Esme’s been stuck in the Wyndemere tower for quite some time now and we’re seeing how very antsy she is getting. “Yes, I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little antsy, too! I love the tower set; I think it’s so fun, but I’m ready for a change of scenery — and I’m pretty sure Esme was ready for a change of scenery about 20 episodes ago.”
The entrance of the Elizabeth character into your storyline has been fun to watch. You’d never had scenes with Rebecca Herbst (Elizabeth) before. “No, I don’t even think I’d ever really seen her in the hallway before, to be completely honest! Which I think is just wild because of all the stuff with the trial and the Cam/Joss sex tape. I was really surprised that there wasn’t interaction between Elizabeth and Esme at that time, although Esme was really only at the trial for one episode. She popped in, did her ‘I’m the picture of innocence’ thing and hopped out as quickly as humanly possible [laughs]! I really like working with Becky. She gives me a lot to work with and because of that, I end up doing things in the scenes that were different from what I expected to do. She’s fantastic. Such a pro, such a sweetheart, she’s always got her stuff down and she’s ready to go. I think when someone is super-easy to work with, it makes it that much more fun, and an on top of that, she’s an amazing performer. Also, I think it’s really interesting having this maternal figure pop into Esme’s life — not necessarily a maternal role model for her, specifically, but someone who certainly understands what it’s like to have kids while Esme is trying to step into that role for the first time in her life. Especially considering that Elizabeth is helping Nikolas and considering what Esme did to Cameron.”
We’ve seen some indication that Esme does truly care about the baby she’s carrying. Do you think that’s sincere? “I think she really does care about that baby. It might simply stem from the selfish point of view that yes, this baby can help her, but also, this baby is someone that she can love unconditionally and that will unconditionally love her, which she has not experienced in her life. So I think that’s a really big thing for her. Plus, she’s been stuck in this tower for so long, it probably feels like years to her, and she’s talking to this baby and to her father, who’s just a figment of her imagination — those are her companions at the moment.”
You brought a lot of “eating for two” realism to those scenes where Esme scarfed down breakfast in front of Nik and Liz! “I loved filming those scenes. They gave me that plate of food and I had so much fun with it because Esme hadn’t eaten in a while; she’d been trying the starvation tactic [to get Nikolas to release her] because desperate times call for desperate measures. So when she finally got to eat that plate of food, it was really fun to just go to town on some really cold eggs! I was like, ‘Wow, I get free breakfast today!’ I’ve had a lot of scenes where Esme feels incredibly trapped, but in those scenes, I felt a lot of freedom and it created some really fun moments.”
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