The Magicians 3×03 finally explained why the Lamprey is after Alice. We’ve got the scoop about the episode in our exclusive interview with Olivia Taylor Dudley.
If you’re not caught up on The Magicians then look away now. This episode had major development for Alice: She finally confronted the Lamprey that’s been after her the past two episodes. What is it with episode three always being crazy on The Magicians?
We delved deeper into last night’s episode with Dudley, who gave us some insight into Alice after she accidentally kills her father and finally defeats the Lamprey.
In episode 3, Alice admits what she did to the Lamprey. Do you think her quest for knowledge is truly the sole purpose for those experiments, or was there something a little darker there?
I think that’s a complicated answer. I think it’s both. Alice has a thirst for knowledge that is always going to drive her motives in life. I think when she became a Niffin she became intoxicated by having pure magic in her hands. I think that got the best of her for sure, so it definitely was the darker side of Alice and not the Alice we know.
She did some pretty fucked up stuff as a Niffin that aren’t true to her character and she’s dealing with the fallout of that throughout this whole season. When you make a really awful, horrible choice and you have to live with it, what do you do? That’s the thing for her this season, so episode 3 was a big one for her.
Do you think it took a lot of courage for her to finally admit what she’s done? She’s been asked prior but at this point she almost snapped when she told them.
I think her plan was to never tell anybody what she did, and a part of her memory is slowly coming back. When she was brought back to life after being a Niffin she didn’t remember everything that happened, so it was a process. Remembering all the nasty things she did, I don’t think she was planning on telling anybody anytime soon. She felt ashamed about it obviously, and doesn’t know quite what it means for her. I think she’s forced to show her hand to everyone, tell them what happened thinking her honesty is going to get her to the next step, and she’s basically couldn’t keep it inside.
Alice is always kind of about to snap, even if she seems all put together she’s never quite grounded.
Does Alice blame herself for her father’s death, despite having to electrocute him to get the Lamprey out?
As Alice, she definitely blamed herself. None of that would have happened for her actions, and she feels really awful about it. Throughout the season we’ll see how she feels about it, but the hardest part about these characters is that things move so fast and so many things happen in the show that they don’t necessarily get a chance to grieve or cope in a healthy way. I don’t really think she lets it sink in for a long time, what happened to her dad.
This episode was such a fun one to shoot. Working with my parents are two of my favorite people to work with because they have such outrageous personalities and they’re so opposite of Alice. It’s amazing to play opposite of them.
Her mother is one of my favorites, because she’s so ridiculous.
I know! She’s so out there and what’s crazy is that she’s April O’Neil, she played the original April O’Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I was so stoked that this was Alice’s mom! I will never forget that on set.
What can you tease about Alice’s relationship with her mom, now that her dad is dead?
I don’t think that they’re going to be close anytime soon. I jokingly pitched to the showrunners after we shot this episode that Alice and her mom should move in to a studio for six months and figure shit out. But that’s definitely not something that’s going to happen anytime soon, haha.
Her mom is messed up, both of her parents really screwed her up. I don’t think they were making a big effort to fix that, and it’s going to be a long road before she and her mom reconcile. I wish we had a whole episode for each character to go through the ramifications in their family line, but we don’t. Luckily, Alice gets a lot of that but even so it’s not enough.
Do you think her actions as a Niffin is why she’s kind of separating herself from her friends, so they don’t see how much of a monster she was?
Alice kind of goes on her own journey this season, and I find this season everyone is really figuring out what their relationship is to magic and how they feel about it. Having it get taken away from him really makes them re-evaluate what it did in their lives.
Alice has a conflict with what magic was doing in their lives, and I think her distancing herself from everyone is self-preservation and to also sit back and collect information. That’s what she does, when she’s feeling scared or uneasy and out of her comfort zone she goes to books, knowledge and learning and that’s a big part of her journey this season. She’s not away from them the whole time, but on different path than the rest of them.
I worked really hard on mapping Alice before we started shooting season 1 because I love her character in the books, and there’s so much to explore that wasn’t in the books. I started her out in such a child-like state, and hadn’t grown into herself. That way she had some where to grow, and finally in season 3 she got to wear pants instead of dresses, and that’s for a reason in her brain. I think now she’s feeling extremely confident and powerful and her wardrobe started changing and is definitely finding more of a place of power, which is exciting to play.
Do you think she would be worried about Alice being power-hungry again if/when magic comes back?
Definitely. I think that’s a huge part of it, and not to say that magic is a metaphor for addiction, but it kind of is. And for her, she’s experienced the worst of it from the bunch because she’s come the farthest and been the most destructive. There’s definitely a part of her that doesn’t want magic to come back, and there’s part of her that does but she’s extremely scared of her own power with it again.
But she’s also extremely curious. I think all smart people, men and women, are very curious. She’s conflicted about whether she wants it back or not.
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