Every single Wynonna Earp cast member lavished praise on the series’ star, Melanie Scrofano, during our roundtable interviews at the San Diego Comic Con. Scrofano’s pregnancy and the pregnancy of her character were kept a secret until the big reveal during the show’s second season. Season two of the popular Syfy series has been one big surprise/plot twist after another, and the series finale promises to be epic. In our spoiler free interview, Melanie Scrofano talks about the series’ second season and what Wynonna’s going through with this life-altering addition to the Earp family.
How difficult has this season of Wynonna Earp been on you?
Melanie Scrofano: “The physical stuff has been really easy. It was easy because I worked hard to make it easy. You know, I tried to eat well and stay in shape – if only because I knew I had to give birth and push a human out. So I’m like, ‘You don’t stop working out before the marathon.’ You know what I mean? So that stuff was easy.
It was really hard emotionally. I was always worried about…in season one I was like really happy all the time. It seems like on set I was always joking around, and I felt like I was letting people down if I didn’t do that in season two because I was tired and I wasn’t always in the mood to joke around. So, it was really hard. I felt like I was letting people down if I wasn’t on all the time. I had to get to a place where I was like, ‘Oh well, if people don’t think I’m as fun, then I guess that’s it.’ That was the hardest part for me.”
How hard was it to keep the pregnancy a secret?
Melanie Scrofano: “My family is like they don’t care about television. They’re not on Twitter. Everybody who stepped onto set had to sign an NDA. Nobody could take pictures. In a way, I sort of liked it because then we had to sort of recreate a bubble. You do really good work in bubbles because you’re not thinking about what are the fans going to say. Like, the work should be pure. In season one, I think the reason people responded to it was because the work was pure. We were just coming at it fresh. So, it was actually helpful to recreate a bit of that cocoon that we had so that we could just be a family and really just focus, and then explode back onto Twitter afterwards.”
You were off Twitter for six months.
Melanie Scrofano: “I bet people will think it was because I was pregnant but I would have done that anyway. If I have to stop doing Wynonna, I don’t want it to be because we got cancelled because my work started getting shitty. I just wanted to just do my best to live in that world and I would do it again. I wouldn’t do it for every show that I’m on, but this one’s so special to me I just want to protect it.”
How is your baby?
Melanie Scrofano: “So good. Not here. I couldn’t get a passport because apparently three month olds need passports.”
What kind of headspace is Wynonna in at this point?
Melanie Scrofano: “Right now, I think it’s just really accepting she can’t catch a f*cking break. It’s like she didn’t ask for anything and if there’s one thing that she did right in her life – that she feels she did right – it was being on birth control. This is one thing that she was like, ‘Another heir? Please, no. Let’s just find a way to end this somehow.’ And then it happens again. I think she’s angry. I think she’s frustrated. I think she feels alone more than ever. I think she feels the burden of responsibility now in a way she’s never felt when she was never really loving to begin with. And so, yeah, it’s not a great place.”
Will she be slightly happier by the end of the season or will we find her in the same headspace?
Melanie Scrofano: “There’s an evolution, in a way. (Laughing) Definitely she’s not just going to be moping the whole time. That’s a bit boring, so no.”
How much do you get to improvise?
Melanie Scrofano: “I improvised quite a bit. It’s so funny because sometimes I remember, ‘Oh yeah, I did that.’ But they’re very generous of being like, ‘You know your character so well, just whatever. Just do it.’ So it actually becomes really hard to remember when I do that. I was also really tired this season so I was like…they would sort of sometimes ask me to ad-lib. If they asked me I was like, ‘No! Not writing too!’ But when I felt free to do it, there was no pressure on it, then I did it.”
What was it like to write with Beau Smith on two comics?
Melanie Scrofano: “Oh my god, he is so generous. This is his baby, right, and he is really protective of Wynonna Earp, of the property. There have been some things that have come up that he shut down. He’s got a strong backbone about this property. But he really just trusted me. He’s like, ‘You have the voice, just write.’ To have that trust…I think if he was really on me and editing everything I said, I would not feel safe and I would have probably sucked. He’s like, ‘Just write and we’ll fix it if it has to be fixed.’ So, that’s what I did and it was the most liberating thing. If he asks me to do it again, I’m doing it tomorrow.
It was just really hard because my two comics I had to write while I was shooting. I was pregnant, I was shooting 18-hour days and then I had to go home and write the comic and learn my lines. So, looking back it was amazing but during it I was white-knuckling. It was tough but it’s a finite amount of time so you know you can get through it.”
What are you hoping for Wynonna in season three?
Melanie Scrofano: “I mean, I’m a sucker for family. I’m also a sucker for I don’t want things to be very happy. Is that awful? Like, that’s not fun to watch happy people doing happy things. Just watch another show for that. I would love to know more about her own mother. I said that last year, too. I would love to know more about that because we’ve heard a lot about the dad – not that much. Where did she go?”
Watch the full Melanie Scrofano Wynonna Earp interview:
