Luisa D’Oliveira Talks ‘Channel Zero’ and ‘The 100’ [Exclusive Interview]

With Halloween right around the corner, we’re craving new spooky horror shows to put us in the mood for the season. Channel Zero, Syfy’s new horror series set to air October 11th at 9/8c, is here just in time to be your new creepy obsession.

I recently spoke with The 100’s Luisa D’Oliveira about Season 4, as well as her new role on Channel Zero. After hearing what she had to say, I cannot wait to watch either one.

“Channel Zero is going to be really fun, it’s going to be very, very creepy,” D’Oliveira teased.

The series centers around Mike Painter, played by Paul Schneider, who returns to his hometown to make peace with his dark past, only to find the horrors of his childhood are happening once again. D’Oliveira gave us an inside look at how the series plans to captivate us later this month.

The best type of horror is the kind that draws you in and preys upon our fears in a psychological way, and Channel Zero looks to do exactly that.

“I’m not usually a huge fan of horror, but psychological horror…I don’t know if it’s because horror scares me so much, but when it has a really strong and well-developed psychological element, I really love it,” D’Oliveira said. “Channel Zero has elements of that, absolutely. It’s very much that kind of a show. It takes you into the dark, dark corners of your mind that should be safe, and there’s a bit of reality in there, which makes it even more scary.”

“I really enjoy that real scary space as opposed to the pretend scary space, [such as] a slasher film, [where] we all know it’s a slasher film and there’s no getting around that fact. This gets into your psyche. This is psychological horror, and it messes with your head a bit. And it terrifies me in a good way, and I find myself drawn to it,” she continued.

“It’s slower than, say, some of the horrors you can find in both movies and TV, but it’s the kind of show that invites you in,” she explained. “I think it’s going to turn out to be really, really good.”

D’Oliveira plays Amy Welch, a young, upbeat sheriff’s deputy ready to prove herself.

“She’s bright-eyed and good at her job, and just a great person to be around. But she hasn’t really been tested that much, because she’s a sheriff’s deputy in a very small town, and not that many crazy things happen. So she’s going to get put through the gauntlet, she doesn’t know it yet, but it’s coming for her, and she’s really going to be tested under fire.”

Amy Welch seems like a bright spot in an otherwise dark and scary world, much like many see D’Oliveira’s character on The 100, Emori. But according to the actress, they couldn’t be more different!

“They are exact opposites! Emori is so… there’s such a heaviness to her and a seriousness most of the time. Sometimes playfulness comes out, especially when she’s with John Murphy,” she said.

“But she’s just been through so, so much in life that it weighs on her like a house of pain. And she carries it with her on her back everywhere she goes. Even though she fights really hard against it. So carrying that around when I’m playing Emori, it just puts you in such a heavy mindset.”

D’Oliveira continued, “[with] Amy things have been pretty good in her life. She’s had a small town upbringing and hasn’t really had anything too crazy that she’s had to deal with.”

“She’s had her normal ups and downs — getting people to take her seriously, especially in a small town when, you know, the people that you’re trying to police or work with in the community have all seen you since you’ve been running around in diapers.”

“Playing Amy, I just got to have such a lightness, in me and it was so wonderful for two and a half months to just hold that energy inside of me, it was just lovely.”

The 100 cast and crew members keep a tight lid on spoilers for the apocalyptic drama, but D’Oliveira was able to give us a taste of what to expect in the coming season.

“Well, our heroes are obviously in a conundrum because there’s the big bad mother Earth coming for them, which is pretty difficult to fight against,” she confirmed. 

“I can say, there’s a bit of a mix up going on. Almost everyone was chipped by the end of Season 3, and everyone got unchipped around the same time. So we have a whole bunch of different grounders mixed up with a whole bunch of different Skaikru, in all these different areas and now suddenly everyone’s back to the way they were.”

“And a lot of people have been killed by ALIE, [people] who wouldn’t get chipped, or who did get chipped and killed themselves trying to get other people chipped. So there’s going to be a really big aftermath, of trying to sort that out, because everyone’s got their pain back. Everyone’s got their emotions back. There’s just going to be a lot of repercussions from that,” D’Oliveira explained. 

She also gave us a glimpse of the challenges Emori is facing in Season 4, as well as a better understanding of just how connected ALIE’s chipped soldiers were at the end of Season 3.

“As far as Emori goes, she’s now in the thick of a society that she has been exiled from, and robbing from, and avoiding getting too close to for basically her entire life,” she said.

“Everyone who was in the City of Light with her had an awareness of her. And she has an awareness of them, because they were all linked to an extent. So she’s not this anonymous bandit in the desert anymore. People know about her and her ability to sort of be a like a wolf in the night. It’s going to be more difficult, and she has to deal with that and deal with society. And it’s gonna be, I think, a very big challenge for her.”

Speaking of challenges, I also asked D’Oliveira what it’s like learning and speaking the grounder’s language, which was created just for the show.

“First off, it’s just so amazing that they literally created an entire new language. But in a way it’s sort of like Creole, because it’s derivative of English and slang. You can hear English, you can hear slang in the language, and then there’s other elements as well, but it’s like it’s own animal,” she explained. “It’s so fun! I love speaking in Trig because something about it is primal and aggressive and it allows me, and I think a lot of the other actors, to just tap into that place that a lot of the grounders inhabit even more easily.”

“There’s a real metamorphosis that happens, even on set. When you show up you see everyone who comes in at the beginning of the day and we’re all in our normal clothes,” D’Oliveira continued. “After everyone goes through hair and make-up, after you know four hours or so, it’s like this whole other world has been born, it’s magical.”

“It’s magical watching the show, but it’s also magical working on it. And Trig is one of the big components of that. It’s like a doorway, like a direct route kind of, into the grounder spirit.”

A recent Twitter campaign about representation on The 100 brought out several people who are very thankful to see themselves shown in a positive light on television by characters like Emori. I asked D’Oliveira how it felt to know that she provided that for an often overlooked group of people.

“I’m really honored by it, and I think that it’s really great that the main creators of the show chose to first have this character, and to bring her back and make her as prominent as she is. And second to give her that attitude towards it, where she sees it as a part of her and is completely accepting of it. Not seeing it as making her any less able than anyone else. Or worth anything less than anyone else, regardless of what they think.”

D’Oliveira continued, “it’s a very underrepresented group of people when you look at film and TV. There’s a lot of groups that are underrepresented, so it really means a lot to me to be a part of that. “It’s something above and beyond the love of playing a character — the love of acting.”

I also spoke with D’Oliveira about her upcoming appearance at Unity Days 2017, and she’s as excited as I am to be attending!

“It’ll be my first convention! I’m really excited. I’ve already been asking people on set what to expect because I’ve heard they’re tons of fun, very exhausting because there’s just so much going on all the time, but then they’re just an absolute blast. Everyone seems to love them.”

I ended our chat by asking her about her favorite shows to watch. D’Oliveira tends to drift toward shows much like the ones she’s a part of: dark, gritty, character-driven dramas.

“I love a lot of TV, but right now I’m into True Blood because I didn’t finish it the first time around. And The Walking Dead, also because I’m behind! Both very bloody, gory, violent shows. I love Game of Thrones, I love Rectify, Broad Church — give me some good BBC any day,” she said.

“TV is incredible. There’s so much good TV nowadays; we’re living in a land of plenty. It’s wonderful.”

Be sure to catch Luisa D’Oliveira on Channel Zero, premiering Tuesday, October 11th at 9/8c on Syfy. You can also see her when The 100 returns to The CW in 2017.

Featured image credit: Natalie Robinson