If you’ve been keeping up with Saint X then you’re probably as excited as we are about FINALLY getting to the bottom of what really happened to Alison with the season finale set to air this week.
Source: Paloma Alegria / hulu
On this week’s episode, written by Saint X showrunner Leila Gerstein and directed by Ekwa Msangi, Emily learns the truth from Clive and all is revealed about what actually happened that fateful night on Faraway Cay.
We spoke with Saint X stars Josh Bonzie and Alycia Debnam-Carey about what drew them to their roles as Clive (aka Gogo) and Emily (aka Claire).
“I really admired how the show takes a look at a community that is kind of already being written off,” Bonzie told Global Grind. “They rush to judgment very early on about these two gentlemen and by the end of it you realize that you were completely wrong and you had no idea what the actual story was and so it kind of has this way of — it’s like, a slight of the hand, or a trick of the light and that kind of turns the mirror back on you and our own you know biases and judgments.”
His co-star Alycia Debnam-Carey says the complexity of the series made her role all the more enticing.
“I was really attracted to this sort of psychological insight into someone who’s gone through such trauma,” Debnam-Carey told Global Grind. “To me it really felt like this sort of experience of a fractured person, having to reunite two parts of themselves, and then this psychological down spiral. It’s not just a murder mystery and trying to understand what happened to her sister and and to get some sort of justice for it, but in so many ways it becomes this mystery into who she is and what happened to her and how she then had to fill a void in her family and what she left behind through this childhood trauma to become the person she is now which in so many ways embodies a version of her sister. So I think for me it was the sort of psychological insight that really attracted me to this role.”
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One of the things we found most compelling about Saint X was the way Emily and Clive formed a bond both on and of off the island by finding their independence, after living in the shadows of Alison and Edwin.
“I think that Clive is sort of frozen in time a little bit,” Bonzie said of his Saint X character. “You know the way that trauma can sometimes affect people, where he’s sort of stuck in like a loop where you know every day is gray and monotonous? This one tragic event really changed the trajectory of his life. How does one move on from that? How does someone carry on from such a thing? I’m sure he would go back and do things differently, but life’s not like that and I think that he’s someone who that’s very evident with.”
Source: Paloma Alegria / hulu
“Emily. — I think it’s so interesting how she, in many ways, tries to become a version of her sister to fill this void in the present day,” Debnam-Carey told Global Grind. “We sort of see it in that she’s dyed her hair blonde and she’s become a documentary filmmaker and trying to live in an area of New York where she feels like she needs to be a little bit more adventurous and takes on these sort of personality traits that I feel like Allison exemplified so much. In so many ways I think she is arrested in her development from being a child.”
We don’t want to drop any spoilers on you, but we’re eager for everyone to finally get a chance to see the full truth about Clive and Edwin.
“What I found really interesting is then when finally you see Clive and Emily start to have this sort of dynamic between the two of them, you know we sort of see these pieces of young Emily/Claire suddenly coming back and this childlike fascination and this deep need to understand how these two parts of her life can exist and at the same time,” Debnam-Carey added. “The person she knew Clive to be was this great lovely person and how could he become this villain in the public eye?”
We are about to find out! The first seven episodes of Saint X are currently streaming on HULU. The season finale streams Wednesday. Make sure to tune in.
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