Interview: Lindsey McKeon Is Feeling Supernatural

When Lindsey McKeon took on the role of Marah Lewis (No. 7) on “Guiding Light” back in 2001, she impressed daytime viewers and Emmy voters so much that she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy after having been in the role for a mere two months. Since then, she’s impressed fans of “Drop Dead Diva,” “Supernatural,” “One Tree Hill,” “90210” and many more with her featured and guest-starring roles. As she makes her mark on feature films (her latest short film, “Delicious Ambiguity,” is making the rounds on the film-festival circuit), the gorgeous and talented 32-year-old took the time to talk with me about her past on “GL,” her present co-starring as Tessa on “Supernatural”  — Tessa returns tonight, May 13, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the CW — and her plans for the future.

Celebrity Extra: Tell me about how you got your start. Had you always known you wanted to be an actress?

Lindsey McKeon: No, I didn’t always know, but there were definitely signs when I was young. In fact, in old home videos you can see me putting on a little bit of a show. It was always sort of in me. I like to explore; I like to play; I like to be different characters. But I didn’t really start exploring that until junior high. I was on the phone too much, and my mom wanted to give me a more exciting extracurricular activity. I went to an acting class, and it was the most freedom and fun I’d ever experienced in my life. For me, it was a relief. I always say that acting saved my life. I had a very difficult time in junior high and high school, so this gave me a way to find myself, experience myself and explore that without being so frigging uncomfortable.

CE: You certainly impressed the folks over at “Guiding Light,” being nominated for a Daytime Emmy for playing Marah Lewis.

LM: That nomination was so unexpected, because I was there literally a couple of months before that happened. It was so surprising, so exciting. Being at the awards ceremony was nerve-wracking. I had butterflies in my stomach the whole time. It was like: hope they call me. I hope they don’t call me. I hope they call me. I hope they don’t call me.”

But what could be better for a 19-year-old than to live in New York City? It’s such a tough city that it took me pretty much a year to adapt to it and not call my mom crying. But once I did adapt, I was really living it up, and to be able to work constantly, consistently, having new friends and living in the city was an amazing experience.

I remember being on “GL” — probably my first year there — working with a dialogue coach and learning 20 pages of dialogue a night, every day of the week. My mind would reject the dialogue after a while and would tell me: “No. No more. I’m shutting down. And we won’t learn anything else.” That’s a terrifying feeling for an actor. I spoke with some of the others on the show, and they said: “Don’t worry. This happens to everyone. You sort of lose your mind in the beginning, and then you come back and adapt to it.” And you do get used to it.

CE: Next up for you is your return to “Supernatural” as Tessa the Reaper. Are you excited to be working with them again?

LM: I am very excited. I love Vancouver. I love the show. The boys (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) are great. I’m very happy to go up there again, and this is one of my favorite characters to play.

Lindsey (left) with Jensen Ackles

CE: You recently guest-starred on Lifetime’s cult hit “Drop Dead Diva.” What was that experience like?

LM: That was a really great experience, and a really crazy experience. The cast and crew were phenomenal — amazing people to work with, very sweet and easygoing. They made me feel so comfortable. In the middle of shooting our episode, we had to deal with a weeklong, vicious ice storm in Atlanta. But it was a wonderful experience. (“General Hospital” alum) Rick Springfield is in it. And the lead singer from Rascal Flatts is in it. It’s a super-fun, famous-people episode.



CE: Tell me about “Delicious Ambiguity.”

LM: There are so many great actors in it, Arielle Kebbel (of “Vampire Diaries” and “90210”), Lucas Neff from “Raising Hope,” Lamorne Morris from “New Girl,” and lots of others. Two of my best girlfriends are in this. It was so cool to film — we just got our friends together one weekend and shot this super-fun short film. And now all of a sudden it’s in festivals and it’s doing really well. I play Ellie, the hot girl who loves fitness and loves men. She doesn’t really care what she says. She’s a very strong woman, and at times, other girls attack her for it. It’s fun, it’s comedic, but at the same time it’s very intense. It’s about uncomfortable relationships and all the different turns relationships can take.

CE: While relationships can be scary, I’m thinking your new film, “Indigenous,” is even scarier. Tell me about that.

