Watch as Tatiana Maslany, who play a wide variety of characters on BBC America’s “Orphan Black,” tears up talking about her feelings for the LGBT community.
Tatiana Maslany, star of the critically-acclaimed and award-winning BBC America series “Orphan Black,” talks with GLAADÂ about the show’s portrayal of LGBT characters and her relationship with the LGBT community.
“Orphan Black,” which has won a Peabody Award, and several Critics’ Choice Television Awards, tells the story of Sarah Manning and her clone sisters, one of whom is a lesbian, and her adopted brother Felix, who is gay and played by Jordan Gavaris. In the show’s second season there was also a trans man Maslany played.
Now in its third season, Maslany plays Manning and all her sisters, a daunting task and does it so well the New York Times last month labeled her performance “TV’s strangest—and most sophisticated—meditation on femininity.”
“By structuring the story around the clones’ differences, ‘Orphan Black’ seems to suggest that the dull sameness enforced by existing female archetypes needs to die,” the Times wrote.
The show’s premise allows Maslany to portray a bewilderingly diverse set of stock characters — the punk-rock con artist, Sarah; the shrewish suburban housewife, Alison Hendrix; the geeky stoner, Cosima Niehaus; the Ukrainian psychopath, Helena; the icily aloof career woman, Rachel Duncan; the pill-popping cop, Elizabeth Childs; and many others — encompassing almost every trope women get to play in Hollywood and on TV. (Maslany’s legions of adoring fans call themselves #CloneClub on Twitter and contend that the credits on “Orphan Black†should say “Tatiana Maslany†nine or more times, once per clone.)
GLAAD’s Video and News Strategist Claire Pires recently sat down with Maslany, who explains that the show offers “good representation in terms of complex characters that aren’t defined just by their sexual orientation.” She applauds Gavaris, who plays Felix, for his “beautiful complex portrayal of his character.”
Talking about her lesbian character Cosima, Maslany says, “one of my favorite things that has ever been written on our show was when she said, ‘my sexuality is not the most interesting thing about me.'”Â
Maslany started to tear up when asked why she is an ally to the LGBT community.
Calling it “a no-brainer,” Maslany explained that a lot of her friends “have struggled with coming out, or with how they identify, and it’s just a no-brainer to me, it just makes no sense that there wouldn’t be support for the community, that it even has to be a separate community. I don’t understand why there’s a line drawn,” she says.
Fans should know there will be a season four.
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