Entertainment

6 Badass Facts About 'Orphan Black's Mrs. S

by Alicia Lutes

Orphan Black Orphan Black OMG Orphan Blaaaaaaaaaack! Could we gush any more about this brilliant, brilliant show the rest of you NEED to be watching like, yesterday? (Don't answer that.) At once a study on science, mystery, thrilling action, and also the politics of female autonomy, there's plenty — plenty! — to like about it. We're sure there's a limitation on how much overly enthusiastic, hyperbolic love we can spill before our editor cuts us off — or even mayhaps sends us to the looney bin — but we just cannot get enough of the BBC America series starring Tatiana Maslany. Especially with Season 2 just barely a month away from premiering.

Neither can the folks at Entertainment Weekly, it seems! In conjunction with their Clone Club-centric cover this month, the magazine also sent a writer to set to chat with the actors involved with season two. Perhaps no other character is more mired in mystery than that of foster mother, Mrs. S (or Siobahn). Played masterfully by Maria Doyle Kennedy, the punk rocker-turned-maybe-Project LEDA-conspirator is full of intrigue and uncertainty. Luckily, the folks over at EW managed to get a few interesting details about Mrs. S and her real-life counterpart that have us all the more excited for her character's development in the upcoming season. Such as...

  • Mrs. S is modeled after a fellow badass lady

"Graeme [Manson] told me that and one of his inspirations for Mrs. S was Patti Smith, so that sealed the deal for me. I was like, 'Okay, I'm in!'"

  • She's got good motivations

"She was always on the side of the underdog or she was certainly fighting the good fight."

  • She really does love Kira

"I think [Kira's safety is] constantly her main motive, to keep her away so that she doesn’t become tainted from everything that’s going on."

  • Maria Doyle Kennedy's pretty wary of human cloning.

"There’s always been trying at some stage to design people. And it will always be presented initially as a positive thing, as a way to weed out diseases. Of course you know it ultimately will be used in a bad way too, to create slaves or servants."

  • ...And she doesn't buy into the hype that pro-clone types offer

"Maybe it depends on what you think about the human race, but I think it depends more on the example of what you've seen already."

  • But she is just as obsessed with Tatiana Maslany as the rest of us

"I absolutely adore her, she's fantastic. She’s just jaw-droppingly good. She's absolutely brilliant."

Orphan Black returns Saturday, April 19th on BBC America.

Image: BBC America