Tasya Teles Talks ‘The 100’ and ‘Prison Break’ [Exclusive Interview]

Here at Tell-Tale TV, we cannot get enough of thrilling television.

The 100 Season 4 has been taking audiences on a heart-racing adventure week after week. Meanwhile, Prison Break is gearing up for what is sure to be an epic return in April 2017.

I recently spoke with The 100’s Tasya Teles about Season 4, as well as about her role in the Prison Break revival. If what Teles had to say is any indication, we’re in for some incredible action this year.

Having been a fan of the show before the revival came about, Teles happily re-watched Prison Break before her appearance on the show. “I had to make sure I knew what was going on, I didn’t know where it was going to pick up again,” Teles laughed.

Teles plays an NSA Agent named Tricia who’s surveying the middle east with drones as they search for a certain character. “She’s in the situation room, so to speak. She’s at the front of the action,” teased Teles.

As if working at the NSA isn’t difficult enough, Teles also said “someone from her past shows up and uses a couple of tricks to play Tricia.”

Teles’ will be in Episode 6 of the Prison Break revival, so she’s as excited as we are to see how the season goes.

“I don’t get to see how anything ends in the season,” Teles explained. “They’re dealing with new people every eight days as they film, so eventually you get cut off. I just want to see how everything plays out! [Especially] now that I’m part of the story!”

Teles is no stranger to playing strong female characters, though. She’s best known for her role on The 100 as the fierce Ice Nation warrior, Echo.

Echo was originally introduced in Season 2, and her role has been steadily increasing as the show progresses. In Season 4, Echo is seated at the right hand of King Roan and has become a crucial lynch pin in Grounder/Skaikru relations.

I asked Teles if she had any idea that her role would become so much bigger when she was first cast on The 100. “Oh my gosh, not at all! I was supposed to be, I think in one more episode in Season 2 when I first started, but they changed the finale,” she said.

“Before Season 4 was coming up I just remember looking at my agent and being like ‘I really hope The 100 comes knocking on my door because I am so in love with this show,'” Teles continued.

“It was my favorite experience so far, and I was familiar with everybody, and I really enjoyed my time there. So I was hoping so much to be brought back, and I had no idea that it’d be in such a big capacity.”

Coming on to an already established cast can always be a little nerve-wracking, but from what Teles said, The 100 cast was happy to welcome her on board.

“I was pretty nervous, actually. Because the first day on set it was like they were coming home, or coming back to school after the summertime. They all knew each other, and I was just like, ‘Hey guys’ and some of the people who didn’t know me were just like ‘Hi! Nice to meet you!’” Teles explained.

“Bob [Morley], when he was there, would be like ‘This is Echo, from Season 2.’ It was a bit like going to a new school, you know?”

Having a bigger role in Season 4 allowed Teles to work with some new faces; I asked the actress who she had been looking forward to spending time with the most.

“I was really excited to work with Zach. Though I didn’t really know it at the time, I was more curious about him because everyone’s like ‘you’re gonna love working with Zach’ and I was like, why? Why does everyone keep saying that?” Teles laughed.

“And then I met him, and we just became instantaneous friends, like peas and carrots. We have such a blast. They were totally right, I love working with Zach. Then I became his right hand woman, in the show as his royal guard, so I was often with Zach.”

She also wondered what it might have been like to see her character, Echo, go up against the nightbloods like Luna and Lexa and how those three women would play against each other.

“I think it would be really interesting if you took some of the other Grounder women, some of the most ferocious, say Lexa or Luna, who we know are very strong female characters,” Teles continued. “I would love to see how those three play together. Just because Echo is also up there in terms of her ferocity.”

“That’s always something that I wonder. So Luna’s pretty good we know that, and I mean, Lexa was pretty damn good too, so I don’t know, it’d be interesting to see that for sure.”

Echo is both a spy and a warrior, so Teles has her fair share of action and fight scenes. Teles shared a bit about what it’s like to bring those sequences to life.

