It doesn’t take much to get either Sean Maguire or Rebecca Mader talking about Once Upon a Time‘s fifth season which debuts on September 27, 2015 on ABC. During the San Diego Comic-Con, Maguire (‘Robin Hood’) and Mader (‘Zelena’) were paired up for roundtable interviews and a question about Zelena’s pregnancy set them off on a lengthy discussion of why turning the pregnancy into a lie Zelena made up would be a big cheat.
Asked what’s going on with that storyline, Mader replied, “I don’t know what they’re going to do with that. I think Eddie has teased recently that the pregnancy is real because we’re all thinking she’s lying. This is so something she would do! Like, ‘Oh, okay, I’m pregnant.’ But apparently, it’s a real thing.”
“It might seem a bit of a cop-out to go, ‘It was a trick.’ I think the audience might feel short-changed,” said Maguire.
“But it is something Selena would do…,” added Mader.
“Even though the fans generally are not happy about this and they get… I think it’s weird because there’s confusion and ‘I hate this.’ But then you go, ‘But that’s what drama is.’ Put obstacles in the way, put things you don’t like, so that your heroes can overcome them. I often say when people are like, ‘Oh, why don’t you and Regina just be happy?’ if the whole episode is us going to IKEA, the show might not fare well,” said Maguire, laughing. “The show probably wouldn’t have the extraordinary fandom that it does.”
“Then it would be like a telenovela,” joked Mader.
“But the answer is we genuinely don’t know almost anything,” offered Maguire. “We’ve read the first episode which is so brilliant. It’s like a finale rather than a start.”
“It’s like a movie,” said Mader, enthusiastically.
“Eddie [Kitsis] and Adam [Horowitz], when they sit down together they can really turn it into a movie. It really kicks off the season in an exciting way. I think the Camelot stuff is going to be really cool. I’ve seen some of the sketches by our brilliant designer for the costumes. They look amazing. Also, I think that the guys said they kind of want to go back to the original. I think they’re going to focus a bit more on the regular cast and the Camelot cast,” revealed Maguire.
“Back to the heart of Once Upon a Time like how it was in season one,” interjected Mader.
“I think real fans of the show are going to dig this season. I really do. I mean obviously last year we had the epic thing of Frozen and that was a great boon for the show. But I think that this year they’re like, ‘Right, let’s get back to the original core of what made this show a success.’ I think it’s going to be really good. I’m excited, obviously for both of us, because we both love being on the show and we both love our cast members and our crew,” said Maguire.
And as a follow-up question, Mader and Maguire were asked about the show’s very modern twist on fairytale stories. “The thing is that no matter what universe you set the drama in, the same things resonant with us as human beings: death, births, pregnancies, marriages,” explained Maguire. “It doesn’t matter what show, what universe you’re in, those things are always going to be…”
“…the drama,” agreed Mader.
“That’s what raises the stakes if you will,” said Maguire. “I remember when it came out that I’d gotten her pregnant people were like, ‘Oh my god, it’s like a Spanish soap opera.’ And you’re like ‘Yeah, and why do the Spanish soap operas do that? Because that’s drama.’ That’s what keeps bringing people back. But how it will all end, we really do not have any idea.”
Watch the full interview with Rebecca Mader and Sean Maguire on Once Upon a Time season five:
