Future Emmy and Golden Globe Winner Diane Guerrero on Playing a Character with 64 Personalities
Doom Patrol star Diane Guerrero on what it's like playing a character with 64 personalities https://t.co/S56iGQzA7B
- Entertainment Weekly (@EW) April 12, 2019
Doom Patrol is a very special series (LEGITIMATELY) that combines absurdity with a lot of pathos. Trauma/PTSD, depression, anxiety - all of these serious issues are central to the series and the main characters, a team of superpowered misfits just trying to make it through each day alive. In a lot of ways, they try to help each other heal and recover from their unique traumatic histories that make them who they are and gave them their superpowers. But UNLIKE Titans, the only other new live action content on DC Universe, there is A LOT of humor and comedy too - something Titans could desperately use in season 2, to be honest! It’s not super Dark with a capital D all the time.
Diane Guerrero was given perhaps the hardest role as Crazy Jane, a character with Dissociative Identity Disorder and PTSD who has 64 distinct personalities - some of which have superpowers, though some don’t have any powers at all. Jane is the current “primary” - the personality “in charge” for want of better words. In this interview, she talks about working with her acting coach to develop different physicality to help her better transform as she shifts into each personality. She talks to Entertainment Weekly about how she keeps track of each personality over the course of shooting:
“I have a notebook, and I have basically every personality there. Whenever one pops up in the script, I can reference my notes, and I reference music. I like to think I have a lot of sides to myself that I can easily access at any given moment, like if I feel threatened or if I want something to go a certain way.”
Diane also discussed her favorite personalities, Dr. Harrison and Baby.
“I like her [Dr. Harrison] power of persuasion and being able to talk to somebody about their own weaknesses and then have her use reverse psychology on them. I like that she’s calm and uses her words.”
And on the age regressed Baby Doll: “It’s interesting when people access their inner little girl or little boy. I remember doing tons of those exercises when I was in school, where you’re trying to dig into your vulnerability. There’s no mask for a child, so all those feelings are real. But also for Baby Doll, it’s scary because it’s a 30-year-old woman acting like a 7-year-old.”
In the latest Jane-centric episode, we go in The Underground - what it looks like inside Jane’s head, a train station with wells where some personalities go to die. We see more personalities - some of them portrayed by Diane Guerrero, some of them portrayed by different actors (perhaps the ones who look like her are more like facets of her own personality? And the ones who don’t aren’t like the primary at all? Although Penny Farthing seems like she’s really not that different from Jane in some ways, and she is portrayed by a different actress in her head).
Honestly, I’m just making this post b/c I have decided to stan and also need to discuss the last two eps (I just caught up)
via GIPHY
Source