Westworld co-creator Lisa Pleasure and star Evan Rachel Wooden discuss season 4, Christina, and the fact of fiction

Westworld‘s future continues to be darkish and foreboding, and whereas the third season ended with a bang, the fourth returns with an odd sense of quiet, seven years later.

The collection has new tips up its sleeves, however there’s no shock that Evan Rachel Wooden returns for season 4, regardless of the obvious loss of life of Dolores in final season’s finale.

Wooden performs Christina, a author for digital actuality video games, and she or he’s feeling unsettled and misplaced as her roommate Maya, performed by Ariana DeBose, tries to verify she will get out to have some enjoyable at times.

The primary episode in season 4, “The Auguries,” sees the return of all of our favourites, together with Maeve (Thandiwe Newton), Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson), William (Ed Harris), and Caleb (Aaron Paul). There’s a way that the identical sport we’ve seen is occurring another time, however I’m unsure the people are doing all that nicely any extra. This time it’s not their sport.

Talking to co-creator, author, and producer Lisa Pleasure, and star Evan Rachel Wooden, they talked in regards to the scripts and improvement of the collection, Wooden’s capacity to guess the present’s secrets and techniques, and the way the 2 have a look at expertise right now in gentle of the present’s plot factors.

Season three of HBO’s Westworld returns Sunday, June 26 at 9:00 PM (ET) on Crave in Canada and on HBO and HBO Max within the U.S.

What’s occurring for Christina this season?

Evan Rachel Wooden: “Nicely, wiping the slate clear once more this season, ranging from scratch with a brand new character. And I believe as folks watch the primary 4 episodes, they’ll discover that there are some similarities with what Christina goes by means of in that she has a way that some factor isn’t proper in her world and she will be able to’t fairly put her finger on it.”

“She very a lot has this routine that she goes by means of daily, very like a loop, and she or he’s making an attempt to determine what’s going on and who she is, which isn’t in contrast to what Dolores went by means of within the first season. However I believe what’s going to be totally different is what she discovers and her objective, and who she is.”

“Who’s Cristina? That’s what we’re going to be taught.”

Lisa Pleasure: “It was actually superior attending to see Evan act so in another way as a very new character and a totally new surroundings within the metropolis. And I bear in mind once I lived in New York for some time, I felt like a bunch typically. Have you learnt what I imply? Like, rise up, take the subway, go to work, come again and get take out, rise up, and simply to see her character exploring these years in a metropolis was actually enjoyable and jogged my memory of my salad days.”

Lisa for you, I’m curious should you had a plan for Christina this season and if Evan had performed any half in how that plan labored out? And Evan, I’m curious in your efficiency should you’re enjoying this character and framing her by means of the sense of who Dolores was?

Wooden: “Yeah, for the previous couple of seasons, she’s been on such a mission and she or he’s needed to maintain her playing cards so near her chest, so it was good to kind of return to this extra weak persona. Christina appears to be like like Dolores, however on no account has the identical type of energy or energy or perception in herself.”

“In her thoughts, she’s fairly powerless and insignificant however like Dolores, she’s positively noticing that one thing could be very, very incorrect that she will be able to’t fairly put her finger on simply but. I don’t have any enter so far as just like the arc of the character, however definitely the nerdiness of Christina, I felt like I might actually carry so much to that.”

Pleasure: “The enjoyable factor about Evan is, and I spotted this actually, I believe the primary day of season one once I was like, ‘are you able to experience a horse?’ And actors all the time say they will experience a horse. They all the time say they will experience a horse. And then you definitely put them on a horse and also you’re like, ‘You may’t experience a horse. You’ve by no means even seen a horse earlier than.’”

“And so Evan goes on a horse and it’s like, we’re in just like the equestrian dream right here. And so I used to be like, ‘oh, my God, there’s nothing this woman can’t do.’ And so each season I attempted to stump her, and I attempt to reinvent the character. ‘Are you able to do that? Are you able to do that?’”

“And she will be able to do all of it. So I’m simply I’m simply going to maintain making an attempt.”

Wooden: “You’ve solely discovered one factor that I couldn’t do on the present, and that was put in a contact lens with out blinking, which I don’t assume is feasible. However that was the one factor I couldn’t do. They stumped me on that. I’ve performed every part else. [Laughs]”

Contemplating you’ll be able to construct and play with so many world concepts and characters, what’s essential so that you can all the time maintain fixed on this world?

Pleasure: “I believe the factor that’s most essential is the sense of the character’s actuality throughout the totally different worlds, as a result of instances might change, proper, and we’ve seen by means of episode 4 so typically the parks replicate durations of decadence and sin. These appear to recur in numerous cultures, in numerous instances, identical to conflict recurs in numerous cultures and totally different instances.”

