Lindsey Morgan is coming to Australia as a part of the Supanova Comic-Con and Gaming Expo in April to Melbourne and the Gold Coast so we were very lucky to have a chat with her.
As one of the most popular up and coming Latina actresses in the business, Morgan has built an extensive resume between her work in television and film. She currently stars as series regular, Raven Reyes, on The CW’s popular scifi drama The 100.
Lindsey’s other television work has included appearances on How I Met Your Mother, Happy Endings, Supah Ninjas, and A Think Line. She is still widely recognized for her work as a series regular in the ABC soap General Hospital, which garnered her a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series.
Here’s a clip of Lindsey as Raven in Season 4 of The 100.
In addition to her most television roles, Lindsey starred as a leading role in the Pixl television movie Casa Vita. She most recently wrapped production in the Edward Burns coming-of-age film, Summertime.
To find out more about the upcoming Supanova Comic-Con & Gaming Tour click here to take you to the Supanova website.
In the meantime, please enjoy this interview Lindsey had with Accessreel‘s Darran. Hit the play button to enjoy the full audio or read the transcript below. Or do both.
I appreciate you taking the time to have a chat with me today.
Of course, kind of exciting you’re all across the other side of the world.
Where are you at the moment?
I’m sitting in the parking lot of Whole Foods in Los Angeles, California. It is 6 o’clock, 6pm in the evening. I just grabbed some groceries for dinner.
Oh, that’s nice of you sitting in the car park having a chat with me.
Oh yes, very glamorous.
You’re coming out to Australia soon and joining the Supanova Tour to Melbourne and the Gold Coast are you excited about coming down?
I am so excited Australia has just been like my number one place I’ve wanted to travel to in the last three years, and I finally get to, so I can’t wait. I feel like I’m going to go and love it so much that I’m going to want to move there, so maybe that’s why I haven’t gone (laughs) because I know I’ll fall in love.
Well some of your cast-mates are Australian, have you asked them what you need to go see?
Well, we’re staying at Bob Morley’s home… Bob’s like ‘You guys need to stay with me and meet my family and I’ll take you around’. So, I’m just, letting them be the tour guides.
You’re currently playing Raven on the series The 100, how is that show different to other shows you have worked on such as General Hospital?
The 100, because we’re in the future and we’re in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world and there’s something about the sci-fi genre that just kind of leaves it open for anything to happen and you have problems or conflicts that just don’t occur in other shows. Like an AI that’s possessing your mind just doesn’t happen on soap operas. I love that there’s just this endless amount of creativity where the shows can go and the situations it puts us in because I’ve never done half the stuff I’ve done on the show in reality, so I love that I get to use my imagination so much.
I’m not up to date with The 100, I’m at the end of Season 2. So, I apologise for that, but I’ve asked some of my local nerd herder friends who are all up with the show and they’ve asked me to ask a few questions. What’s your favorite scene involving yourself in the series?
My favorite scene involving myself. That’s so hard, you know what I really love—you’ll have no idea what I’m talking about—but I really love the alley exorcist scene. Just because you got to see Raven play three different people in one go, which is amazing. And then I really liked the water tank scene in Season 4—the real fans know what I’m talking about, Darran. I love that because I scuba dive and I love water. I love being able to use a skill that I’d never think I’d use on camera. I got to do all of that, except they wouldn’t let me throw myself over the tank. They had a stunt girl do that. But everything else was me. So that was really exciting and a really challenging scene that I loved.
When you have a scene coming up with stunts, do you ever go to the producers and say, “Hey is it okay if I do this one”
Yeah. I mean if anything, they really do prefer when we do it. Most of the time, I’ll have a stunt girl with me ready to go. Looking like me. But if I’m game to do it and I can do it and I’m doing it safely, they don’t use her. She just kind of gets to come hang out and she makes sure I’m good. But overall, they prefer if it’s us, because it looks so much better. Most of the time, most of us are like, “Can we do it?” But if it’s too dangerous they won’t let us. They won’t even let us try.
Your character had a leg brace. How difficult was that to act in, or did it help lift the character?
It’s so confining. And I’m a very active person and so having the leg brace use to drive me absolutely insane on set. Just because I’d want to get it off, because it was annoying or it was heavy. This was the earlier models. We’ve made it more and more flexible as the seasons have gone on. And because I’m wearing it and I was walking with a limp, I created an imbalance in my body. My left side is weaker than my right side, because I put all my weight on my right as I was using it. I didn’t even plan on it, but it’s given me insight of what people with disabilities must go through, feeling confined and feeling frustrated and imprisoned and crazy and then weak. You feel a little helpless and mad that your body can’t do what it used to do. I try to bring that to my performance and I think it brought it to another level. And now, as much as I have a very love hate relationship with the brace because it’s annoying, I don’t think Raven would be Raven without it. It’s such a part of her and her person.
I really love that I got to portray that. I don’t think a lot of young actors get to dive into a character that becomes paralyzed, lives on after and works with it for the rest of their life. Usually a character gets hurt and they’re in a hospital bed or in a wheelchair for two or three episodes and then they’re better. Raven’s never gotten better. I think that’s pretty cool.
Did you prefer the early seasons where The 100 kids were rediscovering Earth or the latter series where there were more allegiances, rivalries and betrayals?
I love the first season because it just felt like we were camping and that was really cool. We weren’t trying to solve world issues, we were just trying to learn how to survive in a new world. You kind of felt a little bit like colonists, like Christopher Columbus, discovering a new land and getting to experience that. When I came down, I come out of the space pod and it was raining and it was drizzling, and they didn’t expect that. And so the writer Bruce Miller wrote that I step out and I feel the rain and I look up and say, “Is that rain?” And I love to have this moment of just immersing myself in it and just being amazed by the world.
In this season coming up there’s so much character interaction with so much history now. There is so much betrayal and heavy history with every single person. It’s just cool to say something to someone and it’s so loaded and filled with years of pain and conflict and drama. I love a lot of lot of other character’s scenes. That means so much and they’re so different.
When it comes to Raven’s character growth in terms of other characters on the show, who is your favorite in Season 4?
Murphy. They have a cool dynamic happening in Season 4. There’s one scene, in particular, I really loved with Richard and I think we did two takes. It was just a perfect scene, perfectly written. And Richard was amazing and everything was just awesome the moment we started rolling. So, I really like that one.
What can people expect in Season Five?
Season 5 is a lot of character development, a lot of people characters we’ve come to grow and love have changed because we’re doing a six-year time job. I say just be prepared for a new era of The 100 which is cool.
Wow, six years, that’s huge.
Six years, a lot happens.
Lindsey, thanks, very much for chatting to me. I really appreciate it.