Season two of Lifetime’s Witches of East End has taken the story into darker territory, and that’s absolutely fine with Julia Ormond who plays Joanna, a free-spirited artist and mother who’s also a powerful witch. Sitting down to chat about the second season during the lull before the Witches of East End-themed Comic-Con party at the Tipsy Crow in downtown San Diego, Ormond offered her take on this season and the evolution of all the central characters.
Julia Ormond Witches of East End Interview
This has been an interesting second season.
Julia Ormond: “Good. Good, good, good, yeah, a number of changes.”
How far in advance did they tell you your character’s arc?
Julia Ormond: “They don’t tell us stuff in advance at all, really. I mean, there was a little bit more sharing of some story stuff for season two as it came up, but pretty much, we get the script as we go into the next episode. So we really kind of don’t know. But the tone of the show is shifting. It was something from the moment they went from pilot to season one, they’ve sort of gradually been shifting and shifting and shifting.
I think it’s supported by the story because season one to me seems very much about four women who are witches trying to survive in East End, and then as the portal opens up, it kind of shifts into different realms. We don’t see Asgard, but it then becomes about beings trying to survive in a certain realm being attacked by other beings from Asgard.”
Do you prefer not knowing what’s coming up?
Julia Ormond: “It’s a mix. There is something about it, there’s something really fabulously immediate about doing TV. You get your script, you get what you’re going to do, you’re very focused on that day. But I also love doing research and I love having time to think things through, so there are aspects of it for me that are really challenging, especially if there’s a kind of lag time that I’m still adjusting to in terms of what we’ve shot and you see bits come out and then edited.
You shoot something and you make choices, and then you make other choices that you hope that would support, and then you see it and you go, ‘Oh no. That didn’t appear at all.’ But it’s interesting. There’s something fun about the immediacy of it.”
What do you like about the second season’s evolution?
Julia Ormond: “I think season one was finding its own voice in all reality and I hope it’s okay to say that. I think what’s really interesting is the tone of the show and I think season one, the way that it’s shot in season two allows us much more freedom as actors because there’s a movement and energy actually in the camera movement instead of it being slightly more still, or much more still.
Alan Arkush came on board and brought a lot of visuals that are organic to the story. He wanted to make it darker and he said, ‘You’ve got to have the visual matching the story much more.’ He brought in elements that he felt deliberately made it creepy. I think he’s done that very, very successfully. So they’re making a lot of visual choices that are different.
And then I think there’s something about the level of wit and warmth in it that I think is just in shift mode. It’s shifting in terms of I hope that it never loses it because I think it’s actually part of the genre. To me, however seriously we take it, it has to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. It has to have a sort of Gremlins aspects, sort of ghoulish. You have to have those moments of looking at it as the audience and going, ‘Really?’ but be totally in it as character and that to me is the escapism of it. There’s got to be that kind of warmth in it, otherwise, it goes off the deep end into something else.”
That’s the secret ingredient on the show.
Julia Ormond: “Very much for us too. We’re constantly being reined in in terms of, ‘But can’t we?’ ‘Nooo.’ ‘You’ve got to…’ ‘No, you’re not allowed to.’ ‘But it would be really funny if we…’ ‘Nooo.'”
Can you talk about your character’s relationship with her son Frederick?
Julia Ormond: “For me, it’s been one of those things. It goes back to the question that you asked in terms of what you do, what you act and then what’s edited out and what comes out certainly have been different things for me. Part of that is accepting that in television, you have buildup in season one of something where somebody’s been rejected, somebody’s been left behind, this really painful thing. And then all of a sudden, the uber witch is just, ‘Oh, my son? Come on, then.’ And it’s like, ‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are they supposed to be…?’
I think for me what it is is that for Joanna, she’s had so much loss of her children that something happens when Frederick comes back that I think she feels she has a second chance with somebody in one long continuous life. Nina Lederman is the head of Lifetime and it’s very funny. When she talked about Joanna, she described her as a witch in recovery. For me, Joanna is trying to play straight and she’s ready to forgive, so she’s very forgiving towards Frederick. I don’t believe that she is completely convinced. I think there’s something about her power that says he can stay near and if it goes wrong, we’ll deal with that.”
