Quite a bit has changed since Season 3 of “The Originals.” With a five-year time jump, Hope (Summer Fontana) is no longer a baby and Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) has done everything within her power to resurrect the Mikaelsons and reunite her daughter with her father Klaus (Joseph Morgan). And yet, the more things change the more they stay the same.
Hope has found herself back in New Orleans with the Mikaelsons as a new war readies itself, blurring the lines even further between vampires, werewolves and witches. With a villain targeting children and wreaking havoc on the French Quarter, Screener decided it was time to catch up with Tonkin to talk about the big bad, what Klaus is like as a dad and what changes for Hayley, now that the life she’s built over the last five years has been turned upside down…
Thus far, Hayley’s Season 4 has revolved heavily around getting the Mikaelsons back. Five years is a long time to spend alone, though. What has changed about her in that time?
Phoebe Tonkin: I mean, I think now — as it always has been, but probably now moreso because her daughter is older — her priority is just to protect and keep her daughter safe. And hopefully give her daughter somewhat of a normal upbringing. Hopefully.
That seems so entire impossible in this world they live in.
Yeah, it does!
Will we be getting any sort of look at what those five years were like for Hayley? Especially when you consider how fundamental a time it is for a child Hope’s age…
Yes, definitely. And I think Hope’s also had a lot of questions about where her family is, her bloodline, her father. I think as she got older, it became more urgent to get her family back, because she had so many questions about what was happening. Hayley has spent five years looking for the Mikaelsons relentlessly — I don’t think there was much room for anything else besides that. She was just super driven to find this cure, and be able to wake them all up, and get Hope’s father back. It’s important to her that Hope doesn’t grow up without a dad.
Hayley has very different relationships with Klaus and Elijah. Now that we’ve moved forward in time, how have those dynamics changed? Because you look at a character like Klaus, and he’s been living in torture for five years…
You know, I definitely think now that Hope is older, everyone is focused on protecting her — especially Klaus. Anything that comes close in any way to harming Hope… They’re just all very protective of her.
I think also, Hayley really wants Hope to feel like she has some sort of a normal family dynamic. So I think Hayley is going to have to put aside some of her grudges, or issues that she’s had in the past with Klaus, to make sure she feels like her mom and dad are in some kind of a functioning co-parenting environment.
Klaus reentering Hope’s life — does that change Hayley’s relationship with her daughter at all, given that it was just them for so long?
Definitely. She’s definitely tried to keep Klaus alive in conversation, and I think Hope probably has him on a pedestal because of how much Hayley has tried to keep her dad in the conversation over the last five years.
There are some nice moments between Klaus and Hope where he’s just a dad. He’s not this supervillain, he’s just a dad who is in love and wants to spoil his daughter.
That is a version of that character I cannot wait to see. Lastly, I wanted to talk about the villain of the season — which we’ve lovingly dubbed the “big, angry blue ball of light” around the office.
Oh it’ll get a name soon, don’t you worry! A name you will not forget.
We don’t know a lot about this particular villain, other than it’s targeting children — which is bad news for Hope. What can you tell us about it?
I think this is the most dangerous threat that has posed any sort of danger to this family. It’s the first time they don’t necessarily understand what it wants, or why it wants what it wants. It’s a very powerful entity of violence and pain. I think, as you said, it’s targeting children — which includes Hope — so all of these characters have to come together, even through their own complicated dynamics, and work together to fight this entity that’s potentially going to harm the one they all love.
It’s horrifying. This thing is very old and it’s something that’s been gathering power. A very serious, and dangerous, threat.
Published March 31, 2017
by Chris E. Hayner
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