“However human nature tends to remain considerably related. And so I believe it’s about embracing that actuality throughout the sweep of historical past.”

Not too long ago within the information I believe the College of Tokyo created a robotic finger coated with residing pores and skin that may heal itself. I’m simply actually curious to know, if you see stuff like that, that does appear to kind of shut the hole between the present and actual life, what do you concentrate on that?

Wooden: “Typically I truthfully, after engaged on the present, I’ve requested myself this query typically. I’m like, wouldn’t it simply be loopy if the ultimate twist for this complete collection is that I’ve been a robotic your complete time? That is their approach of like revealing me to the world.”

Pleasure: “Subsequent season’s script is only one piece of paper that claims this has all been actual.”

Wooden: “That is all a documentary. However I don’t have Alexa in my home. I do have a self-driving automobile, however I don’t like issues listening to me, and social media is one thing that I have a look at very in another way after engaged on the present. Completely. The place my knowledge goes and what it’s getting used for and who’s clutches it’s ending up in. Completely.”

Pleasure: “I believe expertise will permit for thus many nice advances, proper? Like by way of new prosthetics and serving to individuals who might actually have their life enhanced by machine studying and physique elements that may operate very organically with their very own.”

“However, the potential for abuse on a type of psychological degree, I do assume that the final couple of years throughout COVID, we’ve had the Coronavirus pandemic, however we’ve additionally had a thoughts pandemic the place folks have been locked house, they’ve been on social media so much, and social media is an A.I. It’s an algorithm that controls and hacks into our brains that may infiltrate our psyches and our psychologies and essentially change it, particularly for youthful youngsters. And in order that’s a theme, too, that we positively discover by means of metaphor on this season of Westworld.”

Lisa, for the entire collection, do you might have a plan the place the present goes and what is going to come subsequent? And do the actors know what’s coming?

Pleasure: “I’ve I’ve a roadmap. From the very starting, Jon [Jonathan Nolan] and I’ve had an concept of the place we wished the season to go and the chapters of the season to unfold. However that’s to not say there aren’t issues that shock, and turns that we take in the course of the course of it.”

“Once you’re working with actors as unbelievable because the actors we work with, they carry a lot depth in so many new elements of the character’s life that you simply haven’t seen earlier than, so it makes you wish to discover it extra.”

“So, there’s a type of railroad observe that’s laid out, however we take little detours, and I believe these detours are crucial to the present.”

“As for telling the actors you’re very merciless and deny all of them data until it’s must know. Nonetheless, Evan is excellent at guessing our spoilers.”

“She has all the time been good at it. She is a thorn at my aspect.”

Wooden: “[Laughs] I’m not nearly as good any extra now that the present has gotten extra sophisticated. However I did name some issues like approach again the primary and second season that at the moment are circling, which can be popping out within the fourth.”

Pleasure: “Yeah, she’d come as much as me within the village and she or he’d be like, ‘I believe I do know, blah blah blah blah.’ ‘Shh. Shhh. There are different actors round. Don’t say something.’”

Pleasure: “So being attentive to all that stuff and socially, after we did the primary season, having been a lady working within the leisure trade for a while, identical as Evan, identical as Thandiwe [Newton], I positively assume we had related themes in frequent that we had encountered and to have the ability to specific it by means of metaphor, by means of sci-fi, however one thing so deeply private to us… for me as a person, with the ability to share that and watch these unbelievable actors bringing it to display screen, it made me really feel much less alone on the planet. It was it was a therapeutic course of to observe Evan carry Dolores to life.”

Wooden: “And therapeutic to do this as nicely. In methods.”

“You understand, Jon and Lisa have their finger on the heart beat of the underbelly of society and kind of what’s actually occurring below the floor. In order that they’ve really managed to simply mirror my life and my evolution with out me having to say something. And so I really feel like I’ve grown and advanced with Dolores and in kind of the identical approach that the character has, and gone by means of all of the totally different feelings and emotions that she has in a bizarre approach, besides the, you realize, extra murderous homicidal feeling, no.”

“However the emotions of revolution and the sentiments of noticing that there’s one thing incorrect, seeing the larger image, asking totally different questions. The present is impressed me so much.”

Pleasure: “Evan could be very personally inspiring. She’s an exquisite good friend and human being, however she’s additionally this unbelievable beacon of sunshine for ladies. And she or he’s probably the most right down to earth individual ever. So we discuss. We’ve identified one another for a very long time now, so to say that her character and the issues she thinks about and issues which can be essential to her, they completely permeate the best way I take into consideration story, as a result of she could be very inspiring individual, frankly.”