LM: I am terrified of horror movies, and I rarely watch them because I will start seeing monsters in the shadows. It’s totally fine with me to be in the film, but to actually watch it is scary. When I screened this film, I jumped and screamed a few times. Then I started laughing because everybody around me was laughing at me.

We shot it in Panama for about five weeks, mostly in the middle of the jungle. There were these crazy trees with spikes that we would often run into. We had to have the medics pull the spikes out of our arms and our legs. It was intense. There were monkeys, spiders — all types of jungle creatures. My boyfriend in the film, played by Zach Soetenga, is super interested in finding the chupacabra (a legendary “animal” that has been hunted by cryptozoologists, and those interested in this folkloric deadly creature, since the first sightings in the mid-90s in Central and South America), and finding out whether it’s real and investigating it. Most of us don’t believe it. My character thinks it’s a bad idea to go into the jungle to search for it, but all of my friends are like, “Let’s do it. How bad could it be?” And the rest happens from there. How bad could it be, right? Famous last words.

CE: Why do they always do that?

LM: Right? They’re like, “I hear something. Let’s go investigate.”

CE: Was the actual filming process for you scary? Of course you know that it’s not real, but still, you’re out in the jungle, filming at night. I’d be scared.

LM: The first time we (as actors) saw the chupacabra (while filming), it was the middle of the night, and it was almost pitch-black. Prior to this, we hadn’t met the actor who plays the chupacabra, so we had no idea what he, as a human, looked like, and what he would look like dressed up. We had to pass him on this tiny pathway, and I swear to God, I almost peed my pants. I was so scared, I started running. I was like, “Get me away from him!”

CE: Career-wise, where would you like to see yourself in five years?

LM: Film, film, film, film, film, film. For me, that’s always been a goal, because there is something so pure, so honest, so raw about film actors, and when you’re blown up on a screen that big, there’s no room to fake it. I love the sci-fi/action/thriller-type roles. That would be my ideal, playing some type of futuristic warrior who is traveling around all of these different worlds.

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Interview: Mark Pellegrino — Jesus or Lucifer?

Many know him as Jacob from Lost or Lucifer from Supernatural. I know him as a really nice guy who was a joy to interview. I caught up with Mark Pellegrino (photo left, credit: ABC) a few weeks ago to discuss being on such an iconic television show, life in Hawaii and his plans for the future.

When you were cast as Jacob on Lost last year, had you been a fan of the show, or did you have to do some quick catching up?

I had to do some quick catching up, that’s for sure. I almost don’t own a TV. We have one here for watching movies and stuff, and my wife watches TV to relax, but I’m so busy I can’t usually watch unless I get cast in something and have to watch to do some research.

Because of the great secrecy, do you receive the entire script, or just the scenes you are in? How protective are they of that?

The scripts do come with a special tape on them – I don’t know what the tape means, it’s a kind of reflective tape – and it is delivered directly to the house. I do get the whole script for the episode, surprisingly enough, and I get it about a week in advance. And I’m surprised about that, because people are so hot after the material, you’d think they’d be even more cautious that somebody would steal it off the doorstep.

How is the cast to work with, and how do you like shooting in Hawaii?

Shooting in Hawaii is great. I don’t get to see the island too much unless I have some free time and I’ll bring my wife out there. Otherwise I am in my hotel room hunkered down, reading the script and working on that, and writing and catching up on movies and stuff. But it is really beautiful, and I’ve done a few of the touristy things.

The cast is just phenomenal – not only great actors, but they’re really good people. I’ve worked a lot with Jorge Garcia (giggles) and he’s a really funny guy, (giggles) and a really really good actor (giggles). I’m laughing at something, I don’t even know if I can say – just the way that we work with each other off-camera, he kind of laughs at me and has fun with me. And I’ve worked with Matt (Fox). He’s a really great guy, and so intense, as intense as his character onscreen. So is Nestor (Carbonell), who actually studied at the theater company that I teach at and studied there for a while. He’s a really great guy. It’s nice – it’s a nice group of people.

Were you intimidated to join a show that already had such a faithful following and was such a huge phenomenon? (photo left, credit: Eric Williams)

Luckily I didn’t know it was a huge phenomenon until I landed on the island and was told. There audition sides are not the character name, and the scenes are not the scenes you end up doing. It’s all made-up stuff to throw off all the bloggers and people on the Internet who are trying to get the material. Sounds crazy, but I had no idea what it meant until I got there.

