Canadian actress savours sweet Revenge
Emily VanCamp talks about her character Emily Thorne.
Popular fall drama taps into audience’s disaffection with affluence and power
Every so often, and almost always by accident, a role intersects with the zeitgeist at exactly the right moment.
Call it alchemy, call it strange coincidence, call it what you will, but when Port Perry, Ont. actress Emily VanCamp landed the role of Emily Thorne, an upwardly mobile, hard-luck young woman bent on revenge in an updated retelling of the Alexandre Dumas classic, The Count of Monte Cristo, she had no idea that the series - and her character - would take on a life of its own.
The new TV series, Revenge, shares The Count of Monte Cristo’s themes of wrongful accusation, justice delayed, and revenge for a stolen childhood and innocence lost. It’s a story where a hardscrabble, blue-collar worker confronts corruption and affluence, where the rich behave badly - and get their comeuppance, in ways both lawful and beyond the law.
Revenge has tapped into the audience’s disaffection with affluence and power at a time when public protest against the financial centres of power is growing. Six weeks into the fall season, Revenge has surpassed expectations, and is now among the fall’s most-watched new network dramas. Revenge has defied early doubters by edging time-period competitor CSI among younger viewers in the U.S., and is now seen by an average 11 million viewers on ABC in the U.S., a number that, remarkably, puts Revenge on an even footing with The X Factor. (Revenge airs on Rogers-owned Citytv in Canada.)
As with Edmond Dantes, the hero of Dumas’s timeless classic, Thorne is consumed by the need for revenge and blind to its moral consequences.
The story is about a young woman who, when she was just nine years old, saw her father framed by affluent neighbours, whom he trusted, for a crime he didn’t commit. He died in prison; his daughter grew up in foster care, alone and resentful, consumed by guilt and driven by a need for eventual revenge.
The series opens 17 years later, with the troubled teen now a young woman, socially adept, upwardly mobile - and utterly focused on the task at hand.
She rents a beach house in the Hamptons, next door to Victoria Grayson, the wealthy matriarch and socialite she blames for her father’s death, and she puts her plan in motion. Victoria Grayson is played in the series by Madeleine Stowe; her tycoon husband, Conrad Grayson, is played by veteran Toronto stage and screen actor, Henry Czerny.
For VanCamp, who’s used to playing demure heroines in family dramas like Brothers & Sisters, Everwood and the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, Beyond the Blackboard, Revenge posed a unique challenge: Play the friendly, sophisticated “girl next door” whose charm and outward appearance of generosity mask a cold heart and a scheming, calculating mind.
“Focused,” VanCamp said, summing her character up in a single word.
Emily Thorne has educated herself in the discipline of revenge. She has learned how to subsume herself in other personalities and has learned how to move, chameleon-like, through different social settings, without drawing attention to herself. VanCamp has come to terms with her character’s moral choices, though they are not necessarily the choices she would make herself. She’s quick to defend her character’s emotional compass, though.
Emily Thorne is no sociopath, VanCamp insists, despite the way her calculated actions trigger murder and mayhem.
“What happened to her was so traumatic - having this happy childhood and then being torn away from her father, growing up in the foster-care system with this really rough teenage-hood - that I think who she is now is completely understandable,” VanCamp said. “Beyond her father, she didn’t really have anybody who truly cared about her, who loved her. She had that, and it was all taken away.”
The teenage Thorne grew up believing her father was guilty of the crime he was imprisoned for. She had to wrestle with that guilt, while growing up. Learning her father was innocent made her that much colder and more determined to get even, VanCamp says.
“This is not somebody who has family or friends. She’s protected herself, and she’s deliberately chosen not to make any real human connections. Her only true understanding of love is this relationship she had with her father, and her desire for revenge. That’s what keeps her on track. She believes, at this moment in her life, that it’s going to be quite easy and fulfilling.”
It’s anything but, of course. In its darker moments, Revenge recalls the ancient Greek myth of Medea, where Thorne deliberately hurts someone she knows is innocent, in order to further her plan.
“That’s where, for me, it’s about to get really interesting,” VanCamp said.
“That’s what makes her such an interesting person to play. I see it as her spending eight years building up this wall - eight years, just so she can do this. It’s as if she has nothing to lose.
“I see this revenge as a way for her to stay connected with her father. The moment she forgives is the moment that she has to let him go. And I don’t think she’s ready to do that yet. It’s too much for her.”
