Hypable spoke to Melissa Ponzio from Teen Wolf about the second half of season 3, what romantic interests there could be for her character, and her relationship with her son, Scott.
Ponzio plays Melissa McCall on MTV’s hit supernatural drama Teen Wolf. She’s the lead character’s mother and has been a fan-favorite from the beginning. Although her role was initially meant to be quite small, she was heavily featured in season 3, much to the audience’s delight.
What most fans want to know about the second half of Teen Wolf season 3, dubbed season 3B, is what kind of relationship she will have with her ex-husband and Scott’s father, who showed up near the end of the first half of season 3.
“That ex-husband is turning up like a bad penny,” Ponzio says. “He is coming around and he is stirring all kinds of craziness.”
Fans aren’t too happy about the return of Scott’s father, given the strained relationship he obviously has with both Melissa and Scott. However, it doesn’t look like he’s going away anytime soon — a fact that some of the other characters won’t be too happy about either. “So the ex-husband is back in Beacon Hills and he is stirring up some controversy, not only with me and not only with his son, but with the sheriff as well,” she says. “We’re in the middle of some nitty-gritty right now, and they’re really writing some fantastic stuff for the parents and the controversy that’s happening.”
While Ponzio has to stay mum on some of the more important aspects of the show, so as to not give too much away, there’s still a lot she doesn’t know herself. During seasons 1 and 2, she only read the script that was pertinent to her character so she would only know what her character would know in that moment.
However, because Melissa now knows her son is a werewolf, Ponzio does read the entire script, even though that doesn’t always give her all the answers. “I still don’t know why he left,” she continues, speaking about the ex-husband. “I haven’t asked Jeff, and a couple people have an idea of why he left, and I want to keep it a surprise. I want it to be, as we slowly peel back the onion, for me to realize as Melissa the person and also the character Melissa what happened. I want to honor that. I don’t want to sit on it. I want it to be fresh, and if it’s angry or if it’s sad or if it’s still raw, I really want to feel that in the moment.”
While she can’t tease us about the family’s past too much, she did have some things to say about their current state of being: “The family dynamic is in full-effect. For however long and why-ever he’s back, that family dynamic…we’re in the middle of getting to the root of frustration for Scott not having his dad for a long time and for me not having him as a partner and why. And that’s just really evolving the more that we shoot.”
“When Tyler [Posey], in character as Scott, calls him Dad, it really bothers me,” she says. “Is it that I’ve worked so hard to be Mom, and he’s been gone for so long and he immediately is Dad? But what else do you call him?”
It sounds like there is definitely a lot of pain there, and while Ponzio doesn’t know the complete truth, she does have her own theory about what occurred. “Something happened when Scott was really young. I want to say right around five or seven years old. And maybe it had been building in the relationship, but the final break happened really fast and it was really quick, and Dad left almost immediately, and in my opinion we haven’t seen him until now,” she explains. “Maybe we’ve had contact with him, but we haven’t seen him until now. And for me that’s why it’s so heavy.”
For fans of Melissa, and those who want to see more of Scott and Melissa’s relationship, you’ll be excited to hear that Ponzio says, “In 3B we’re in our house a lot. There are new sets for the house, and so just looking around, I see that our home has been a home for a really long time.”
As anyone who watched the first half of season 3 of Teen Wolf can tell you, a lot of important events came into play in the final few episodes. When asked if the surrogate sacrifices would have been discussed between the children and their parents, she says, “I think it will be addressed on the show. When you go through a traumatic experience, there is that regurgitation of it to the others around you.” She continues, “I think everybody wants to know the feelings and the thoughts of what was happening during that time, so I believe we have all downloaded each other on what happened in our perspective during that time.”
Another result of the events of season 3 so far has been the fact that Isaac is now living in Scott and Melissa’s house. Although Melissa is obviously aware of this, it hasn’t been directly addressed yet on the show. When asked how Melissa feels about it, Ponzio responds, “Again, on personal experience, it’s like when your child says, ‘Hey, Isaac needs to come and stay with us for a while.’ It’s like, ‘Absolutely.’ You know, because it’s that thing of…you want to be able to help your child’s friend and you also want to help your child because I believe that if they’re coming to you to ask, it’s like they have a need for it as well. Because otherwise they’d be like, ‘Dude, we live in a really small house, I don’t know if Mom’s going to be up for it.’ Like, they would cut it off. But the fact that Scott is entertaining it says something to me as a parent that maybe this should happen. And so far it’s gone on swimmingly! They do their chores.”
But what about the growing relationship between Isaac and Allison, especially given that Isaac is one of Scott’s closest friends and Allison is his ex-girlfriend? “I try to stay out of it unless he brings it to me,” Ponzio says of her character. “It’s that fine line of wanting your child be independent and making his own decisions, and then maybe stepping in to give him a little bit of advice when you think that he may need it. And then stepping right back out.”
So, what can we expect out of the character of Melissa in the back half of season 3? “I think we’re going to see more of [Melissa being a nurse] in 3B. A lot of action happens in the hospital.”
But what everyone might want to know is if Melissa will be hooking up with Sheriff Stilinski. We’ve seen a lot of chemistry between the two characters, but is Ponzio rooting for the pairing as well, or is she looking at her ex-husband or maybe even Peter as a possibly romantic interest? “That to me is really, really interesting. Because, again, my own thoughts about the show: You see all these different dynamics that are happening, and you think that someone is going to be chosen, but what if it’s someone you haven’t even seen yet? Or what if it’s someone that is completely 180 degrees from any of those choices?”
That would definitely dash a lot of people’s hopes! But Ponzio thinks it may just be the best solution, stating, “Some random person almost makes more than any of them.” However, she will admit that there is something there between her character and someone else: “There’s flirty games between Mama and the sheriff, so I think there’s been a little something-something even prior to this, even it’s just a little bit more friendly, that hasn’t been shown to the audience. Because otherwise how would I know it would be okay? He’s still wearing his wedding ring. That’s a huge tell for me if I’m a single woman and your wife has passed and you’re still wearing the wedding ring. Then you’re sending a huge signal to me, no matter what I’m hearing you say.”
It’s an excellent point, and we’ll have to hang on to see what will transpire for Melissa in the back half of Teen Wolf season 3.
In the meantime, you can catch the entire interview in audio form on Not Another Teen Wolf Podcast, where we talk about Ponzio’s time at the Wolf’s Bane convention in London, her work on The Walking Dead, and whether or not she would take The Bite if it were offered to her.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.