Hopefully you’ve had a chance to catch last week’s episode of Syfy’s Being Human, the first episode featuring Suren, vampire queen Mother’s vampire daughter, played by Dichen Lachman. She brings an otherworldly vibe to the part and to the show. She took time out of her schedule last week to answer some questions from the press.

SciFi Mafia: Thanks so much for being on the call. I was a big fan of Dollhouse. I’m so sorry it ended so soon.

Dichen Lachman: Oh yes, but then I can’t do Being Human.

SciFi Mafia: Exactly, so we’re happy about that. I’ve seen your first episode of Being Human and to have you in the part, it seems like it’s tailor made for you. Do you know if they made any changes to the character once you were cast?

Dichen Lachman: I don’t know. I know that there’s a few people working in the writing staff that worked on Dollhouse or maybe no, one. Maybe it’s just (Lisa). But the creative, the sense of the show, I don’t know if they changed anything.

I actually should ask them, but it was such a great opportunity and it came round and I had to chemistry read and like everyone who was there was so nervous. But when I got the sides and they said, they’re interested in sort of auditioning you for this part, I read them and I was like, “This is great.”

Like if just sometimes you read material and it just makes sense to you and I don’t know whether that’s just, because it’s meant to be or because the writing’s good and the writing is good. But I just read it and I was like, “I think I know how this girl is meant to play and I know where she sits. And I understand it.” It wasn’t like a really great leap for me to make as, as an actor as far as like, “Oh, how do I do this?”

It just came to make complete sense to me. So I’m not sure if they wrote it with me in mind or whether they changed it. I have no idea, I’d love to know. I should ask the guys, but no when I read the (slides), I was like, “This is so exciting” and I was so looking forward to being able to go into those dark places. Because vampires are – they’re very interesting creatures.

They play out one sort of shadow itself and you don’t get the opportunity to really do that a lot of the time, to live in that dark space constantly.

SciFi Mafia: Right.

Dichen Lachman: So no, I’d love to know the answer to that. I can’t tell you right now, but I can say that when I read it I really responded to it and I was really excited to go in and have the opportunity to read with Sam and for Syfy. And the people who, the wonderful writers and creators of the show.

SciFi Mafia: Well, like I said, it’s wonderful casting and I’m so happy seeing it. I can’t wait to see the rest of it. Thanks so much.

Dichen Lachman: Oh, thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the episodes.

I love what she shared in response to SciFiVision’s question about the most challenging aspects of shooting this series:

Dichen Lachman: The most challenging, it’s going to be so – such a basic thing. I think it was like showing the teeth with the dots so they could like the fangs extending. And wearing the black contact lenses which cover your entire eye. I mean, all of us – all the vampires you had to have them fitted. You used to dread sitting in the makeup chair having someone like put these enormous lenses in our eyes.

It was very difficult and Sam and I often had conversations about how to show our teeth so they could see CGI, the fangs growing because you kind of feel like a complete (unintelligible) in front of the camera and you’re trying to raise your upper lip so they can, find the dots to make the CGI possible.

That was I think one of the more difficult things because I’ve never done anything. Well, I’ve done things with CGI, but never sort of, that’s part of the performance. And when you’re performing – I mean, this is one of the things about being an actor. Sometimes it’s just very technical, it’s not sort of really craft-based.

You have to be this angle and you have to raise your lip just the right amount and, you’re still trying to keep in the moment and also satisfy the needs of the effects department. That was a real challenge and it’s such a basic thing.

But no, I found that one of the more difficult things and obviously, as an actor sometimes when you’re doing a show, you have – and they shoot so fast especially, on a show like Being Human. I mean, they’re all remarkable. They work very quickly. They work very hard and the actors are all incredibly good. So they’re all, they’re for each other and for the show.

But when you have to reach that emotional point, sometimes you don’t always have the time to get where you need to get and there’s a lot of pressure that I put on myself to get to those places and really commit to them. And I think one of the things in television is when you’re working at that speed, you really have to have a technique.

You’re like a very strong technique so that you can be in those moments truthfully for the show and for the character. That was also challenging and that’s challenging in all shows, when you have to get to the heightened emotional place. But you couldn’t be working with nicer people, more supportive. And yes, so it was definitely the technical aspect first and then reaching that sort of heightened emotional state.

She was also asked if it was possible to see through the special contacts:

There’s a tiny little hole for your pupil to see through, but it’s not very big. So your vision is limited. You can still see. It’s very uncomfortable for the first sort of 15 minutes because the things so large and so foreign in your eye. But then it’s sort of like, it settles in and you just have – your peripheral vision becomes extremely limited and you can only really see what’s directly in front of you.

And I remember Sam and Kyle had a big fight scene and they wanted them to wear these contacts and they were like on the top of a building with no balcony. They’re on the roof and Sam just had to say, “We can’t do this with the contacts in. We may fall off and we can hardly see.” It was so completely dangerous. Yes so you can still see, but it’s very limited.