That must be difficult for the casting team, because they have people auditioning for roles, but it’s not the material they’ll be doing, or even the character name.

You know, in a way I am glad they did it that way, because it’s such an iconic role, you don’t want to fall into traps. You could try to act the stature of the part, and it’s really so much more simple and down-to-earth. It’s a good thing to be Jesus the carpenter, as opposed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, the God-like figure. That’s hard to act – the carpenter’s better.

If you had Jacob’s God-like powers, how would you like to see the show end?

I hope it ends well, and I hope Jacob’s point of view about human nature is born out, that’s for sure, because I think it says something about us. I don’t know what that means, but I just hope it ends well, and that my point of view wins out. But I don’t know what that means in concrete fact; I don’t know what that means with respect to the characters.

Playing Jacob certainly is a change from playing your character on Supernatural, which happens to be Lucifer (photo left, credit: David Gray/The CW).

It is fun. In fact I leave on Monday to do some more Supernatural stuff, and I’m looking forward to that because we’re in the middle of the apocalypse. But playing Lucifer is fun; he’s a fun bag of tricks.

How did you make your Lucifer different from other Lucifers in past movies and TV shows?

I guess it’s just to enjoy the different Lucifers I’ve seen in past films and know that this Lucifer is written very differently than the other ones. This Lucifer is written as a very down-to-Earth, honest person. I think I have justice on my side, and that’s a very strong place to come from. I don’t have to lie, pretend, fool anybody, charm anybody – I just tell the truth. That’s pretty unconventional. I can’t think of too many Lucifers who’ve had to deal with those circumstances. They are usually big, iconic, charming, interesting ... although Viggo Mortensen was kind of an interesting – he played Lucifer in Prophecy, didn’t he? He was an interesting, down-to-earth kind of devil, in a way.

You’ve been on a lot of top-notch television shows, like Burn Notice, Dexter, Grey’s Anatomy. What have been some of your favorite experiences and why?

I was coming out of the make-up trailer of Grey’s Anatomy, and Sandra Oh was like, “Oh my God!” and grabs me by the face, kisses me on the face and hugs me. She’s apparently a big Dexter fan. It was a totally shocking experience to have that happen. So that was a really nice, enjoyable experience. 

Being on Dexter was funny too, because me and Michael C. Hall were rivals in the show for Julie Benz’s affection, and for the first episode or two, we didn’t really speak to each other. And I thought he didn’t like me, and he thought I didn’t like him. So we had this totally antagonistic type of relationship, and we never really dealt with it for the first couple of shows until one day by chance, we were at craft services eating something at the same time. And I forget who broke the ice, but one of us just started talking, and we realized that he thought I didn’t like him, I thought he didn’t like me, and we became friends. He’s a nice guy. And I hope he found out I’m nice too.

Is there a particular show you get recognized for more when fans approach you on the street?

Well lately it’s been Dexter, Lost and Supernatural, but I do get a lot of: “I think I know you from somewhere.” Like they think they met me at a party somewhere, but they really saw me maybe on Burn Notice or something. But I’ve been getting a lot of recognition for Lost now. I’ve been getting people walking up to me in the supermarket. Just the other day when they had the premiere, I was getting groceries for my family, and a girl asked, “Are you Jacob from Lost?” And I said, “Yes.” And she said, “We are having a dinner party for you tonight. What are you doing in Valencia?” And I told her I live here with my family, and she says: “Oh, OK, good. Well, all right. Bye!” It’s an interesting phenomenon, definitely.

You played lots of different and interesting characters in your career, but what would your dream role be?

A dream role would be Charlie in Flowers for Algernon, I’m kind of obsessed with it, but I think Will Smith is going to do it. But it’s been a project that I’ve loved for a long time. Actually there is a pilot that Frank Darabont is doing called Walking Dead that I am totally into, and I just went out for it. That would be kind of a dream role. I love the zombie/apocalypse thing and horror. This is from a series of graphic novels, and I like the main character a lot. It’s kind of like 28 Days Later. He wakes up in the hospital after being shot, and the apocalypse has happened and he has to find his way to safety. It’s kind of a cool scenario. And you can’t go wrong with Frank Darabont; I love his work.

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