Tonight, Syfy is launching a multi-media venture with “Defiance.” The series stars Grant Bowler as Nolan, an outlaw who settles in the town of Defiance along with his adopted alien daughter, Irisa as portrayed by Stephanie Leonidas. Concurrently, there is also a “Defiance” video game on all major platforms that allows players to encounter characters from the show.
At the Television Critics Association press tour, we met with Leonidas, who gives a striking performance on the show. Leonidas’ character Irisa is an Irathient whose unique appearance includes a substantial brow, altered nose and red hair. Irisa doesn’t get along with many in the “Defiance” pilot, which could be because she’s an alien or just because she’s a loner. But Leonidas was lovely to speak with in person.
CraveOnline: Does Irisa have a futuristic form of Aspergers?
Stephanie Leonidas: In a way, yes. I could see that. I’ve never been asked that question, so that’s quite possible in some ways. She’s very quiet and slowly comes out of her shell through the series, but she’s also in a place she doesn’t recognize and she’s growing up around people that she doesn’t feel comfortable around. That’s also part of the fact that she’s a different species to Nolan who’s this human who she’s traveling with. Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I guess to some degree, maybe.
Of course I’m basing that on only one episode’s worth of behavior that I’ve seen.
Yeah, a lot of her behavior remains. Irisa will never be a chatty alien girl. She’s always going to be somebody that is very internal, but she knows how to speak her mind.
How do you fathom that, playing a different race? You must get to transform into a lot of different things as an actor, but a different species?
Pretty extraordinary. As hard as prosthetics sometimes can be and as early as my calls are in the morning, I wouldn’t feel like I was Irisa until every part of that was complete. So yeah, you really do transform.
Did you ever have acting exercises in classes, like we always hear things like “be a tree?”
Not so much acting classes being a tree, but I think I played a tree in one of my early school plays when I was like six or seven and I think I always got lumbered with the tree in the back. I guess maybe that helped in some way.
Is playing an alien race the furthest out you’ve ever gone?
Yeah, I’ve never had prosthetic or anything like that before, so it was a lot of new stuff to deal with. Just also learning how to move my face in a different way.
How so? What do you have to do differently to make the makeup show what you’re expressing?
Well, first the contact lenses are so big and cover so much of my eye that I have no peripheral vision. I have pinpoint vision in them, so I had to learn to be Irisa without being able to see very well. But actually, it kind of helped in the end. I didn’t feel right until the contact lenses were in because I wasn’t looking at things the way Irisa would. And also, the prosthetic piece on my forehead wouldn’t move so easily, so it was a new experience in kind of expressing myself maybe slightly differently to the way I move.
How did you feel when you looked in the mirror and saw yourself with the red hair and the forehead and nose?
I loved it and it made me want red hair every day, because I felt so boring when I took it all off and I looked in the mirror and I just thought actually, Irisa’s much more interesting.
How does this experience with a sci-fi show on The Syfy Channel compare to your experience on MirrorMask?
I guess the green screen. MirrorMask gave me a huge learning experience with green screen and I’m so thankful for that because as soon as we were planted on green screen here, it was all systems go. I felt like I knew what to expect to some degree, so yeah, that really helped.
Did you ever have a goal of being an action heroine when you got into acting?
No, I never really thought about what characters I play. I always just wanted different characters. I always wanted to play something very different to myself and I just love playing a range of characters, so Irisa is really out there and quite amazing to play something like this.
What are we going to learn about Irisa’s race?
Quite a lot really. You learn about each alien race quite quickly. As the episodes progress you realize how differently they all interact with each other. Their rules and regulations are so different and Irisa’s very feral. The Irathients are kind of creatures of the land. They’re very animal-like. Irisa is very black and white in her views. Her emotions go from zero to 11 in seconds. I guess that’s a little bit like me actually.
Are there others like her?
There are, yes, and some other Irathients will be introduced as the series goes on.
When another actor came in to play an Irathient, what sort of conversation did you have with him about what you’d established?
Well, we could talk. We could talk together because we have this Irathient language so we bonded through that. And also, because we don’t see very well through the contact lenses, we both sit quietly together, quite a lot of us would. It’s funny how even on set, all the alien races kind of end up sticking together in a way, and through the scenes, having to learn to live with each other and it kind of represents life now as human beings, the troubles that a lot of humans go through and learning to live with each other and fine peace. So I think it’s an interesting story.
It’s a language you can actually speak together and have conversations?
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, not full on conversations. Hopefully next season, but yeah, we used to snicker because we’d have a few words here and there that no one would know about.
