Castlevania is a franchise that has been popular since the 80's when the first video game was released. In recent years, love for the series has been reinvigorated by the release of Netflix's animated series, which was launched in 2017.
We recently caught up with actress Alejandra Reynoso (Winx Club) as part of our Artificial Season 3 Finale Countdown in which we've been chatting with talents such as Stephen Chang (Last of Us II, Captain Marvel), Tohoru Masamune (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Heroes), Dante Basco (Hook, Avatar: The Last Airbender) and plenty of others.
While chatting with her for our second time, we dug a little deeper into not only her character of Kira from Artificial but also her role as Sypha in the animated Castlevania series. We also learned who from the series she finds to be the evilest, and we got some great answers out of her!
If you're interested in hearing our exclusive chat with Alejandra, click the podcast player below. Otherwise, scroll down for the transcript. We have also included the audio chats with Artificial creator Bernie Su and actress Jennifer Field throughout the article, as Alejandra mentions both of them in our conversation.
Literary Joe: Okay, well, I'm gonna jump into Artificial. Can you kind of give me an update on what's gone on with Kira since the beginning of this season?
Alejandra Reynoso: Yeah. So now we know that she has been working for Whitney Keen, who is the daughter of a Nathan Keen, who met his untimely demise in the previous season when Sophie, my predecessor, poisoned him. And so Whitney has brought Kira on board to get justice for her father and thought Kira was the best way to do it because she had an in with Justin. And since then, we've had the big trial of Dr. Matt Lin, where the Twitch audience was given unprecedented power and a given the power to potentially vote a character off of the island, and a cast member off the show, and also one of the two remaining original season one cast members. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually, the only remaining character up until that point, because Sophie is now Lilith. So he was the last character from Season 1 left standing, and luckily, the audience decided to keep him. So I know Tohoru was very happy about that. And yeah, and then we saw Whitney fire Kira, and we thought maybe this would be the end for her or this character. And it turns out she is not that easy to get rid of. So now we're seeing her working with Sebastian, which kind of goes against a lot of the things that she had professed upfront, but they found a way to coexist, and it's an option for Kira to stay on the project. And better the devil you know. So she thinks it's a better alternative to falling into Xander's hands. So that's where we're at with Kira.
Literary Joe: Now I know that we don't know if there's going to be a Season 4 yet, but if there was a Season 4, what would you like to see happen for Kira?
Alejandra Reynoso: I mean, I'm really enjoying that we're getting to see more of her backstory and we recently had another world-building episode where I got to come on live as myself, and we got to write a scene with the audience where the audience got to write a scene, which was a really cool experience. So we had absolutely nothing going into that. And as the chat and the polls wrote the scene, suddenly there was a script appearing in front of me, and it was like, "Okay, go, you and Steven Chang playing Sebastian are going to do this scene live as the audience writes it." So half the time I was on the stream as Alejandra, when we were talking about the show, and then the audience would add more to the script as we did polls, as we were going through the chats and then Bernie would be like, "All right, Alejandra go off the script, come back on, and we're going to perform live." And we did, and the audience wrote a very interesting scene, and it was kind of wild that it came together at the end. And it definitely gave us more of Kira's backstory, and in a way that actually informed what had come before in the season. And it gives us more moving forward. And we learn more about Dr. Ruby, this character who is played by Jennifer Field, who is amazing. So I've loved that. And so I hope that, if we had a Season 4, and Kira's back for our fourth season, we just get to keep digging more into her backstory.
Literary Joe: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you and Dante, where the two character created episodes, right? I don't think we talked about that last time. Can you kind of give me the rundown on how that went?
Alejandra Reynoso: Sure. Yeah. I mean, its kind of like the world-building scene that I did with Bernie recently, but it was towards the beginning of the season, and it was Justin Lee, who plays Justin, and Bernie Su. And they had told the audience, "Right, we are doing a world-building episode, you're creating a character that is in some way, shape or form related to the character of Justin." And the audience got to decide how they were connected, and they decided, okay, this is Justin's ex-girlfriend. They got to decide what her profession was, and she's a PI. they got to pick out her personality traits, her quirks like she drinks exclusively strawberry milk. And Kira was created entirely by the fans and then cast. And then, for Dante's character, the audience was presented with an actor with Dante, and then they were tasked with creating his character specifically in the show. So even the fan-created characters have all been created in different ways. And we obviously have another one in the works, which Bernie has mentioned, but in terms of what I want to plug, obviously the last two story episodes coming up for Artificial and it's going to get really interesting. And I'm excited to see what happens too because obviously, that's so dependent on the audience that we, as actors, don't even know what's coming down the pipeline.
Darth Lexii: Who do you think is the most evil amongst these characters? Cause there are some really bad guys in this show. I loved the beautiful revealing it's beautifully horrific have the judge's character, but now for you, who do you think would be the evilest?
Alejandra Reynoso: Oh, God. Well, I definitely don't think it's Dracula. Because the impetus for all of this was to stop him from destroying the world, yeah, that's pretty bad, but I can see where he is coming from. You know, the motivation comes from ultimately a pretty pure place, a place of love. And it's just been a little bit twisted the way he's trying to deal with it. And I mean, The Judge, obviously you brought that up. That one is pretty horrific, especially because he presents as being this really righteous character who is in charge of this town, and he is supposed to keep people safe. And he's doing something truly evil, which is going after the most vulnerable, the most innocent. Ah, so that's pretty bad. Carmella as well. It seems motivated from a pretty selfish place. And at the same time, it is a reaction to, in her life, being at the mercy of demented old men. Right? And she is finally coming into her power, and she was like, you know, we're going to do it, and we're going to do it better. And no one's going to get a mess with us again. And she does have that relationship with her sisters. And they're this coalition of very powerful women, but Lenore is another one that is pretty terrifying because it kinda goes hand in hand with The Judge, where she is probably the one that presents the sweetest, and you know, there's this delightfully evil intellect there. Whereas, Carmella's not trying to be anything different. She presents as exactly what she is. And so there's something to that where I find it slightly less evil than what Lenore and the judge are doing, where they present as being one thing like this lovely honey trap. And she turns out to be actually the scariest one of all and twists a lot of those emotions that should be pure, which are love and trust and, and fairness, in her world the way she presents it. So, yeah, I think it's, it's between Lenore, The Judge, and the twins there at the end also give them a run for their money. So I mean, a lot of parallels were drawn there at the end between characters that presented as one thing and used, or weaponized pure emotions and seemingly more genuine emotions. And it turned out to be the most conniving of all. So yeah, not necessarily Carmela or Dracula, but The Judge and Lenore are pretty scary.
*This interview has been edited for clarity. Audio is co-hosted by Toonado writer Nick Brooks and cosplay actress Darth Lexii.*
The groundbreaking Twitch series Artificial returns with Artificial: Remote Intelligence. This season takes a huge step forward with a bold new sci-fi vision and ground-breaking interactive methods, including an audience-controlled musical score and revolutionary new interactive Worldbuilding episodes. Viewers will be able to dictate aspects of the production including casting of new characters, story, and set design.
Artificial airs live on Twitch tonight, and every Thursday at 5:00 pm PST, and Castlevania can currently be viewed on Netflix.