According to the Mayan calendar, we’re pretty darn near the apocalypse, but actress Tracy Spiridakos is not even the tiniest bit apprehensive.
“Obviously I would never want something like that to happen, but at the same time, there is a part of me that I consider a warrior and a fighter, so I’m not scared of it,” she says. “If it comes it’ll come, and I’ll deal with it.”
What makes this 24-year-old Canadian so confident about her ability to weather any storm? Well, for starters, she plays an apocalypse survivor on TV.
Spiridakos, a newly minted Toronto resident by way of Winnipeg, Man., stars in this fall’s most anticipated TV drama, Revolution (Mondays on Citytv).
On the show, she experiences life after our civilization’s collapse, and Spiridakos (actually, her character, Charlie Matheson) is every bit the fighter she has to be to live through the chaos.
For this first major leading role of her career, Spiridakos has fallen in with the right people. Revolution is the brainchild of celebrated producer J. J. Abrams — creator of hit shows such as Alias, starring Jennifer Garner, and Lost — and TV gurus Eric Kripke and Jon Favreau.
The series’ plot line is set in motion by an electromagnetic pulse that disables each and every electronic device on earth. Blackberry? Dead. Laptop? Kaput. Refrigerator? Fat chance.
The show’s trailer even depicts airplanes whirling earthward. But life goes on, and 15 years later, humanity has adapted to its new circumstances.
Charlie is now a teenager with little memory of the good old days before the lights went out. Unfortunately, her life is upended yet again when her younger brother Danny is kidnapped by the ruling militia (led by Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito).
Charlie is charged with rescuing her brother, and step one is tracking down her estranged ex-Marine uncle Miles (played by Billy Burke of Twilight fame).
What’s more, she and Danny are of special interest to the bad guys since their father was the only person on earth who held the solution to restoring power to the planet.
Speaking from Toronto’s annual Fan Expo, where the Revolution pilot screened to the largest audience in event history, Spiridakos reveals that she, too, was quick to fall under the spell of the show.
“I was down in L.A. for my first pilot season when I read the script, and I was instantly just in love,” she says. “I wanted the part so desperately.”
The appreciation was mutual: although Spiridakos was a relative unknown to Abrams and Co., they saw something in her audition tape that fit the bill and summoned her to meet in person. As intimidating as that sounds, Spiridakos sailed through her tryout.
“The whole audition process, I’m very lucky to say, was a very positive one,” she says. “Eric is an amazing, fantastic guy, and so is Jon. I felt like they were my friends from the minute I walked into that room, which is always really cool.”
It’s evident that Spiridakos is right for the part from the way she describes her character. (It also doesn’t hurt that she looks like a young Angelina Jolie.)
In the actor’s eyes, there’s more to Charlie than her kick-ass fighting moves and deadly aim with a crossbow.
“I think she’s smart and she’s a fighter, and she’s not the jaded warrior that you usually see when people have gone through so much,” Spiridakos explains.
“They get very jaded and hard, whereas Charlie still wants to be positive. She still wants to love, and she will give people a chance, which is what ends up getting her into trouble.”
Although she identifies with Charlie’s optimism, Spiridakos admits that being involved with Revolution has forced her to look to the future with a bit more anxiety.
“When we were filming the pilot, I remember sitting in Atlanta, sitting in my hotel room and thinking, ‘Wow, I’m away from all of my loved ones right now and they’re all in different places. Where would I go if something like this happened? Which way would I go first?’ ”
Now that she’s had some time to formulate a game plan, Spiridakos has resolved that, in case of disaster, she would head to the ’Peg.
“I have family in Toronto — who I love very dearly,” she says diplomatically, “but my immediate family, my brothers and my parents, are in Winnipeg. So I would need to get to them.”
With the filming of the first season of Revolution underway, Spiridakos is picking up survival skills from Charlie left, right and centre. And she’s having fun doing it.
“The cast and crew get along so well together,” she raves.
“Even if we’re working from first thing in the morning to the wee hours of the night, there’s still always laughter on set.”
She also knows how fortunate she is to be working with some of TV’s top scribes.
“Every script that I get to read, I read it, and I think, ‘I can not wait to get to this part,’ which is so cool. I’m so lucky to have that opportunity as an actor to do something that I’m so passionate about.”
Whether you count yourself among the future fans of the show or not, Revolution might just be prudent watching for everyone because Spiridakos suggests that the sci-fi premise of the show is more real than you might think.
“What’s really cool is that Eric and the rest of the team have asked the powers that be if this concept — the idea of all the power going out — could actually happen, and they said that it is very possible,” she says.
“That’s kind of interesting to think about.”
It sounds less interesting to those of us not trained in shooting a crossbow, but in case of apocalypse, Spiridakos, for one, will be ready.
