EMMA DUMONT
The Gifted’s Polaris on pregnancy, powers and pricey wigs...
There’s no mistaking Emma Dumont when she walks into the suitably named green room at Kensington Olympia to talk to SFX: namely because she’s wearing the green wig she sports on The Gifted in her role as Lorna Dane, aka Polaris. “It’s all about my hair, guys!” she laughs. It’s certainly one expensive barnet – she reveals that it costs $50k per episode to digitally cover up the wig line on her forehead in post-production – but of course it’s only a small facet of her character. Polaris is the mutant who kicked the hornets’ nest in the first season of the show, ending the year pregnant, angry and determined to fight for mutant rights. Which isn’t surprising, given that she’s Magneto’s daughter: a fact not fully acknowledged on the series, though Dumont would love for it to happen. Time to ask her how Polaris is doing in the new season... What’s the world going to look like in season two?
A disaster [laughs]. A freaking disaster. We’re doing a six-month time jump, so things have changed, people have changed. Everyone’s pretty emotionally wrecked, there’s a baby coming, so six months on means we’re closer to that. The world is hard. Will we get to see Baby Polaris?
Oh yes. I love that you’re calling her Baby Polaris! Forget the dad! The pregnancy gear is really heavy, they fill it with bird seed so that it weighs, like, 12lbs. I put on quite a bit of weight knowing I’d be pregnant in season two – I wanted fuller cheeks and fuller arms, so I’d look more like a mother, bigger and stronger, and like someone that’s created a human. How do you think Polaris will fare as a mother?
Meh. Have you met her? She’s nuts! [Laughs] You know that thing with a mother’s adrenalin where they say that they can lift cars off of babies? That’s a real thing, and boy does Polaris have it. Everything she does is crazier, and more dangerous and violent, unlike normal mothers who you’d think would try not to put themselves in danger and not be so violent. She’s the exact opposite. I have to fight for this kid. Where’s the father, Marcos, in all this?
Who cares? Marcos is off being sad. [Laughs] What else would you like to explore in season two?
In one way we’re veering more towards our comic-book selves. We want to see more powers, being less in one location, as we were having to hide last year; this year we’re being shoved into the real world. We’re getting to see the mutants in real life, things that aren’t, “I’m tearing down a powerline.” Before you started the show, what did you know about the universe?
I had some basic knowledge of the X-Men. Don’t tell Marvel, but I was basically a DC girl for a long time. Shame on me! I was always a huge Magneto fan. I was always drawn to him... look what happened! Where do you want the connection to the X-Men to go?
If it were up to us and we didn’t have contractual and legal whatever, and franchise nonsense, I’d want Magneto on the show. We want the X-Men! But if you’re a homeless refugee on the run for your life, and there’s a team of mutants out there with anything at their disposal, then what’s the point? They’re just gonna come in and save us: “Oh, Rogue’s here again, we’re saved!” Instead we have nothing. Are you enjoying being able to explore things that weren’t in the comics?
That’s the great thing. Polaris was written in the ’60s. We weren’t really, like, “femme power” back then – she was very over-sexualised, she was often written off as the crazy girlfriend. She was a crazy girl who was under mind control so many times, and now it’s like, “No, we’re justifying it.” She’s not crazy, she’s not dumb, she’s soon to be a mother... These people are more than just caricatures, they’re people. What has been your experience with the fans?
It’s been phenomenal. Here’s the deal – people were like, “They’re gonna make a TV show out of the X-Men movies! That’s gonna be terrible!” Even I doubted it. I’m playing a character from 1969 – playing characters that are generational, that have so much backstory and are basically set in stone in the lore of Marvel, playing Mutant royalty... You never know what’s going to happen. All we want to do is do right by these characters, and make sure anyone who knows them, or doesn’t know them, enjoys it.
The Gifted season two will air from 25 September on Fox in the US, and will start on Fox in the UK during October.
“whO cArEs whErE ThE fAThEr Of POlAris’s bAby is? hE’s Off bEiNg sAD”