Last year, a cable series premiered on a channel previously best known for airing slightly tweaked genre shows and quickly distinguished itself for both its high production values and its mesmerizing performances. No, not USA’s “Mr. Robot.” It’s Syfy’s “12 Monkeys,” which will see its second season premiere April 18.
Yes, the television adaptation of the 1995 film about time travelers attempting to circumvent a worldwide plague is possibly the best show you’re not watching, in part because it’s cerebral enough to attract a dedicated cult following but also because leads Amanda Schull, Aaron Stanford, and, particularly, Emily Hampshire, in the Brad Pitt role, are so eminently watchable. So good are both Schull and Hampshire—both of them turning upside down the tropes of women in sci-fi and action series—that it’s a shock when both actors reveal the tangled path they traveled to being cast.
“I went in numerous times [for Dr. Cassandra Railly],” Schull says on the Toronto set of the series. “Like, I had wardrobe changes. Hair changes. ‘Do you like me more like this?’ I loved the role and I wanted to do everything I could to convince them they had the right person. So it was an intense process. And at the end I had a chemistry read with Aaron.”
That chemistry read, during which she and Stanford were told to improvise around the basic structure of a scene in the pilot in which Stanford’s time-traveling Cole kidnaps Cassandra, is what ultimately landed Schull the part—despite having to improvise with someone she had only just met.
As for Hampshire, she was originally a guest star in a handful of episodes as the institutionalized Jennifer Goines. But she proved so remarkable that she was quickly made recurring in Season 1 and added as a full-time cast member for Season 2. She’s as kinetic as her character, but far more enthusiastic (and a far cry from her martini-dry character on Pop’s “Schitt’s Creek”).
The entire cast, in fact, seems thrilled at the chance to revisit their characters, particularly given the juicy scenes that creators and showrunners Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett have provided them.
“The writers have been really cool about [working with the actors],” Stanford says. “They always want to hear what we have to say, if there are any little adjustments we want to make. It’s a very collaborative environment. And the thing about TV in general is that as the writers get to know you, your strengths and weaknesses, they start to cater to that. It’s a symbiotic thing that sort of happens naturally.”
Part of that shift came when the writers saw Schull’s affinity for the darker aspects of Cassandra, writing much of Season 2 to those strengths. “I spent the entire season in what we consider the present,” she says. “So it was fun to finally enter the apocalyptic world. We get these crazy, exciting storylines with people we haven’t yet had an opportunity to work with.”
One of those is Hampshire, whose Jennifer will have a few interactions with Cassandra this season. And both actors couldn’t be more thrilled; in conversation, they’re both obvious fans of the other. In fact, Schull had to give Hampshire a pep talk before a particularly scary scene in Season 1.
“Amanda noticed I was freaking out,” Hampshire recalls, “and she told me that her mom used to say to her, ‘You’re Amanda Schull! You can do anything!’ So before I went out I’d say to myself, ‘You are Amanda Schull! You can do anything.’ And I just went out feeling like, I’m Amanda Schull. And that served me well!”
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