Jordan Gavaris as Orphan Black's Felix Dawkins. Photo copyright of Bell Media/SPACE.
Orphan Black’s resident struggling “artist” Felix Dawkins thought his days, and especially nights, were filled with more than enough excitement, but that was before his foster sister Sarah Manning breezed back into his life just over a year ago. Neither he nor Sarah realized that her surprise return would set into motion a life-and-death struggle involving several clones – of which Sarah is one- along with a mysterious corporation called the Dyad Institute that aspires to play God when it comes to the creation of life.
At the end of the show’s first season, Sarah’s little girl Kira and Sarah’s foster mother Mrs. S. mysteriously disappear, leaving our heroine at her wits end. In the season two opener, Nature Under Constraint and Vexed, Sarah sets out to find and, hopefully, rescue them. The first person she turns to for help is Felix. She eventually tracks him down at one of his favorite haunts, and together they visit one of Sarah’s clones, Alison, to obtain some much-needed “fire power.” Given events of last year, Felix is used to all the new Sarah-related drama in his life. It is no different for the actor who plays him, Jordan Gavaris, but nonetheless, it was still initially a bit daunting for him to jump back into the fray.
“We actually block-shot the first two episodes, which means we took two or three weeks and shot all the scenes for those two episodes out of order,” says Garvaris. “The very first scene we did was from episode two [Governed by Sound Reason and True Religion]. It was a relatively contained scene, but it still was really scary for me. I woke up that morning and before going to work I said to myself, ‘Oh, no, I should have been prepping weeks for this.’ However, what I discovered once we began filming was that my character was there all along. I worked really hard to establish who Felix was in the first season, and what season two allowed me to do was to ease into the skin of my character.
Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) and Felix (Jordan Gavaris) in season two's "Mingling Its Own Nature With It." Photo copyright of Bell Media/SPACE.
“Instead of being so hyper-focused on the accent, physicality and all the other external work that I did last year to create the character, I was able to sort of push all that aside, trust that I knew it and that it was just below the surface of my skin. In doing so, I gave myself the chance to experiment a little bit more with who Felix is on the inside as a person. I was then able to realize and accept that he’s not going to be exactly the same every time I play him. Human beings are messy as a species, and by that I mean we’re really inconsistent. So this season I allowed myself to relax and enjoy the inconsistency of portraying a real human being as opposed to being so worried about nailing the character.
“Of course, it helped having John Fawcett [series co-creator/executive producer] as the director for our opening two episodes this year as well as last. Obviously, he and Graeme Manson [series co-creator/executive producer] have been around since the conception of Orphan Black, which gives him a unique insight that I don’t think other directors have. We tend to groom our characters a little bit in these earlier episodes, and because John is just as much an authority on these characters as we our, we get to have vivacious discussions on what our characters are doing, what they’re feeling, where they’re headed, what their story arcs look like for the next few episodes and what it all means. So John is a terrific director as well as really communicative when it comes to what he’s looking for and wants, which eliminates any confusion.”
Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) manages to track Kira (Skyler Wexler) and Mrs. S. (Maria Doyle Kennedy) to a safe house and subsequently escapes with her little girl. The two of them hook back up with Felix and together they leave the city to hide and figure out their next move. They end up at an old farmhouse where, much to Felix’s surprise, they meet up with Cal Morrison (Michiel Huisman), one of Sarah’s ex-lovers and Kira’s father. This unexpected family reunion becomes overwhelming for Felix, who suddenly feels totally out of place, so he decides to return home and put some physical distance between him and Sarah.
Road trip! (L-R) Felix (Jordan Gavaris), Kira (Skyler Wexler) and Sarah (Tatiana Maslany). Photo copyright of Bell Media/SPACE.
“For me, I think thematically in season two, Felix’s journey begins with self-exploration, which is relatively apt, I would say, given the rest of Orphan Black’s themes,” notes Gavaris. “Felix needs to redefine himself because he’s been an accessory to the ‘clone club’ for an entire season. I think he’s feeling somewhat lost as well as taken advantage of and exploited, mostly by his sister. So far, Felix has said, ‘Yes,’ to everything that he’s been asked to do. He’s jumped down the rabbit hole with everybody, but at no point did anyone stop to ask him how he’s doing. As a result, he needs time to reclaim a portion of his identity. Felix has just been a tentpole for everyone else, and I think part of his journey is coming to terms with not only that but also the fact that he truly has only himself to rely on.
“Like I said, human beings are inconsistent. So along with the I-can-only-rely-on-myself type attitude, there’s also this recurring theme of, ‘We’re stronger together.’ It’s weird, you know, and there’s going to be this ebb and flow when it comes to Felix this season. Where he winds up, I can’t say, but I don’t think the audience will be disappointed,” teases the actor. “When I was recently in New York City for a BBC America fan screening of the show, I was riding in a limo for about an hour with Graeme Manson and I asked him, ‘Where is Felix going as a character?’ He asked me, ‘Well, where would you like him to go?’ It’s wonderful to feel like I’m part of the [creative] process. For me, this show offers ownership. I’ve never felt more a part of something in my life, and I think that’s something all human beings want, is a purpose. As actors, we bring that to our performances, and it’s also something that our characters want. That’s part of why Felix gets so juiced by the clone mystery. He just longs to be a part of something and have a purpose.”
