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Q: I’m curious how Jane Badler, who played Diana in the original V, came to be involved with the V remake. It seems like such obvious stunt casting (although she’s terrific so far). Was it planned from the start — or did they bring her in once the ratings started to flag? — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

Neither, according to V producer and showrunner Scott Rosenbaum. Despite some reports to the contrary, Rosenbaum tells TheTorchOnline.com that the new character of “Diana,” Anna’s mother, was conceived without Jane Badler in mind.

Mother, daughter, grandmother

“I had this idea at the end of last season about what season two was going to be, and I thought it would be interesting to do a little back-story of the Visitors,” Rosenbaum says. “I started with Anna, and I thought, ‘Does she have a mother?’ I spent some time figuring out who that mother was, why there was conflict between them.”

At this point, Rosenbaum says he still hadn’t even considered Jane Balder for the role, but that he got a message that she was in town and wanted to meet him. “But we hadn’t even started casting yet,” Rosenbaum says. “She didn’t even know there was a role.”

It wasn’t until they were actually chatting that Rosenbaum put two and two together. “She was talking about her kid in Australia, and I was completely zoning out, thinking, ‘She could be Diana!’”

Rosenbaum says Badler auditioned for the role — something Badler confirms.

“There were sixty or seventy very well-known actors who auditioned for that role,” he says. “I was shocked by the names that came in. I didn’t think we’d have such a pool of recognizable actors — some who’d had B+ TV roles. But I chose [Jane] because she was the best. I didn’t do it at all because she was from the original.”

Rosenbaum acknowledges that it turned out to be something of a publicity coup for the show.  “But I didn’t do it because I thought the fans would be excited,” he says. “The thing is, they could’ve reacted the opposite way. You have to just pick the best person.”

Rosenbaum’s story strains credibility a bit — I’m assuming the character wasn’t really named “Diana” from the beginning — but he seemed sincere to me. And he did take over as showrunner partway through the first season, so it’s possible that previous producers were working on casting Jane as well, and Rosenbaum simply wasn’t aware.

Incidentally, why did Rosenbaum decide to make the next series story-arc about three women — Anna, Diana, and Lisa — in conflict?

“I felt like there needed to be more pressure on Anna,” Rosenbaum says. “And there’s an expression I heard years ago that stuck with me. The reason why grandparents and grandchildren get along is because they share a common enemy: the mother! That’s all you need to know about this three-women dynamic.”

Q: I agree with your opinion that prequels are really, really hard to pull off (e.g. Star Wars). So is Spartacus going to do it? How? — E.J., Lake Hope, OH

The Oracle Speaks:

I’ve only seen the first episode, so I can’t say how they’ll do it. But the producers have talked about what they learned from the first season, acknowledging that their storytelling grew stronger as the season went on. Maybe it’s just spin, but what they say is so in sync with how I perceived the first season to be that they’ve convinced me that they really do know what they’re doing.

“From the first episode on, we ratchet up the tension and the stakes,” writer-producer Steven DeKnight tells us in an exclusive interview. “There’s a lot of things that happen in the prequel that inform season one. You don’t have to have seen season one to know what happens, but in true Spartacus fashion, a lot of characters won’t see in the end of the prequel.”

What does DeKnight think of the finished product?

“Honestly, it turned out better than I had ever hoped,” he says. “We really got a chance to go back and flesh out so many of the characters and tell a story that I don’t think we ever would’ve ever been able to tell otherwise.”

In fact, DeKnight says that the existence of the first season, the events of which still lie ahead in the time-line, gave them the major theme of the prequel.

“Your actions will decide your fate,” he says. “It’s something that Batiatus’s father will warn him of, and we draw directly between what happens in the prequel and where it leads him in season one.”

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According to Morena Baccarin, the actress who plays Anna, the evilly manipulative leader of a group of lizard-like aliens on the ABC show V, expect some almost Shakespearean-like drama in the weeks ahead — thanks, in part, to the introduction of the character of Anna’s mother Diana, played by Jane Badler, the actress who famously played a different character named Diana in the original 1980s incarnation of the show.

“She was so sweet,” Morena says of Badler, in an exclusive interview with TheTorchOnline.com. “I was opening my mouth to compliment her, and she said, ‘I love your show!’ These characters butt heads a lot, and I thought it was so great that even as a V, you get your butt kicked by your mother. No species escapes that! I thought that was awesome.”

Badler’s Diana, it seems, plays a pivotal role in upcoming episodes.

Morena Baccarin and Jane Badler

“She becomes very instrumental in the rebellion with Lisa,” Baccarin says. “I’ve imprisoned her for twenty years, which is why she’s still on the ship. Everyone thinks she’s dead, and she’s trying to get her queenship, her throne, back.”

Baccarin smiles. “Between her, Lisa, and myself, you’ve got three women fighting for the throne!”

Thirty-one-year-old Baccarin, born in Brazil, first became known to TV viewers as Inara Serra on Joss Whedon’s 2002 cult classic Firefly, famously canceled after only fourteen episodes (only eleven actually aired, though the characters did return in the feature film Serenity).

V’s ruthless Anna couldn’t be more of a polar opposite from the kind, serene character of Inara, but the fact that Baccarin seems to have been born to play both roles is a testament to her talent.

Does the viciousness of the character ever impact her behavior in real life — or affect the way people react to her? 

She laughs. “Do I order people around at Starbucks?” she says. “I definitely — I think! — keep a healthy separation between work and life. It’s not difficult for me, because when I put on that make-up and the clothes, I see that character right away. And the words — the way Anna speaks is very different from myself.”

Apart from the appearance of Badler, the most interesting thing about the most recent episodes of the show may be the indication that even Anna, the supreme leader of a lizard race that keeps its emotions tightly controlled, is starting to lose control of those emotions.

“The wonderful thing about playing this part is the challenge of maintaining that regal personality and laying in that new emotion,” Baccarin says. “And I think it’s great, because it humanizes her in such a way that I think people will be able to relate to her, to sympathize with her, which I think is really scary, to be able to relate to such a nasty person.”

Which brings up an interesting question: just how much emotion does Anna feel? Does she feel any of the kind and gentle emotions she’s projecting to Earth, or is it entirely an act she’s putting on?

“I think it’s an act,” Baccarin says. “I think she knows exactly what to do or say, to manipulate, to be adored by her people. I mean, she has a love for her species, and as leader, it is her job to ensure its survival, and she has a deep love for her people, but when it comes to humans, she’ll go to great lengths to get what she wants.”

With the appearance of Badler on the show, Baccarin pondered the differences between the old and new versions of V.

“The perils are different,” she says. Our show “is more about terrorism-fear, that fear and paranoia of not knowing who your neighbor is, and I anchored [my performance] on that. I feel like [the show's take] is a little more subtle and a scarier way in, because it’s not on the surface. You don’t know if you’re safe, ever.”

In fact, she says, Badler’s reappearance is a pretty good example of the show’s theme. “In the original show, it was a little more apparent [who was bad],” she says. “But here, you don’t know who’s on whose side, and people switch a lot.”

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