Orphan Black turns 10: "We almost killed Tatiana Maslany"

Airing from 2013 to 2017, Orphan Black opened discussions about bodily autonomy, LGBT representation and sisterhood, all the while with humour and shocking twists and turns.

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com about the show's beginnings, co-creator John Fawcett recalls: "Back in 2002, Graeme [Manson] and I were trying to figure out what we wanted to do together but it was going to be a feature film...

"I had this idea one day of a woman who arrived on a subway platform and saw what appeared to be her identical twin in the moment before that woman killed herself, before she stepped in front of a train. And I had this idea that she would steal the identity of that person and I didn’t really know what that was, I just thought it was a really cool opening scene and I pitched it to Graeme and Graeme was really excited about it.

"So we started talking about what that story could be. Could that story be that they’re long-lost twins? Is that something more supernatural? Is that a weird alternate reality where you’re seeing yourself in some other reality, or is it clones? There was a lot of discussion about what we were going to do but we both loved the idea of, whatever we were going to do, that’s how it was going to start."

Fawcett continues: "We worked on it for a long time as a feature film, creating the characters, creating the world. And we worked on it for a couple of years really trying to kind of solidify that story, but we always had a difficult time ending it and we just couldn't come up with a satisfactory ending for it as a feature film, and so it sat on the shelf for a while and around 2007 television kind of changed.

"And we saw some shows that to me, were what I got really excited about. Television started to become more serialised. So we saw shows like LOST, even like Battlestar Galactica, which had a continuing storyline, the first season of Prison Break, which always ended on these cliffhanger episodes and you wanted to just come back and see the next episode. And I got very excited about that. So then, we started talking about working Orphan Black as a TV series in 2007."

However, it wasn't exactly an easy process.

"Honestly, I didn't think we were ever gonna get it made. A lot of people were afraid of it. And it was in the early days of serialised television, so it was not like it is now… Orphan Black wouldn't be that original right now. If it were to start up now, I don't know that it would have had the same success. Back then, in 2013, there weren’t as many shows like this to see. But that was the same reason why people were afraid of it, because it was really different.

"And I think people were afraid of it because it was one actor playing all these roles. So if you failed, if you cast this wrong, you fail pretty epically. If you don't have the person that can play all five, six, seven, eight, nine, who knows how many parts you want to play, if you have a person that people don't like, or that maybe isn't as strong as you thought she was, this turns into a disaster, rather than into a success. So it was a lot of just close your eyes and jump off the cliff, roll the dice. And it was not easy getting it made, it was not easy."

Ultimately, it was BBC America that scooped up Orphan Black – and led to some of the prominent British influences, including Sarah and her relatives, Maria Doyle Kennedy's Siobhan Sadler, and Jordan Gavaris's Felix, becoming English characters.

There was still the issue of how exactly the clones would be presented though – and the answer came, very aptly, from a scientist named Cosima. "Graeme was like, all these girls are going to be completely different because they all grew up in different [environments]. His close friend was Cosima Herter, who is kind of a science nerd. And so he had been talking with Cosima and Cosima was like, 'Listen, if all these girls grew up in different places, they'd all be really different. They would all have their own very distinct personalities, they'll look identical, but they're not going to be identical.'

"And that was really an important part of what made Orphan Black so exciting was that all of these girls were going to be very varied. And we just got so charged up about the fact that one actor was going to play all these different parts, and that they would be so super distinct from each other."

Casting an actress to play what would become 13 roles on the same show was not easy but thankfully, Fawcett and Manson already had Maslany in mind after Fawcett worked with her on a previous film. Also in the running was Evelyne Brochu, although the pair ultimately decided to create the role of Delphine for her.

Fawcett recalls: "Tatiana had auditioned for us a bunch of times, and we thought she was great. And she came in with a bunch of like four or five other women one day and BBC, all the executives have showed up. And it was an important day, and it was a big day. Everyone from the network and from the production company, everyone was there – there's probably 20 people in the casting room.

"And that day, Tatiana rollerbladed to her audition, which blew my mind... and she just knocked it out of the park. And it was really clear that she was the best hands down. She was the best."

Casting Tatiana was only half the battle though. Wearily thinking back to actually shooting the show, Fawcett admits: "You can imagine how complicated that is. First of all, it's incredibly time consuming. You can't shoot a scene the way you would normally shoot a scene, it takes a lot longer to do it."

He adds: "I think Graeme and I were naive, Tatiana was naive, production was naive, no one really knew how much we could pull off. We were ambitious and wanted to do as much as as we could. In season 1, we literally almost, we all almost died, the days were super long and they were hard.

"It was really a passion project for everybody. And it became a passion project for the crew as well. But it was incredibly long hours, and it was a grind, that first season. And I think we almost killed Tatiana. Season 1 was a big learning experience, learning what we were capable of and what we could do and what we could pull off and where was too much? And where did we need to pull back? And so by season 2, we had a much better idea of how to balance our resources and where to put our energy so that we weren't killing everyone."

But when it worked, it worked incredibly well.

"We started to get really good, me, and Graeme, and Tatiana. And all of our technical people started to get really good at how we were doing it. And so we started to really hone our process. And as a result, we just kept wanting to challenge ourselves and make it more and more complicated. And by season 3, that's what kind of brought in the idea of our finale having a scene where we were going to have this giant dinner scene. As soon as you add in the extra complication of having one actor play for different parts, you can imagine it took us two days to shoot that whole dinner."

One thing Fawcett didn't expect was the outpouring of love from the LGBT community following the very matter-of-fact representation of gay relationships on screen, something that even in 2013 wasn't exactly commonplace.

"I don't think we set out to have a platform. I think we wanted it to be relevant, obviously, but I don't think we were trying to make any big statements. I think it was really just we wanted to make a great show. That was the goal to begin with, that the mystery was going to keep people coming back.

"But in the end, it was interesting as it grew and developed. We realised that we were saying a lot of things about a lot of different subjects and and the LGBT fanbase really embraced our gay characters. Honestly, we weren't even thinking about the LGBTQ community, all we were doing was like putting characters in our show that were representative of people that were in our own lives.

"And and those characters just became. As you do with any television series, you develop your characters and you develop them to the point where they become real breathing people and have their own lives and storylines and we were very fortunate that the LGBTQ community really embraced them. I don't think those were things that we set out to do. You know, it was a byproduct of just trying to create a great show with interesting characters and then all of the science elements. It gave us a platform to speak about relevant issues, there's no question.

"So I'm most proud of the fact that we made a show that that ran for five seasons, that people really loved, that was beloved critically, that Tatiana won an Emmy Award for her work. We all won a lot of awards along the way. It was an important five years in our lives. And it was certainly life changing for everyone involved, the cast, Graeme and I, for Tatiana, of course.

"I think 20 years from now, this show will still have an audience. I think people will still be discovering the show. I don't know that there's anything that will ever be like it. I think a lot of people will try, but I don't think anyone's going to touch this show. I think 20 years from now, this is still going to feel unique."

You can catch all seasons of Orphan Black on All4.

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