The latest episode of Freeform’s Siren, finally saw the escape of Donna from the military facility, followed by the long-awaited reunion with her sister Ryn. Tonight’s all-new episode, “Curse of the Starving Class” is a big one for Donna — and now that she’s out and free, we thought you’d like to get to know a little more about her character. OMFGTV met up with her portrayer, Sibongile Mlambo, along with Rena Owen, who plays Helen on the show, at WonderCon where we got more information.
“I play Donna and I’m one of the mermaids and I am Ryn’s sister,” Mlambo tells us. “I’m captured in the first episode and that’s one of the reasons why she comes to land. I would say Donna is very loyal, very loyal, fierce, and has a bit of a different experience to what Ryn goes through on land in and my interaction with humans is very different.”
To say Donna’s experience was torture, is an understatement. She was constantly tested like a lab rat whose DNA was tested on actual lab rats. *Side Note: Once Ben’s mom, Elaine, figures out mermaid DNA can reverse paralysis, we hope she becomes the new villain and uses that to her advantage and then somehow turns that into a new, shady business for the family.*
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Being kept in a tank for nearly the first half of the season was not all bad — at least not for Sibongile. “It’s kind of freeing because you don’t have to worry about what accent [to use],” says the Zimbabwean–South African actress, “you don’t have to remember any lines.” Regarding the accent, it’s a joke among the cast who all but one have different accents than the Pacific Northwest characters they play on the show.
And while she was free from having to remember lines for her part, she does add that acting and emoting without words and just movement was “very physical” but was something she really loved about it. “I had to watch a lot of animals and pick and choose what to use and just kind of blend it together.”
Tonight’s episode jumps a month ahead. And not only does Donna speak much more, she does a lot more, too! After being confined in such a small place for so long, we’re sure Donna and Sibongile are thrilled to be able to stretch her legs and get in on the action.
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Upon the arrival of the mermaids to Bristol Cove, one of its denizens, Helen, was shocked when coming face-to-face with one (Ryn), but she didn’t seem too surprised. “It’s like the trailer says — every town has a story, and every story has a believer, and the believer is Helen,” Rena Owen tells us of her character. “Our whole town operates around the whole legend and myths of mermaids. But my character is a believer. She believes they’re very, very real, and people don’t until they come to land and then they have to come to her for answers.”
“My personal character is the town’s nut job,” she continues. “But if you watch the series, you find out Helen isn’t a nut job, she really isn’t. She’s just called the town nut job because her whole shop is Helen’s Antiquities and it’s just all about mermaids; it’s all about mermaid memorabilia, mermaid collectibles.”
One of the questions that was lightly touched on in last week’s episode and will be explored more in tonight’s episode was what brought them to Bristol Cove. “Why did you and your sister come so close to the surface?” Helen asks Ryn. “You know better. I’m sure you’ve been warned.” “Food,” replied Ryn.
Though Siren is fiction, series creators Eric Wald and Dean White wanted the show to feel grounded and as much scientific fact as possible and part of it is the very real environmental issues that Rena points out.
“The whole story, the whole premise is based on the fact that the seabeds have been stripped,” she explains. “So these deep sea creatures have no food left. This is happening all around the world, it’s happening in New Zealand, it’s happening in every coastal community.
“Fisherman like Xander don’t have a job anymore because it’s literally been stripped by big industries, and so these deep sea creatures have been forced to come closer to the surface in order to find food, but unfortunately coming close to the surface, you’re going to get caught up in a fisherman’s net.”
It won’t be long until the existence and arrival of mermaids shakes up the town of Brisol Cove, and when it does, Rena says it will “rough up” the whole town, taking everyone out of their equilibrium and challenging them. And with that, there’s a sense of pride and validation that Helen feels.
“After all these long years, she was the old girl on the block of believing that mermaids are real, finally now people realize that she’s not the crazy person they thought she was and that maybe she has some value,” Owen says. “It’s her worst nightmare and her biggest dream come true because she also knows what [their arrival] means and what could happen, so a big part of my character is to protect them.”
Siren airs Thursdays at 8pm on Freeform.
