Echoes’ Showrunner Will Answer Your Finale Questions in Season 2

[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for Orphan Black: Echoes.]

The Big Picture

• To set itself apart from the original series, ‘Orphan Black: Echoes’ focuses on three printed clones at different ages.
• Kira Manning, Sarah’s now adult daughter who’s also a scientist, is dealing with the consequences of human printing.
• The AMC series explores the terrifying potential of printing human beings and the effects that could have on everyone around them.

The 10-episode AMC sci-fi thriller spin-off series Orphan Black: Echoes follows Lucy (Krysten Ritter), a woman with no memory of who she is when she crosses paths with Jules (Amanda Fix), a 16-year-old that she feels a deep connection with. When Lucy realizes Dr. Kira Manning (Keeley Hawes), the now adult scientist daughter of Sarah Manning (played by Tatiana Maslany in the original series), experimented with printing human beings, she unravels a world with very dangerous consequences.

Instead of multiple clones at the same time, like in the original series, this time around, three printed clones of the same individual at three different ages are trying to figure out what comes next. At the same time, the very rich Paul Darros (James Hiroyuki Liao) forms a secret plan of his own that he’s already set into motion.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, showrunner Anna Fishko talked about why she wanted to take on Orphan Black: Echoes, never wanting to repeat what had already been done previously, connecting the series with the character of Kira, why Ritter was the perfect Lucy, how scary it is that printing human beings doesn’t seem entirely impossible, the tank of pink goo, the moment with the three clones singing in the car, bringing Felix (Jordan Gavaris) back into the story, the possibility of a Maslany cameo, and having a mapped out plan for possible future seasons.

Collider: When this project became a possibility for you, what was your first reaction to that? Did you have any hesitation about doing it? What ultimately canceled out any hesitation you might have?

ANNA FISHKO: Initially, I was really interested in it, but I was aware that it sits a little bit on the edge of what I’ve typically done, just in terms of tone. So, it took me a little while to figure out whether or not I could bring something to the original show that felt fresh and interesting, but also was fun and had a likeness to it, in the way that the original did. That was my initial hesitation. I’d worked on lots of shows that are very self-serious, and I tend to be pretty serious as a writer. Trying to find opportunities for fun was a good challenge for me, ultimately. But once I thought about this idea of three women at three very different ages, interacting, living and breathing together in the same scene, I felt like that was something I hadn’t seen very much before on television, and I was excited by that idea.

‘Orphan Black: Echoes’ Showrunner Anna Fishko Never Wants To Clone the Original Series

Did you know, from the very beginning, that you didn’t want to go that route of having one actress playing a bunch of clones of herself?

FISHKO: Yes, that was very specifically the original mandate. The studio and the network felt like the original had done that, and done it very well, and they didn’t wanna go back and do the same thing over again. They wanted to do something different and still keep a lot of the same themes and have the show feel meaningfully connected to the original, but not just retread the same territory.

This show has the interesting challenge of reminding people of the original series while also being its own thing, and I think it does that very well. But I’m curious what led to Kira being such a major part of this story and what were you looking for in an actress who needed to embody this character that did this very questionable thing that some might say is horribly wrong to do?

FISHKO: With the new show, we wanted to create something that was easy for a new audience to start with. I didn’t want the audience to feel like they had to have watched all five seasons of the original show in order to enjoy the new one, but also, they needed to be meaningfully connected. Taking a character like Kira, who was a child in the original show, and imagining what she would be like 30 years later as a really fully fledged grown-up was a good opportunity because we could start with her character. People who had understood what she had lived through in the original show would be bringing that knowledge to the new show, but a new audience could start fresh with her in the same way that we’re not living the same lives that we were living when we were 11.

And I think Keeley Hawes has such a lovely warmth to her as an actress. We were so lucky to have her. She is incredibly talented and she brought this great combination of sharpness and warmth. There’s a softness to her that I think really worked for what we had imagined of Kira, the way Kira had been played in the original show by Skyler [Wexler]. That really worked out very well for us. I wanted to make sure that we really understood that choice and, in order to understand that choice, we had to really understand the relationship between Kira and Eleanor, where it came from, and how that love felt. We took a whole episode just to do that story, so that we could really be in that mental space with her when she experienced the loss.

What was it about Krysten Ritter that made her your lead in this series? How much of the character that you envisioned did you see in her and how much did she change or shape who the character ended up being once you cast her?

FISHKO: Lucy’s character was always to be this survivor, somebody who had the ability to survive by her own wits and had to make her own way in the world with no support, having no idea who she was or where she came from. And I think Krysten really has that toughness, as a human, and you feel it on screen. We also really wanted Lucy to have this emotional core. She built this life for herself with these meaningful emotional relationships that she developed with these new people, and Krysten also has this vulnerable emotional center that you feel, as well. That combination was a really good fit for Lucy’s character. And then, as the scripts developed, we started to write more and more to Krysten’s strengths. She does have this wit and sardonic smile and all these little expressions that worked really well for us as we started to embrace them.

