Memories from the set: Gina Torres

CLEOPATRA 2525

“That show was ridiculous!” Torres says of the pulpy sci-fi series, in which she played Hel, whose mission was to fight the machines that had taken over the Earth in the 26th century. Did we mention it was from the minds behind Hercules and Xena? “[Seroes creator] Rob Tapert pitched it to me,” Torres says. “God bless him, he saw something in me that I will always be so grateful for. He said ‘I want you to lead this group of freedom fighters. You’ll be wearing rubber hot pants and a silver corset in the process and protecting a cryogenically frozen stripper…'” she laughs. “There were times when I was on set that I felt like Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest. I was like, ‘I can’t believe this is where [I’ve landed]. I’ve done the classics… All these years layer, I’m like, ‘That was a good time.’ I’m waiting for my daughter to be old enough to check it out.”

FIREFLY

The short-lived space western, Joss Whedon’s follow-up to the highly succesful Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, “was a lesson in that there are no givens,” Torres says. Still, the cast – which included a pre-Castle Nathan Fillion – was “happy to come to work, see each other every day, do this and inhabit this world, and it showed,’ she adds, “The idea of it was fantastic. I really do think we were ahead of our time. Unfortunatelty… Fox just didn’t get it, and they buried us. They can take full responsibility for that.”

Though as the ship’s first mate, Torres’ Zoe had her share of larger-than=life moments – “Coming out of the fog and a sand storm with a shotgun with Mal saying, ‘What does that make us, Zoe?’ ‘Big damn heroes.’ It doesn’t get better than that!” – but the actress is fond of the “sweet” exchanges between her and Alan Tudyk, who played her husband, Wash. “I so appreciate that the writers would let Zie really be a girl and a woman and a wife,” she recalls. “That made her the ultimate chick, because she was a fully realized person. That’s what I mourn the most, given the early demise of the show.”

ANGEL

Next, Torres played a completely different type of character: Jasmine, the smiling-yet-sinister entity that possessed and birthed itself through Cordelia, then brainwashed Los Angeles until everyone was under her sweet spell. “She wanted love. Is that so wrong?” Torres asks, cracking herself up. “I think the scariest monsters are the quiet ones, the ones that are sitting in front of you and are very seductive. I put my voice into that honey place… There was just this calm grace about her delicious evilness. I love Jasmine for that.”

24

Torres’ first day of work on the Fox thriller, “I was called in, in the middle of the night, to do a phone call with Penny Johnson [Jerald, who played Sherry Palmer],” she recalls. Sherry was in her car for the scene, “so I folded my 6-foot self into the back of a car that I shared with a camera crew, because there was a camera in the front seat,” Torres says, remembering how impressed she was by the series’ dedication to detail. “I was like, ‘They’re taking this seriously… They want the reactions to be real, and they want it to be a tennis game.” As for her character, Julia, “I mean, she had the world by the balls that first hour, and then it all goes terribly wrong – thank you very much, Gary Palmer,” Torres says.

ALIAS

L-Directorate assassin Anna Espinosa “should have had her own show,” Torres says. “She was the other side of the coin of Sydney Bristow. They’re both ride or die, believe in their cause, doing their job, excellent at their job. They just happen to be pitted against each other.” Turns out, the character was originally written as a born-and=bred Russian, but a suggestion from Torres – as well as the fact that she can do a Russian accent – turned Anna into a Cuban-born Rissain. “I’m proud that I the courage to even bring it up, and I’m so proud that they ran with it,” she says.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

“I was robbed!” Torres says, laughing, about the demise of her character, a withc from Damon’s past named Bree, on the supernatural CW drama. “Yeah, you pulled my heart out, but come on.”

HUGE

“I’m so much taller than the average bear,” say the statuesque actress. Add on that her self-described “ethic ambiguity” wasn’t seem much on TV or movies when she was growing up, and you’ve got someone primed to be in the ABC Family series about a camp for overweight… It’s another show that I mourn, and it was also an opportunity to play somebody” – camp director Dr. Rand – “who wasn’t altogether together.”

CASTLE

Reuniting with Fillion on his ABC procedural also gave Torres an opportunity to have some fun lampooning on the Real Housewives franchise via her character, Penelope Foster. “I show up on set and I know exactly how I want to play it,” she recalls. “I wanted to fly the New York flag high, and I showed up with this think Bronx accent. The director, I think he was expecting [Suits‘] Jessica Pearson. I said, ‘No. She’s not here. She’s not showing up’… He just let me play.”

TRANSFORMERS: PRIME

Here are Torres’ unedited comments about her role in the Hub Network animated series, in which she voices Airachnid: “The job came up. It was a good fit. Do I get an action figure of my own? Do I get to work with Optimus Prime? I think that it’s better that he just lives in my head. He’s awesome. That voice. “Transformers, roll out.” What’s wrong with that? Nothing.

REVENGE

Torres showed up as schemer Natalie Waters in Season 4 of the ABC drama, but “I wasn’t going to do it if I wasn’t going to work with Madeleine Stowe,” she says. “I said ‘Who do I play with?’ ‘Victoria Grayson. You’re her foil.’ ‘Sign me up. I don’t need to know anything else.'”

HANNIBAL

Working with one’s spouse – like Torres did when she took on the role of Bella, the termianlly ill wife of Jack Crawford (played by Torres’ real-life husband Laurence Fishburne) – “is not an easy thing,” she says. “People often mistake that for peeking thorugh the window in our lives, and that’s not of interest to us.” But a conversation with series creator Bryan Fullar, with whom she’d worked on Pushing Daises, sealed the deal. “He crafted the most beautiful woman and arc for me to play… somebody who doesn’t have all the answers, who is struggling, who is vulnerable.” Plus, she points out, her diseased character was probably the only person on who the drama’s titular cannbibal wouldn’t want to nibble. “If anybody is safe on that,” she jokes, “it’s Bella.”

SUITS

Torres minces no words when she sums up the firm’s current situation. “It is f—ed up,” she says, laughing. “These next six episodes are what we were all afraid of and desperately trying to keep at bay.”

Original article at TVLine