Brief Take: Do you bring your own experiences into portraying Lorna?
Emma Dumont: I would say season 1 Lorna and Emma Dumont are the exact same person in many, many ways—their political views, their strength, their relentless stubbornness, negative and positive. I related so much to Lorna when I first “met her”. Season 2, I don’t know this girl. [laughs] I don’t know who she is. I don’t know what she’s doing, I don’t know why she’s sitting around crying so much. In season 2, what I think is right for the character doesn’t matter and what I feel personally doesn’t matter because I’m not in charge, I’m not the boss, so whatever is on the page is what we do that day. And that’s great! You know, there are so many things about Lorna this year that are so hard for me to understand, and it’s not a bad thing, it’s not in a negative way. I played roles before in which I didn’t understand the characters, I would do the same thing if I was playing a murderer—to a different level, of course.
But yeah, in the first few episodes she finds out that her baby is sick and instead of going out and hunting for a doctor, leaving the Inner Circle, really going and doing what a mom would do, pounding the pavement, trying to find something to help her child, she sits around and cries about it. So, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know if I can fully understand season 2 Lorna Dane. Lorna this season was really passive and I didn’t like that at all.
I was like “who is this person? I don’t know this Lorna Dane”. But the writers thought it would be better that she was a little more submissive and weak this season. I guess that’s important for her journey, it’s important for everyone’s journey to have highs and lows. Her mental illness aside, for anyone, it’s important to show those different parts of a character. Playing someone with bipolar disorder is a big task and it’s definitely something we talk about every day. This is still a person who has not been treated in any way, through therapy or medicine. She’s completely on her own, and then she has a baby, which is a huge hormonal change in anyone’s body, so yeah, she’s really going through it right now! [laughs] My girl Lorna’s really going through it.
https://brieftake.com/interview-the-gifted-emma-dumont/