Earlier this week, SciFi Mafia had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Felicia Day (The Guild, Eureka), star of SyFy’s Red: Werewolf Hunter premiering tonight. Red is part of SyFy’s series of modernized fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast and Hansel and Gretel and tonight’s installment is just what we need to celebrate Halloween.
Day stars in Red: Werewolf Hunter along with Kavan Smith (Stargate: Extinction, Eureka) and Stephen McHattie (Immortals, Happy Town). Day portrays Virginia Sullivan, “a descendant of Little Red Riding Hood [who] brings her fiancé home to meet her family and tell him about the family business – they are werewolf hunters.”
Just how does Red modernize the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood? Day tells us how we go from the fairy tale of a victim of a wolf attack to perpetrating slayage on werewolves.
SciFi Mafia: Felicia, let’s talk a little bit about the mythology of your character’s family and how we get to the storyline of Red coming from the fairytale.
At the end of the Grimm version of Little Red Riding Hood, Riding Hood and her grandmother do actually set a trap for another opportunistic wolf having learned from their first experience with one. Does Red take the story from that point and progress it forward to a werewolf-hunting in a modernization of the story?
Felicia Day: I think that was definitely the inspiration from it. I think the fairytale itself was only like a jumping off point about the idea that if the first Red Riding Hood killed the first wolf then what if they felt like the responsibility was to kill all wolves forever and keep them away from the world.
So, I mean, it’s not so much a literal I think interpretation as just a jumping off point of the idea that you have werewolves joined with that fairytale which I think is kind of a clever thing.
SFM: Are you more of a werewolf person or a vampire person? Because people are usually one or the other.
Felicia Day: Yeah, I mean, I think there has been really fun stuff on both ends as far as literature. I love Mercedes Thompson (or Mercy Thompson). Those books are fantastic ones that made me love werewolves in a way that I didn’t like before.
So I have to say that vampires are definitely my preference but there are certain books that bring werewolves to life really, really well and hopefully that will kind of continue into Red be a sort of humanization or anthropomorphize them, is that the word?
SFM: Well I’m an old skool vamp lover so I’m firmly in the werewolf-killing camp. I’ll be cheering you on.
Felicia Day: You’ll be enjoying what happens in the movie then.
SFM: Yes, I hope so! And what was the most fun you had in that role?
Felicia Day: It was fun like at the – I love doing the fights things, I really did. Being able to run and jump on people and like slash and learning how to use a gun. Like I said, I actually went and trained and went to a shooting range and shot real guns to do that because I didn’t want to look like I didn’t know how to handle a firearm which was really fun.
Those are the fun things in acting when you can learn something new and you take that through. It changes you. Those things just add to who you are and what you know how to do.
SFM: Excellent. Well I can’t wait to watch Red when it premieres this weekend. And you are a huge inspiration for geek girls everywhere so thank you very much and we love you.
Felicia Day: Oh thank you so much for saying that. It really does mean a lot to me.
SFM: Thank you!
Check out the trailer and sneak peek of Red.
Don’t miss the premiere of SyFy’s Red: Werewolf Hunter, starring Felicia Day tonight, Saturday, October 30th at 9/8C on SyFy.
Read more on SyFy’s modernized fairy tales here.