But everyone’s so understanding and the makeup department, they’re the sweetest, loveliest people on Earth. And, they did everything to try and make you feel comfortable. And, everyone understood that it was like a thing. I can’t even imagine doing an entire film with those things in and I know people have. But yes, you can see.

She told us about developing the accent she uses for the part, as her natural accent is Australian:

I only got there a few days before and we were still trying to find her voice. Like well how does someone who’s 500 years old or 1000 years old speak, especially when they’ve been in the ground for 80 years?

And I had my ideas and the show runner’s had their ideas. And we were trying to find sort of that balance, what does she sound like? And yet you have mother who sounds very, specific and strong. And so does she sound like her mother exactly or is she a little bit different? And finding the voice, the accent was very tricky on the first day. But we finally, I have a lady I work with who’s amazing, a dialect coach.

And we basically created after that first day because it was sort of, it was something that we just bypassed, somehow we didn’t manage to discuss. Because I assume that what I did was in the audition was sort of what I would do and then we actually had a discussion about it, but it was sort of too late to change anything.

So the very next day, I worked with my dialect coach and we designed sort of an accent and a voice for her that was a little bit American, but a little bit British, sort of like a mid-Atlantusesque type accent. But not specifically. We kind of modernized it slightly and made her a little bit more youthful.

And then once we came up with her voice, I went back and I don’t know if you want to write this or not. But ADR, some of my speeches on that first day because I wanted there to be some consistency with the character obviously. I mean, that’s one of the most important things with the voice and sound because you don’t want that to take someone out of the show or getting carried away with the storyline.

So yes, we went back and we ADRed over that because that was very challenging. And, “per sona” in Latin apparently means “through sound.” And you can fool people with little like tricks and people will accept things and they don’t look so good. But if something doesn’t sound right, people won’t believe it. And it’s very important for me for the characters voice to be specific and consistent and settled.

So that was like one of my main priorities on the first day was communicating with Adam Kane about what they were looking for and how I felt about the character. And then bringing in Mary McDonald-Lewis who’s just so – an incredible dialect coach.

To just communicate, with the show runners and with me and just so we were all speaking the same language and finding her voice because, you don’t want her to sound like she’s from, Pasadena or Brooklyn or something. You want her to sound like she’s from another world in a way, but you don’t want her to be inaccessible.

So hopefully – I don’t know if you’ve all seen the second episode, but hopefully you like her sound and it’s something that, that you respond to because it was one of the things that was really important for me.

And she spoke a bit about working in sci-fi:

Dichen Lachman: I love sci-fi and fantasy. It’s, for me, I – my friend, a very good friend of mine, (Max Kabalek), he always – he’s in casting. But he always says, “I’m Asian, but from the future.” So it’s sort of – it’s very hard for me to fit into like a period piece or, you know – I mean, yes in modern days, they can sort of slip me into a show here or there, but for the family involved forget about it because, I have like this sort of weird, unique alien thing going.

And so I’m very grateful that I guess in a way it just kind of works. Like I love sci-fi, fantasy and I kind of fit into that world because I don’t – it’s weird. People find it hard to cast me in real circumstances. I hope that changes because I’ve always loved period pieces and I love the fact that on this show because it is a fantasy, I actually get to be – I get to exist in, the 1920s and 30s.

in the normal world – I mean, like I love Deadwood, but I’d never be on that show. Like I think it’s one of the greatest shows ever and if I was on that show, I’m Australian and my father’s family is European and I really respond to that. I understand sort of that time and I would love to explore that, but I can’t. I mean, unless someone writes a show or a movie about one of the little people or the women who work in like in an opium den way back then or something. It’s just not going to happen. So one of the most exciting things about reading the scripts they came in with that I could be a person or a vampire at least. But in that period and I get to be like a person that people acknowledge and not just like one of the Asian people that do something in the background. So that was really exciting.

I guess it’s because they weren’t like doing things of note because they were sort of the people that were kind of pushed down to the bottom of things. It was just the way it happened. I don’t think – obviously there are stories like that that are really fascinating, that occurred in those communities, but I feel like no one wrote them down. I hope something surfaces sometime soon, but at the moment, I love sci-fi/fantasy and somehow I just – thanks to Joss Whedon I guess I’ve made a little home there. And I hope I can continue to do this genre because I love it. I love it, I think it’s a wonderful place to play out ideas and opinions about the world today in a safe place, you know.

Thanks again to Dichen Lachman for taking the time to speak with us; she was a treat. Make sure to check out her performance in this season of Being Human.

Being Human, starring Sam Witwer, Sam Huntington, Meaghan Rath, and Dichen Lachman, airs Monday nights (tonight!) at 9/8c on Syfy.