Season one of MTV’s Finding Carter airs on Tuesday nights at 10pm ET/PT with Kathryn Prescott, Cynthia Watros, Alexis Denisof, and Anna Jacoby-Heron in starring roles. The drama series centers around Carter, a 16-year-old girl who has a close, loving relationship with her mom, Lori, until one day that’s yanked out from under her.
Carter learns that Lori isn’t actually her mother but instead, this woman who she has always called mom and who she grew up admiring abducted her when she was just three. Now back with her real family – mom, dad, twin sister, and little brother – Carter has to attempt to start over, knowing that her life up to this point has been based on a huge lie.
Prescott stars as Carter and Watros plays her birth mom, Elizabeth, a police officer who has dealt with the loss of her daughter by closing herself off emotionally. Together in Los Angeles for the 2014 summer Television Critics Association press day, Prescott and Watros discussed the family dynamics and what viewers of this new MTV series can expect from the remainder of season one.
Cynthia Watros and Kathryn Prescott Exclusive Finding Carter Interview
We would assume that with a mother who’s suffered this loss and then gets her child back, the audience would be completely on her side. But from the pilot, she starts doing things where the audience might not be on her side. Was that a challenge to find that angle of this emotional situation?
Cynthia Watros: “I think they wrote it in such a way – and I talked to Terri [Minsky] about this, too – that Elizabeth is in cop mode and Carter is coming from this really loving, affectionate, feely sort of bonded more like sisters [environment] into this family where Elizabeth is so cut off from her feelings. I think basically because her daughter was kidnapped 13 years ago, in cop mode, I sympathize with her because she had to change who she was because of the pain and anger and loss. I don’t think she was always like that. But, yeah, now she is closed and is in cop mode. She has her daughter back and is very protective. I think she’s somewhat controlling. I understand that, but I also understand why people aren’t sympathetic right now.”
Kathryn Prescott: “I will say that the pilot is you’re kind of showing the world through Carter’s point of view. So in the show they’re not going to – in the first episode at least – we don’t see Elizabeth’s side where we see how broken she was by all of that. You just see how Carter sees her which is like, ‘My mom is all warm and lovely and tells me she loves me all the time, and you’re just like being really cold with me but you’re also my mom so why aren’t you…?’ You know what I mean? Like, you see it from Carter’s point of view.”
Do you think for the past 13 years she had to be in this defensive mode just to get by?
Cynthia Watros: “Yes. I think when there’s so much pain, to feel that so much pain for so long it would kill you.”
Kathryn Prescott: “I always say I guess it’s like, but on a much stronger level, when you have a really painful break-up – or I’ve had friends who’ve had really, really painful break-ups and for a while they’re in denial because their brain…it’s their way of protecting them. Maybe they deal with it a bit and then they stop for a bit. Their brain allows them to deal with it in chunks, but this is so painful I almost feel like it must have been where you have to do something to process it and not feel it 100% of the time to always be thinking about it.”
Cynthia Watros: “It’s either doing that or jumping off a cliff. She had other kids she needed to take care of, maybe not as best as she could have. I mean, she probably was only ever there 50% of the time. So it was either put up some walls or jump off a cliff.”
Kathryn Prescott: “She made a good choice.”
Cynthia Watros: “Yeah, she did.”
The late night confrontation scene was really powerful. Was that a really intense scene for both of you to play?
Kathryn Prescott: “Yes. When we first started to do it, we did it more like sad and quiet. But Scott [Speer] the director who’s amazing was telling me, ‘It’s like #1, she’s been out drinking. #2, you’ve never seen her lash out at Elizabeth before. #3, Elizabeth has been cold throughout the episode but never actually enforced something on her before in the episode. I think the anger is right.’
Yeah, it was intense. It was intense because I played it a different way than I’d originally pictured it. But I think it was better the way that Scott was suggesting.”
How odd is it for Carter to be so close – only two hours away driving – from her old friends and never actually get to see them?
Kathryn Prescott: “I think she’s very relieved and grateful when Max comes and lives where she’s living because that’s like the one fragment of her old life that she still has intact that was real. It’s some of her memories that were real. There’s a scene on the bench on the carousel where she was like, ‘Why didn’t all of my other friends come and visit me?’ And Max is like, ‘They were freaked out.’ So maybe her old friends weren’t that great, but Max is. Max is the best friend.”
Does Carter have a very different relationship with her father than her mother?
Kathryn Prescott: “I think it changes. But at first I think it’s very different because Carter’s never had a dad before so when she meets David it’s not like he’s coming in and in her mind replacing anyone. For Carter, it’s like more he died almost. […]Not only did she have to get over the loss of her mom, she now has this new woman in her life who’s like, ‘Oh, I’m your mom actually,’ and trying to get in there instead. I think it’s easier for her to form a bond with David than it is with Elizabeth because of that.”
Cynthia Watros: “It almost seems like a betrayal.”
Kathryn Prescott: “Right, exactly. The more she gets close to Elizabeth, the more she’s betraying Lori (played by Milena Govich).”
Which episodes should we look forward to seeing as far as big twists go?
Cynthia Watros: “Well, I think there’s shifts and surprises in almost every episode. I mean, the degrees are different. There is something cool that happens in episode three – we get introduced to a really cool character. I guess I’m just, for right now, I’m looking forward to seeing the next episode and how this character is received. He plays a very pivotal role in the rest of the series, so this is a huge change coming up.”
Is Carter’s new younger brother an ally to her or a problem she’ll have to deal with?
Kathryn Prescott: “No, he’s an ally. Grant, I think, is born into this family and he wasn’t there for the initial trauma so he doesn’t understand it as deeply as everyone else does. But he sees his whole family act cold to each other and they have kind of retracted, and he doesn’t get it. He’s just got this child-like innocence which is wanting to tell each other how you feel. And then Carter comes into it and feels exactly the same way because she comes from Lori who is loving.”
There’s a powerful scene in the series in which Alexis Denisof as David tells you you don’t have to be strong all the time. Does that have a big impact on Elizabeth in letting her guard down more often in the series?
Cynthia Watros: “Oh yes. I think there a number of things that happen to Elizabeth that she slowly is starting to let the wall crumble. I think that really helps. If I had somebody in my life that I love and I was just trying to hide the pain and somebody said that to me, that would be very powerful.”
Did they start with Carter and then build the cast from there? Who was cast first?
Kathryn Prescott: “Was it me? You were cast very soon after me, if it was me. It was me, not by very long.”
Did you come to the States for auditions for television?
Kathryn Prescott: “I used to go back and forth, for like three years. I would come and stay until I ran out of money and then go home and make more and then come back. But when I got the audition for this, I was in England. I just videotaped myself doing it. I sent it to them and they asked me to retape it. I retaped it and then they asked me to come out to LA and test for it, so I did. And then I found out I got the part.”
