with other vampires, but you want them to be consistent. So they were very good about creating those characters and help guide that.”

OMFGTV knows how much everyone wants to know what’s going to happen in tonight’s installment, “Stay Away,” so we asked Rukiya if she could tease it for us!

“We end up in a utopia that no one trusts because this is not a utopian world we live in. It really unearths a lot of truths for our main characters; not only Doc, but with Flesh and Vanessa and Sam and Susan. It really triggers people to unveil themselves.”

Be sure to catch Rukiya Bernard as Doc on Syfy’s Van Helsing Friday’s at 10pm!