“We talk all the time about finding the right balance,” says VanCamp.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Canadian+actress+savours+sweet+Revenge/5640916/story.html#ixzz1cWXUFFAD
Popular fall drama taps into audience’s disaffection with affluence and power
Every so often, and almost always by accident, a role intersects with the zeitgeist at exactly the right moment.
Call it alchemy, call it strange coincidence, call it what you will, but when Port Perry, Ont. actress Emily VanCamp landed the role of Emily Thorne, an upwardly mobile, hard-luck young woman bent on revenge in an updated retelling of the Alexandre Dumas classic, The Count of Monte Cristo, she had no idea that the series - and her character - would take on a life of its own.
The new TV series, Revenge, shares The Count of Monte Cristo’s themes of wrongful accusation, justice delayed, and revenge for a stolen childhood and innocence lost. It’s a story where a hardscrabble, blue-collar worker confronts corruption and affluence, where the rich behave badly - and get their comeuppance, in ways both lawful and beyond the law.
Revenge has tapped into the audience’s disaffection with affluence and power at a time when public protest against the financial centres of power is growing. Six weeks into the fall season, Revenge has surpassed expectations, and is now among the fall’s most-watched new network dramas. Revenge has defied early doubters by edging time-period competitor CSI among younger viewers in the U.S., and is now seen by an average 11 million viewers on ABC in the U.S., a number that, remarkably, puts Revenge on an even footing with The X Factor. (Revenge airs on Rogers-owned Citytv in Canada.)
As with Edmond Dantes, the hero of Dumas’s timeless classic, Thorne is consumed by the need for revenge and blind to its moral consequences.
The story is about a young woman who, when she was just nine years old, saw her father framed by affluent neighbours, whom he trusted, for a crime he didn’t commit. He died in prison; his daughter grew up in foster care, alone and resentful, consumed by guilt and driven by a need for eventual revenge.
The series opens 17 years later, with the troubled teen now a young woman, socially adept, upwardly mobile - and utterly focused on the task at hand.
She rents a beach house in the Hamptons, next door to Victoria Grayson, the wealthy matriarch and socialite she blames for her father’s death, and she puts her plan in motion. Victoria Grayson is played in the series by Madeleine Stowe; her tycoon husband, Conrad Grayson, is played by veteran Toronto stage and screen actor, Henry Czerny.
For VanCamp, who’s used to playing demure heroines in family dramas like Brothers & Sisters, Everwood and the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, Beyond the Blackboard, Revenge posed a unique challenge: Play the friendly, sophisticated “girl next door” whose charm and outward appearance of generosity mask a cold heart and a scheming, calculating mind.
“Focused,” VanCamp said, summing her character up in a single word.
Emily Thorne has educated herself in the discipline of revenge. She has learned how to subsume herself in other personalities and has learned how to move, chameleon-like, through different social settings, without drawing attention to herself. VanCamp has come to terms with her character’s moral choices, though they are not necessarily the choices she would make herself. She’s quick to defend her character’s emotional compass, though.
Emily Thorne is no sociopath, VanCamp insists, despite the way her calculated actions trigger murder and mayhem.
“What happened to her was so traumatic - having this happy childhood and then being torn away from her father, growing up in the foster-care system with this really rough teenage-hood - that I think who she is now is completely understandable,” VanCamp said. “Beyond her father, she didn’t really have anybody who truly cared about her, who loved her. She had that, and it was all taken away.”
The teenage Thorne grew up believing her father was guilty of the crime he was imprisoned for. She had to wrestle with that guilt, while growing up. Learning her father was innocent made her that much colder and more determined to get even, VanCamp says.
“This is not somebody who has family or friends. She’s protected herself, and she’s deliberately chosen not to make any real human connections. Her only true understanding of love is this relationship she had with her father, and her desire for revenge. That’s what keeps her on track. She believes, at this moment in her life, that it’s going to be quite easy and fulfilling.”
It’s anything but, of course. In its darker moments, Revenge recalls the ancient Greek myth of Medea, where Thorne deliberately hurts someone she knows is innocent, in order to further her plan.
“That’s where, for me, it’s about to get really interesting,” VanCamp said.
“That’s what makes her such an interesting person to play. I see it as her spending eight years building up this wall - eight years, just so she can do this. It’s as if she has nothing to lose.
“I see this revenge as a way for her to stay connected with her father. The moment she forgives is the moment that she has to let him go. And I don’t think she’s ready to do that yet. It’s too much for her.”
“We talk all the time about finding the right balance,” says VanCamp.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Canadian+actress+savours+sweet+Revenge/5640916/story.html#ixzz1cWXUFFAD