While human clones feel a bit like a fantasy, 3D printed clones seem not that impossible because it’s something that feels more tangible. So many of us have technology in our lives that it seems easier to understand the possibility of how printing a human could happen. How do you feel about the basic concept of this series? Does it terrify you? Could you see how someone could end up down a path that would actually lead them to doing something like this?

FISHKO: Yeah. What’s scary is that when we talked to the expert on human printing at Wake Forest, who consulted with us, he really didn’t feel like we were that far off from something like this. They’re already printing lots of organs and little mini-hearts that beat. They’re way ahead of where we actually think they are already. So, I think there is something scary about the speed at which technology develops and our inability to reckon with the fallout and the consequences. We’re constantly doing things like cloning. You’re saving your dog’s DNA in case you lose your pet, so that you can try to replace your dog with a clone. The one thing we haven’t really been able to solve as humanity moves forward is this idea of life being finite. If we had a machine like this that could potentially solve that problem for us, I think there would certainly be a lot of people who would embrace it.

Working With the ‘Orphan Black: Echoes’ Tank of Pink Goo Was a Memorable Experience

We see glimpses into the process of what it was like for Lucy to wake up in the tank and the pink liquid. What was that like to shoot? How do you figure out what that should look like? How were you able to make that work?

FISHKO: It was really fun, actually. I have a lot of fond memories. It was very complicated to do the tank. It was very, very heavy. The pink goo is made out of glucose, which is also very, very heavy, so there were a lot of concerns about how to hold the tank together and to make sure it could hold both all that goo and a person. And then, the goo had to be heated to a certain temperature, and it takes a very long time to heat that much goo. There were really interesting meetings about what color the goo should be, and with six different shades of pink, which color pink it should be. The biggest challenge, which we weren’t expecting, is that you’re very buoyant in the goo, so it’s very hard to get an actor to sink down underneath the surface. We had to put weights on people to get them to go down underneath the surface of the goo, so that they could come out. I learned a lot about goo.

Because the series takes a different approach to clones, you don’t have one actress playing endless clones of herself. What was it like to cast Jules? Did you want to find someone that looked like Krysten Ritter?

FISHKO: We cast Krysten first, and then we did a global search for an actress who was the right age. We were actively looking for someone who looked reasonably like Krysten at that age. She was very kind and gave us photographs of herself at 15 and 16, so we had some points of comparison. We got very lucky in Amanda [Fix] because Amanda is a tremendously talented performer, but then also really does look quite a bit like Krysten at that age. And then, we used hair and makeup. There were all these interesting things, like Krysten’s eyebrows are lower than Amanda’s, so the makeup people would lower Amanda’s eyebrows a bit. And we gave them both a distinctive birthmark on their face to help with the trick of it. We had them spend time together whenever they could, so that they could talk about it and find little mannerisms and gestures that they could do, that would be the same.

There’s a classic moment toward the end of the season, with Lucy and Jules and Eleanor singing together in the car. How did that moment come about and how do you end up choosing the song for that moment?

FISHKO: That was fun. We wanted something that felt appropriate, that they would all know and like. It’s a little bit of a callback to the original show because it’s the same artist who performs in the original Orphan Black in a scene that’s set in a club. It’s a recording of a newer song by her, which is very cool. We just wanted to find these moments where we could bring the three of them together to have fun and show that connection and that bond. Everyone was really excited about that.

What was it like to bring Felix into the story and to have him in this show? What were the conversations like, in regard to finding who he thought the character might be now, as opposed to what you wanted him to do in the story?

FISHKO: It was really lovely to work with Jordan [Gavaris]. He’s such a sweet, talented human. He was so game and excited to come back and play this character that he played for five plus year, but as a much older man. It was hard because he had to sit for quite a bit of prosthetic makeup every day, and it’s hard to act through all that stuff on your face. Jordan is Canadian, but he had this really amazing accent that he had done for Felix’s character, which he brought back for us, along with all the physicality and the loveliness of that character. It was just really fun. Some of the most fun and joyful moments on set were having these actors come back to play these characters who they loved and played for so long. And we were on the same page about his character and where he had ended up. We loved the idea that he had become this very successful artist and followed his passion.

I read that there had been some discussion about possibly getting Tatiana Maslany for a cameo. How seriously did you try to make that happen? Do you hope it could still happen in the future?

FISHKO: Yeah, we did try to work it out. Our schedules didn’t line up. She was shooting at the same time we were shooting. But yes, we would love to make it work out in the future if it’s possible. We thought about that very seriously.

‘Orphan Black: Echoes’ Showrunner Anna Fishko Has a Plan Mapped Out for Future Seasons

By the end of the season, we have some answers about what’s going on, but it feels like it also really opens up a whole new world of questions and possibilities. Do you have a clear plan for what Season 2 would be? How many seasons have you thought about, as far as the major story points you want to explore?

FISHKO: We have several seasons mapped out a little bit. The end of Season 1 begs a handful of very specific follow-up stories that we would start with in Season 2. The fun thing is that there are lots of different directions we could take it. We’ve left ourselves a lot of different printouts out there in the world that could bring us lots of different, interesting stories, which was the point of ending that way.

Orphan Black: Echoes airs on AMC and is available to stream on AMC+.

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