On the family storyline with Helen and Ashley Magnus: It's really an interesting relationship between these two. I mean, first of all -- and this is something that I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to play this out but -- Helen made a choice to bring this child into the world knowing that she could quite possibly watch her grow old and die -- not knowing if Ashley has the same gift that Helen has, not knowing if Ashley will have the longevity.
So she brings this child into the world knowing that she may lose here which as a parent is like the worst thing ever to imagine your children dying before you.
So starting from that as your jumping off point of a relationship is just a weird place to start. And then what happens is they're comrades. They're colleagues.
She'll fight to the end of the earth to protect her daughter but in the end of the day, it's often her daughter protecting her. Which again turns the whole mother/daughter dynamic on its head. There's a huge amount of respect and there's a huge amount of chemistry between these two women.
And then there's times when the mother/daughter dynamic flashes up and it sort of feels weird. It's like Ashley be careful out there, you know, and yet you're sending her out to fight a, you know, an invisible monster in the caves underneath the city. It's like this weird dynamic.
So at the end of the day there's a huge amount of respect but there are times when you'll see flashpoints between the two of them and it makes sense only because they work so closely together.
And because of what they're facing everyday, there's these flashpoints. But at the end of it there's a massive amount of love. But again, I have to stress that it's a weird jumping off point because she's made this choice to bring this child into the world.
On whether the web series was intended as a springboard to TV: Well we, in our infinite naivety, actually envisioned staying on the web. We never really set it up to be a model for a television series.
Our initial hope was that the shifting paradigm that this convergence of new media, we were going to do games and having, you know, a full social networking site so that Sanctuary for all became a place where fans could go not just to watch the show, but to get involved in other aspects.
And in ideology it's great and monetization not so much. And we wanted to make a really spectacular show. We spent a lot of money and it needed it. We wanted to do something that was really big and really flashy, and that we would all, you know, be proud to watch.
Now we're on TV and it makes sense. And we're all very happy to be here. But I think still our goal is to get back onto the web in a different presence.
On whether they have a multi-season plan: We don't actually. I'm sure that Damian actually in his head has a grander scheme for the whole thing. But at this stage, we've sort of started mapping out where we want certain character relationships to go.
It's that superstitious feeling of let's not plan too far ahead because we may be derailed, you know. Like let's think really intelligently how we want this series to move forward.
We don't want to be rushed into anything but also by the same token, people are like, "What would happen in Season 2?" and I'm like. "I don't want to talk about Season 2."
Let's hope next year we get a pickup for Season 2. Let's get through Season 1. Come on everybody, just calm down, calm down. I'm a bit of a fatalist.
We've all been in this industry long enough to know. I mean, I just kept thinking Stargate would get canceled and it never did. And the one year that we thought it would get picked up again we got canceled.
So I'm of the mind that I'm just going to think that -- you know, think the worst and be really pleasantly surprised. But I think Damian has a grander scheme for it. We just have to dig it out of his little brain.
On mythology she wants to do: I've always loved the vampire mythology and I've always loved the idea of that kind of creature, a sort of totally without social conscience and how that works. Vampires, they're the scariest thing I can possibly think of. And so we sort of explored that mythology actually already in the first 13.
But I like that idea. I like the idea of what happens with a creature that seemingly has no social conscience, seemingly has just a selfish agenda and then you find out that maybe it's not necessarily that at all.
On whether Helen thinks her longevity is a gift or curse: Both. I think ultimately she still sees that there's work to be done and she still sees that her quest is worthy, so she needs to be around for it. But she often talks about the curse of it and that's what I alluded to before, this swing of incredible loneliness.
When you watch everyone you've ever known grow old and die -- all your lovers and your friends -- I think that her heart is very well protected now because if it wasn't, she would be heartbroken all the time, watching these incredible people that she spends time with. So I think she's very guarded because she doesn't want to give people too much for fear that it -- you know, she'll be heartbroken in the end.
On the secret of who Ashley's father is: Ashley does find out. She had to. I mean, that's not something that you can just keep playing out. It's like beating a dead horse after awhile, the idea that Ashley doesn't know who her father is. So she does, she does find out who her father is.
And it's interesting because it dealt with by not being dealt with, which means that it's something that's going to come up and bite Helen in the ass.
On differences between the webisodes and the show: What the move to television has done has given us a lot more freedom and a lot more room, and a lot more time to be honest, to spread out this mythology and to open up the mythology.
The web series was so compact and so much information was given in that short period of time that I don't think the stories were given as much breadth as they needed.
And so here we're able to breathe a lot more life into these -- into specific areas of the story. I don't think that people who have watched the web series will be disappointed.
