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one clone, he would be dressed as the other,
and we would shoot it. The challenge was I
had to remember what he was doing once we
switched – we would shoot it, he would step
out, I’d put in an earbud, there’d be tennis balls
for eyelines, and I would act to the air and we
would flip and do the whole process again.
Thankfully the visual effects people would put
it all together and make it look real, and fool
even me!
03/ DidTatiana Maslany give you some
helpful advice?
The first thing I did when I heard they were
shooting the [season two finale] clone dance
party was go and watch, and marvel at how
she manoeuvred around it. Dealing with the
technical craziness was the biggest challenge
for me this season. So I watched her do it and
tried to incorporate that into my performance.
What was great for us was that now she had
someone who was experiencing what she was
experiencing – it really put me in a safe zone.
It’s exhilarating and the greatest challenge
in my acting career thus far; I doubt many
projects that come my way will challenge me in
the same way. It’s been a wild ride.
04/ How time consuming is it to shoot the
clone scenes?
The camera that they use for some of
those special shots has been affectionately
nicknamed “the time vampire”, so there were
some long days [laughs]. Even if we were on
point with getting our shots, what’s fantastic
about the show and the directors we get
is that they come up with creative ways to
shoot those scenes – the clone dance party
is probably the best example of that. I think it
took three days.
05/ What else can we expect to see in
SeasonThree?
What Clone Club can really look forward to
is Project Castor is really going to help Project
Leda sort of tighten up and pull together and
see what’s really important in the greater
scheme of things. For the last two seasons
we’ve been asking a lot of questions and
the world is getting bigger. Now, in the third
season, I think Clone Club can look forward to
getting answers to some of those questions.
More questions will be asked, and there’s
going to be some really great payoff in this
season. I think Clone Club is really going to
love where we’re taking them.
01/ Did you know you’d be coming back as
a clone prior to the end of season two, and
how many roles will you be playing in the
third season?
ARI MILLER: They kept their cards pretty
close to their chest – they let me know about
two weeks before we shot the big cliffhanger
reveal of season two. We know of four
[characters] right now that I can talk about.
We know that they are self-aware. They grew
up in a tight knit, secret military wing, trained
together and formed a cohesive, brutal wolf
pack to do the military’s worst bidding. Coming
into this season, we’re discovering that they
need something from Project Leda and they
have a lot more intel on Project Leda than Leda
knows about them. So things will become
more difficult now they’ve got hold of Helena.
02/ What’s the biggest challenge of playing
multiple characters from a performance
perspective?
It’s so complicated; it’s hard to explain,
even though I was there [laughs]. A layman’s
description would be, I have a fantastic clone
double named Nick Abraham – we would read
the scene that has two Castor clones in it,
then we would discuss what we wanted to
get across, and then we would talk with the
director and block it. So I would be dressed as
AUGUST 2015 JB Hi-Fi
Orphan Black star Ari Millen was literally beside himself in
the third season of the cult sci-fi series. He tells Scott Hocking
about the challenge of playing a cloned character, and what
we can expect in SeasonThree.
BACK IN BLACK
visit Q&A EXTRAS
Orphan Black: Season Three
is out now on DVD & Blu-ray