In season one of Orphan Black, Felix was introduced to a number of his foster sister’s clones including homemaker Alison Hendrix, microbiology student Cosima Niehaus, and the psychotic Helena. Such interaction has become more frequent this season – with the exception of the manipulative and driven Rachel Duncan, who Felix has yet to meet – and that has been an interesting as well as challenging acting experience for Gavaris.
(L-R): Felix (Jordan Gavaris), Alison (Tatiana Maslany) and Donnie (Kristian Bruun), Alison's husband and "monitor." Photo copyright of Bell Media/SPACE.
“There were many, many more clone scenes involving Felix in the second season, which, for me, meant getting used to the techno-dolly,” he says. “Tat [Tatiana] bore the brunt of that last year and again this season, but I got a better feel for it this year, having done far more work with multiple clones in multiple scenes. That was tricky and a real exercise in imagination because you’re reacting to someone who isn’t there. You’re basically talking to an X on the wall; I may have one Tatiana in a scene with me, but I’m also talking to two others who aren’t there.
“Tat credits a lot of being able to do that so effectively to her long-form improv training, which I didn’t have, although I did have some short term and comedic improv training. In doing those scenes, I realized that Sarah’s clones offered me an opportunity to redefine Felix. They’re different relationships that show different sides of him, and, in the process, different sides of me. I may not be playing clones, but I get to do the next best thing – I’m playing opposite one woman who is playing all these different people. That’s a cool exercise in the suspension of disbelief. I know Tatiana very well, of course, and she does an incredible job in giving me every reason in the world to believe that she’s these different women. All I’ve got to do is surrender myself to that and respond to what Tatiana is giving me in a scene.
“I have to say I really enjoyed developing the relationship between Sarah and Felix in season two,” continues the actor. “I think there’s been a great deal of growth in that relationship, where we’ve seen that Felix stands by Sarah and that he’s reliable and can be an asset to her. However, you have the flipside to that sibling relationship, which is the ugly side. There’s the matter of Sarah betraying Felix, not trusting him with this or that, or saying something to someone else that made him feel bad. We get to explore a bit more of that side in season two, which is a side I’m familiar with. Having two older sisters, I know what it’s like to be the younger brother and feel like you’re being excluded, aliened or lonely. Even when you have your entire family around you, it’s easy to still feel that way. So it was pretty neat for me getting to go down that road, instead of, again, Felix always saying, ‘Yes,’ to Sarah and to whatever she asks him to do. This time he says, ‘No,’ for just a little while, and their relationship comes to a head, which then leads to some big decisions having to be made.”
Felix (Jordan Gavaris). Photo copyright of Bell Media/SPACE.
When asked if he has a favorite episode or scene from season two of Orphan Black, the actor chooses two. “In our third episode [Mingling its Own Nature With it] we were filming on-location and not stuck in the studio,” recalls Gavaris. “We were in the country and it was a beautiful place to film. Everyone felt liberated and really open, and there’s some terrific material in this particular episode that I’m quite proud of. I think it’s the first time we witness Felix’s true vulnerability. We’ve seen it a little bit before, but this is him really stripped down to the bone emotionally.
“Then in episode eight, Variable and Full of Perturbation, there’s a very unexpected connection that my character makes and one that offered me a chance to see what Felix looks like when he’s so unsure of himself. Part of his modus operandi or makeup is his confidence. He’s very self-assured, which is something he’s had to work very hard at. Felix has been different his entire life, and in order to survive he’s had to become a confident person, which has not been easy for him. This is the first time we’ve ever seen him afraid, and not pretending, but genuinely afraid. That was another proud moment for me in the redefinition of my character and trying to make him even more of a real person. I can’t wait for everyone to see it.”
While Felix, Sarah and the rest of the Orphan Black characters might be caught up in bizarre and fantastical situations, it is the actors’ efforts to present audiences with real and believable characters that Gavaris feels is one of the reasons why people continue to tune in.
“The story is very well-crafted and the mystery is very intricate, which makes viewers think,” says the actor. “That’s the escapism of Orphan Black, but in addition to that, most people turn to entertainment in order to feel, and I think what really attracts them to this show are its characters. You have these really diverse characters that all represent different sides of humanity. Everyone can look at any character on Orphan Black and see a piece of themselves in that person, even Felix. You don’t have to be a theatre graduate, a rent boy or an urbanite to see part of yourself in my character. That’s what our job is as actors. We don’t go in to play a ‘type,’ we go in to play human. It’s what gives our characters resonance, and it’s what makes them truthful, when someone who’s watching can connect to them.
“So our viewers enjoy the story because it’s an escape, but they also see our characters and are able to relate to them and feel something. It’s a double-whammy, it’s the steak and sizzle, you know? As for Felix, who of us hasn’t felt like an outsider or oppressed at one time or another? Women feel oppressed when they walk down a street and they’re cat-called by someone, Men can feel oppressed if their masculinity is questioned or if they don’t confirm to a certain gender role that the Western world has constructed for us to conform to, which is just ludicrous. Any minority in the world can connect because they’ve probably felt marginalized and oppressed at one time or another. Felix is just a portrait of an outsider or an ‘alien.’ That’s why these stories resonate with those watching, because we all feel like aliens or outsiders sometimes.”
Steve Eramo
Season two of Orphan Black airs Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. EST on Canada's SPACE Channel and in the States on BBC America. Please note, all Orphan Black photos courtesy/copyright of Bell Media/SPACE.
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