Once Upon a Time‘s Ginnifer Goodwin was sporting a new hair color at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con and when asked what prompted the major change, Goodwin laughed and said it was for her husband, Josh Dallas. During our roundtable interview, Goodwin said the new look didn’t scare the baby, which is something she thought might have happened.
Dallas commented on how the new hair color is close to their son’s hair color, and Goodwin agreed. “We’re twins already, but now we’re a lot. He’s blonde. He’s like towheaded, so now we’re closer twins.”
Back to the matter at hand, Goodwin and Dallas were part of ABC’s Once Upon a Time cast who once again made the trek to Comic-Con. Always a big draw with viewers and the media, the cast participated in a Q&A with fans and sat down in a slightly quieter environment for interviews.
Asked how Snow and Charming will be handling the fact Emma (Jennifer Morrison) has turned dark this upcoming season, Goodwin replied, “Not well.” Dallas concurred, saying, “Not well because before she was born, they went to great lengths to make sure the darkness that could or could not appear in her, they made sure it wasn’t a possibility.”
“That it couldn’t factor in,” added Goodwin.
“It’s happened, and that’s not a great thing. It’s their fault. I think you’re going to see Snow and Charming go to some great lengths to make sure that she gets back to the savior that she is,” said Dallas.
“But boy, is that going to cause us some trouble,” revealed Goodwin.
“There might be a little strain in this relationship. Maybe,” said Dallas.
Now that Goodwin and Dallas are parents in real life, Goodwin says being a mom has completely changed how she sees the parent-child dynamic. “I mean, there’s no way to explain it. I read every book, asked every question before having Oliver and there’s no preparing me for what was to come. I always thought that when people say there’s no greater love than the love you have for your child, I thought that that was like quantitative. But it’s not that you have more love, it’s that it’s this whole other different kind of love all together that you didn’t know existed.
And so it’s changed how… I mean, I find myself, a) super tired, but also I’m a lot more emotionally raw all the time in these scenes because the stakes are so much higher than I ever could have pretended them to be, imagined them to be. So there’s sort of an automatic having a knee-jerk reaction, like keeping her safe, that I would never have understood before having Oliver, for sure.”
“I also think there’s this thing about Snow and Charming which I’m realizing that in real life, even though Oliver’s only 13 months is that you don’t want him to make the same mistakes that you made,” explained Dallas. “I think Snow and Charming, probably one of their faults is they’ve done wrong in their life, of course, but they’re so steadfast about being right all the time and doing the right thing, purity, that sometimes it can be…”
“Like their standards are too high,” said Goodwin.
“Sometimes they have very, very high standards even though they’ve done some terrible things themselves. I guess that’s human. That’s within you. So, I think you’re going to see them, particularly with Emma going dark this season, you’re going to see Snow and Charming going to some maybe questionable lengths to help Emma be the savior that she was. But, yeah, it definitely informs what we do with our onscreen kids and our offscreen,” said Dallas.
Asked if this will be a difficult season for them as actors playing Snow and Charming because of the dark Emma, Dallas replied, “I think they’re always going through something difficult. There’s never a time where everything’s like, ‘Yeah, this is cool.'”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” asks Goodwin. “Let’s go on vacation to Hawaii!”
“Is it going to be more challenging than any other season? I don’t know. We’ve only seen one script so far so we don’t know exactly where it’s going to go,” said Dallas.
None of the characters in Once Upon a Time are drawn in black and white; each exists in the grey world where they can’t be defined as strictly a hero or a villain. So, is there a moment in real life in which either Goodwin or Dallas went over to the dark side to get what they wanted? “I mean, we’re all actors so we’ve all got crazy, unethical stories, I’m sure,” said Goodwin, laughing. “None that I’m going to share with you, that’s for sure,” replied Dallas.
“We know how he got this part!” joked Goodwin.
Wrapping it up, Dallas said, “It’s going to be an exciting season. Camelot’s going to be great, in particular seeing as how Snow and Charming have a relationship with a couple of those characters back in Camelot. Of course, Lancelot. Lancelot made sure that we got married in the first place at Charming’s mother’s death. You’re going to see a brotherhood and a real friendship with Arthur and Charming. They going to bro out in a big way. I don’t know how it’s going to happen but you’re going to see Charming at his most heroic that we’ve seen him yet. So, there’s a lot to come.”
“I don’t know. Sword fighting with a baby was pretty heroic,” said Goodwin.
“I don’t know how you beat that, but apparently that’s what they keep telling me,” replied Dallas.
More Season 5 Interviews: Colin O’Donoghue & Jennifer Morrison / Lana Parrilla
Watch the full interview with Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas on Once Upon a Time season five:
