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Exclusive Interview: Lost Girl’s Rachel Skarsten

rachel skarsten lost girl interview

rachel skarsten lost girl interview

Get ready Lost Girl fans! The first batch of episodes for the Canadian series’ final season is set to debut this Friday on Showcase. The TV Watercooler was on set earlier this year and we got the chance to speak with Rachel Skarsten about why she’s excited to show off Tamsin’s bad side again this season.

I hear Tamsin’s still a bit dark this season.
Yes, I still am dark. There’s not light in sight with in Tamsin. However, I don’t think that to be dark necessarily means that you’re inherently evil. It’s just like the difference between being Liberal and Conservative! [Laughs] I won’t say which one’s dark.

rachel skarsten lost girl interview

So you’d say that she’s more of a grey character than a dark character.
Yeah. The one thing that I love about Tamsin is that I love playing a bad ass! It’s way more fun to play the bitch than to play the good character. Last season, Tamsin was so much of the innocent child and the “good” character. It was no fun! II get to go back to how she was in her first season, which was spicier. It’s going to be a blast.

In the third season, she had no attachments. She was bad and her intentions were bad. In the fourth season, she was very attached to Bo (Anna Silk), Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) and Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) – they were her family. She was good, innocent and even childlike. And now in season five, both versions are present and it’s kind of like a battle between the two.

With the rise of shows like Breaking Bad and House of Cards where you sort of have this grey character who is the anti-hero. There’s no longer this need to always have the lead who is this good guy or girl. You even said that you wanted to play the bitch.
Well, that’s because everyone has that aspect to their personality… Except for Anna Silk, she’s the nicest person ever! She literally does not have a bad side! But she’s an anomaly. Most of us, like Walter White… There’s a very dark side to us. But there’s also a good side and a side that people what to root for and that we want to root for within us. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Full House and those things, but there’s a raw and honesty to being able to portray both… I really love playing [a character like that] and people love watching her.

rachel skarsten lost girl interview

She’ll be dealing with a loss. How will Kenzi’s death affect her?
For Tamsin, there’s always been shades of a love greater than friendship between Dyson and Bo, but with Kenzi, it’s been very maternal. Speaking as someone who has a lost a father, that’s a really tough thing. That’s a lot and I also feel that Tamsin is the type of person and the type of character that never leaned the skills on how to deal with a loss like that. It’s going to be interesting to see how she’s going to process it and how that lose comes out. It’s going to be very different from how Bo or Dyson deal with it, they’re much more emotionally expressive.

When Lost Girl premiered, it received a lot of comparison to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Four years later, there are many genre shows that not are not only shot in Canada like Lost Girl, but also have strong female leads like Defiance, Continuum and Orphan Black. Do you think Buffy helped pave the way for these shows?
Absolutely. I think that in the past, there was always this idea that you had to have this male driven cast in order to get men to come see it. I have been shocked at how many male fans we have. In fact I think that there are more male fans that are actually active on Twitter and Instagram, attend Comic Con and send mail. I think that part of it is because there are beautiful women on this show, but I also feel like with Lost Girl, one of the things that I like about it is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It can be campy but it is smart. It has intelligence and it has heart. I believe that when you have those things, it can appeal to anyone – regardless of gender.

The fifth season of Lost Girl premieres Sunday, December 7 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Showcase. Click here to read our interview with Anna Silk (who plays Bo).

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