STACK 132 October Issue

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with GEMMA CHAN.
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Anita is an enigma and a challenge:
there are many layers to her which you
get to see more of as the series goes on.
The challenge was to be able to plot the
arc she’s going to go on, revealing little by
little about what she is and why.
How do the family initially respond to
the arrival of Anita?
I would say that each member of the
family starts off with a certain perception
of Anita, which changes for each of
them in a different way and for different
reasons. Certain relationships develop in
an unexpected way.
When you first meet Anita you aren’t
sure whether she is a threat to the family
or what her deal is and what’s going on.
But things aren’t as they seem and they
might not be what you first suspect either.
Laura in particular feels initially quite
threatened by her presence. She never
wanted one of these things in her house
and she’d always said that she wouldn’t
have one and she comes back to find
that her husband has made an impulse
purchase and bought Anita and just
brought it home without her permission.
I think she does feel like her place
is being usurped in the family with
Anita being completely brilliant at every
domestic task; cooking cleaning, looking
after Sophie, so there’s a lot of mistrust
and fear.
So tell me a bit about Humans, where
do we join the characters?
GEMMA CHAN: Humans is set in
a parallel present, in a very familiar
world in London and you first meet the
Hawkins family when they purchase a
synth called Anita. Synths are a highly
developed robotic servant which are very
human in appearance; they are the latest
aspirational product or gadget for a family
to have.
Parallel present? Is that one the
viewers will recognize?
Yes, the world of Humans, it could be
today, it could be tomorrow. To the viewer
it should be very recognizable. In that
sense Humans isn’t traditional sci –fi, it is
set in a very grounded universe.
Who is Anita and what attracted you to
her as a role?
I was attracted to playing Anita because
I like a challenge. She is a very complex
multi layered character but also obviously,
a character that isn’t human. I read the
scripts and loved them. Reading the
first three, I just wanted to read more. I
hadn’t read anything like it and I’d never
seen the subject of AI approached in this
way before. So that for me was really
refreshing and it raised a lot of questions
and lots of interesting themes.
HUMANSGemma Chan takes on the role of Anita in Humans
- the futuristic tale of a humanity aided by synthetic
companions. We caught up with the actress to chat
about one of her most prominent embodiments to date.