The new sci-fi drama series Stitchers premieres this Tuesday, June 2 on ABC Family. Stars Emma Ishta (Kirsten) and Kyle Harris (Cameron) had a few things to say about the new series, their characters and what would-be fans can expect from the show.
Stitchers brings to life a covert government project where agents are recruited to be stitched into the minds of the recently deceased, using their memories to investigate murders and decipher mysteries that otherwise would have gone to the grave. Kirsten (agent) and Cameron (neuroscientist) work alongside one another in this secret program, headed by Maggie (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), a skilled veteran of covert operations.
Emma sheds a little light about her character. “Kirsten is a computer science grad student and she gets recruited by this covert government agency to hack into the brains of deceased people. She has this condition called temporal dysplasia that affects her in two different ways. The first way is it affects her ability to comprehend the passage of time, so every moment to her feels as if it’s always been there, like she’s constantly experiencing déjà vu. And it also affects her ability to emotionally connect with herself with her own emotions and also with the emotions of other people. So throughout the season you see her become a part of this crazy program and how that affects her as a human being throughout the course of all the adventures they go on.”
Kyle chimes in on his role as Cameron. “Cameron is the head of this Stitchers program that Kirsten is the subject in and you start to see his process. As soon as he meets Kirsten, his world is flipped upside down because now he’s got this beautiful girl inside of his lab that he has to navigate his emotions for, but at the same time feel responsible entirely for because, as you learn throughout the season, there are some things that went wrong in the past in this Stitchers programming and he vows to never have it happen again. So he’s just contemplating his emotions with Kirsten as are they romantic feelings or are they actually just overbearing parental feelings in a way because he’s got such a responsibility to protect her at all costs? You start to see him grow as more of a hero and guy as she pulls him out to the street and basically takes the crime fighting into their own hands and that’s sort of different.”
In the show, both of these characters play off of one another by continuously challenging, changing and drawing things from the depths of each other’s psyches.
Both Kyle and Emma are looking forward to this new twist in the sci-fi genre. “I’m excited for fans to see a sci-fi procedural show on their favorite network that they’ve never seen before. I think we’re branding a new way for the network and we’re very proud of what we’ve been doing. I think people are going to be able to relate to these characters, whether they’re into sci-fi or procedural — or just cool human beings that are smart and using it in cool ways. I think that’s really fun. I think it’s going to reach out to a lot of audiences,” says Kyle.
Emma continues, “I completely agree with Kyle. It’s so different for the network, and we’re excited for the audience base and new people who might watch the show to see something different that we’ve been working on.”
There is a lot of CGI that goes into this series to breathe the sci-fi reality into the show. “Something that’s been unusual for me throughout this entire process is CGI, especially the stitch stuff that I do. We’ve done a lot of green screen work and we’ve done a lot of imagining to stuff that’s happening when it’s special effects. So that’s been interesting because you’re basically in your own world and you don’t have a lot to react off of — you’re creating or pretending that all of this stuff is going on around you, all of this crazy stuff, having things fly at your head and it’s not really happening. So that’s been really unusual and interesting and I think it’s a really cool part of the show. Also the tank, let me just throw that out there. I do spend a lot of time in the tank (up to 6 hours in a day),” reveals Emma.
Emma’s character is initially a very non-emotional kinda gal, but as the show goes on, the more she is stitched into the memories of “dead people”, the more she evolves over the course of the season because she feels what they feel and thus her emotions start remapping themselves back into existence over time. This can definitely be a struggle. “Imagine spending 23 years of your life or since she was 8 years old, not really feeling anything, not really connecting. Now all of a sudden you have these really strong emotions pouring at you. So I think the hardest thing for me has been tracking her journey as she evolves into an emotional being,” says Emma.
The show isn’t all sci-fi and procedure with no play however. Emma explains, “It’s just one of those shows that has a bit of everything. It has humor and it has drama, so definitely finding its voice, and finding what all of the characters’ voices are together and what Stitchers is going to be to people. It takes a while for it to get into sync; that was interesting as well.”
When asked what memory she’d like to be “stitched” back into if they had the chance, Emma responded by saying”her wedding day. It was full of joy and laughter and love and there was rain. And people were dancing barefoot in the rain and mud everywhere and it was so unifying and wonderful and if I could experience that again, I would in a heartbeat.”
Talking about where he pulled his inspiration from to portray his character, Kyle reveals, “Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch. I just sit and watch Sherlock and Watson traits that they both have that are both Cameron in a way. Sherlock is this headstrong guy, he knows what’s going on, and he’s got this passion. He knows what’s happening and then you have Watson, who’s the side of Cameron that when he leaves the lab and he’s following Kirsten in this way and they’re wondering “what are we doing, we shouldn’t be here,” the crazy neurotic side. I watch that show and take both of their traits as characters and wrap it into one as Cameron and that was helpful for me to watch and say “okay, I like the way these guys think.” That’s the intelligent level that Cameron and the rest of the Stitchers crew is at — being prodigy geniuses that are always one step ahead of everyone else.”
There you have it sci-fi lovers … Stitchers looks to be an interesting new show joining the ABC Family channel. Check it out this Tuesday, June 2 @ 9/8c.
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