Marie Avgeropoulos Interview: Playing Silver Swan at NYCC 2019

Marie Avgeropoulos as Silver Swan, explained

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines premiered at New York Comic Con and reached digital platforms on October 5, 2019, with a 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray release on October 22. It is a Warner Bros. Animation film running 79 minutes, directed by Sam Liu and Justin Copeland, with a screenplay by Mairghread Scott based on Greg Rucka's comic Wonder Woman: Down to Earth. Rosario Dawson voices Diana Prince, and Marie Avgeropoulos plays Vanessa Kapatelis, who becomes the villain Silver Swan.

Avgeropoulos was best known at the time as Octavia Blake on The 100, and the film was her first animated feature. At the roundtable she spoke candidly about what that was like, from the isolation of a recording booth to her own teenage wardrobe.

Readers searching for Marie Avgeropoulos after the film will find the answers to most of the usual questions here: who Silver Swan is in this version, how the performance was recorded, whether she might return, and what she thinks of Gal Gadot's take on Diana.

Who Silver Swan is in Bloodlines

Avgeropoulos kept the description spoiler-light, but she said audiences see several stages of Vanessa. The film begins with her as a young girl, follows her through adolescence, and reaches a high school phase where she turns gothic, angry at her mother and resentful. The relationship with Diana is the engine. In her telling, Diana quickly becomes the favorite child in the household, which sours Vanessa, and the animosity between the two grows as they become adults.

The synopsis of the film fits that. Diana investigates the disappearance of Julia Kapatelis's daughter, Vanessa, who has been transformed into Silver Swan and has joined a group of supervillains called Villainy Inc.

Recording a first animated film alone

The hardest part, she said, was doing it entirely solo. She described working like Han Solo, alone in the booth, and added that the premiere was the first time she had met any of the cast. Seeing everyone's contributions assembled into a finished film impressed her. She told the room that viewers would freak out and that it was made with a lot of love.

Compared with on-camera work, voice acting gave her more freedom, because the animation does not exist yet. You make things up into a microphone and go off a script, then do a second pass once the character has been drawn. That second pass is where actors sync up what she called the flats, the technical term she was told for the process. It felt strange to her to do all this alone, and also liberating, both at once.

Her enjoyment shows in her answer about the future. She would happily do more animated features, partly because, she joked, people apparently like the deep, raspy voice.

Gothic years, bravery and Gal Gadot

Asked if she relates to Vanessa, Avgeropoulos laughed and admitted she was gothic in high school, down to a dog collar around her neck. She wondered aloud whether the writers knew. She also said she respects how Silver Swan shows bravery in the face of fear and keeps moving forward, which she called a solid message for women and for anyone.

On Gal Gadot, her answer was short and warm: Gadot did an amazing job and hit a home run with the character, and Avgeropoulos looks up to her. Would she like a live-action turn in the same universe? Absolutely, she said, though she hoped she had not let the fans down with this one.

Before recording she did some research into the comics, because she wanted to know what headspace she was entering. She deliberately did not go too deep, since she wanted to make the character her own and put a piece of herself into Silver Swan.

Comic-Con, fans and a turtle with a camera

Avgeropoulos said she likes Comic-Con because it is the one place where she sees real-life reactions to work that is normally made in a secluded bubble on a set. Fans who show up dressed as her characters, having put in weeks of effort, clearly delight her.

At the autograph signing earlier that day, a man approached with a live turtle that had a GoPro strapped to it. You do not see that every day, she said, and she meant it as a compliment to the crowd.

The roundtable took place on the night of the premiere, and her excitement about audiences finally seeing the finished film runs through the whole conversation.

From Octavia to Blodreina to Silver Swan

The 100 came up in several questions. Playing villains is a habit for her, she said, and the best version is the one where the villain turns into a hero along the way. She likes watching characters work out how to overcome their own obstacles, and learning to use a sword at work is a bonus.

The funniest exchange came when she was asked to rank Silver Swan among her roles. She would love to see Blodreina, the war-painted version of Octavia, fight Silver Swan. Her pick: Silver Swan, because she can fly.

As for the show's finale, she confirmed what everyone knew, that it was the last season, and teased a very wild ride with twists the fans were not expecting, including another version of Octavia. She said Octavia keeps evolving and never bores her. Comparing booth and set, she preferred the hair and make-up chair on The 100, where the hours in the chair double as time to learn dialogue. The Blodreina tattoo takes about three hours to apply, she explained, and she leaves it on for the whole week, which wrecks her white sheets. That is commitment, she said.

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines at a glance

• Release: premiered at New York Comic Con and went digital on October 5, 2019; physical release on October 22, 2019.
• Directors: Sam Liu and Justin Copeland.
• Writer: Mairghread Scott, adapting Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman: Down to Earth.
• Voice cast: Rosario Dawson (Diana), Jeffrey Donovan (Steve Trevor), Marie Avgeropoulos (Vanessa Kapatelis / Silver Swan), Adrienne C. Moore (Etta Candy), Nia Vardalos (Julia Kapatelis), Constance Zimmer (Veronica Cale).
• Runtime: 79 minutes.

Marie Avgeropoulos interview recap: what the roundtable showed

The interview is notable for what Avgeropoulos does not do. She never oversells the film, and she does not claim familiarity with the comics she did not have. When asked if she knew the characters beforehand, she began to say yes, mouthed no, and then described her research honestly. That kind of directness makes the rest of her answers easy to trust.

The most revealing material is practical. Voice acting for animation sounds glamorous, and her account makes it sound like a solitary craft where the performer works without a scene partner and without a drawn character to react to. That she met her co-stars only at the premiere says plenty about how animated films are assembled.

The film's plot gives her character real weight. As summarized for the release, Wonder Woman has left Themyscira to protect the outside world, and the search for Vanessa leads her back to a siege of the island led by Doctor Poison and Doctor Cyber. A mid-credits scene reveals that Veronica Cale leads Villainy Inc. That structure puts Silver Swan at the emotional center of the villain side, and it gives Avgeropoulos plenty to work with.

Her connection to the role is personal in a way that lifts it. A goth teenager with a dog collar is, after all, a decent route into a character who is angry at her mother and jealous of a golden child.

There is also the matter of that ending. Asked whether Silver Swan has room in a sequel, she said the film ends open-ended, then caught herself: had she just revealed that the character does not die? Whoops. Whether Bloodlines ever got a follow-up that used the opening is something the interview cannot answer, but it does show where the film left her.

Sources

• Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, Wikipedia — voice cast, crew and release date