“The stunt coordination and fight choreography comes at you so fast and hard,” she noted.

“I’m worried, you know? I don’t want to punch someone in the face, or like kick Bob in a bad place by accident,” laughed Teles. “But they’re really, really amazing at teaching the fight scenes and teaching them in a way that we can hold on to.” 

Speaking of things Teles has learned while working on The 100, playing Echo involves speaking the language of the Grounders, Trigadasleng, a language created just for the show. Teles shared her secret for learning the cryptic lingo and some insight into how quickly things change on set.

“I loved it,” she said. “I realized that there’s a way, for me anyway, to understand how to memorize it.” 

“I would just rewrite it, in a way that phonetically would make sense to me, and then I would kind of just sing it. This is awful, but I would kind of pretend I was rapping, you know to give it that kind of commanding edge that it has,” Teles explained.

“Actually, my first day on set I had like the big speech where I’m like ‘In the name of King Roan, Polis is now under Azgeda rule!'” remembered Teles. “That whole piece that I said in English was actually written in Grounder.”

“I took like weeks to memorize it. I was just driving in my car and I’d be memorizing it and memorizing it, no matter where I was I’d be muttering it to myself. And then I get to set and they’re like ‘oh yeah we’re actually going to get rid of the Grounder and you’re going to say it all in English, and I was like ‘oh okay…’ I’ve never been more disappointed!” laughed Teles.

One of the relationships we’re really enjoying watching play out in Season 4 is the relationship between Echo and Bellamy.

“Those are always the most challenging scenes, when I have to deal with Bellamy,” remarked Teles. “I think those two don’t really know how to figure each other out.”

“Echo understands respect, and honor, and loyalty — things you get taught when you are a royal guard or an assassin. So she respects him a lot, and he’s the only in the Skaikru that she does respect.”

Teles continued, “I think that bothers her. Bellamy is like this pebble in her shoe so that she has this conscience almost. So when she does something, before she’d just do it and have no remorse; now I think it stays with her a bit more.”

It seems as though Bellamy brings out a side of Echo that she never lets anyone see. “She just needs to stay in the safe zone, stay in the warrior because it’s safe here. [That relationship] doesn’t just go away for the rest of the season.”

“That’s what I like most about their relationship, is like how destabilizing [it is] how you never really know what’s going to happen,” Teles explained.

Echo’s relationship with King Roan is also an interesting dynamic we’ve seen developing in Season 4. I asked Teles if there were any limits to Echo’s loyalty to Roan and the Azgeda throne.

“Even if I was to answer that straight up [the answer] would be yes and no. I think you’ll only understand that in watching it,” Teles said.

“She basically is just straight up for Roan 100%, but there’s miscommunication and misunderstandings that, of course, have consequences. So those misunderstandings of one another, that’s where the trouble lies. So that’s what I’ll say.”

Teles and I also discussed some fun topics such as whether or not she had a particular theme song for Echo.

“Me and Zach had a lot of fun on set with ‘Ice Ice Nation,’” laughed Teles.

“I was actually looking for a song for Echo when I was doing my work for her. I wanted something that was really powerful with some finesse or smoothness to it, so I was looking at R&B songs and R&B rap songs,” she said. “I listened to Rihanna when I’d go to set, and it occurred to me that those were kind of perfect attitudinal places where Echo lied.”

As for the kinds of things Teles likes to watch on television hereself, she admitted her tastes are varied, but she can’t get enough of good television.

“I just finished watching Westworld, as everybody has. And I just started watching The Crown which is great,” she said. “I just blasted through Orange is the New Black recently. I just found Workaholics again, so I’ll just throw it on in the background to giggle a bit while I work.”

Be sure to catch Tasya Teles on The 100, airing Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW, and on Prison Break when it premieres Tuesday, April 4th at 9/8c on Fox.

*Featured image credit: Liz Rosa

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