Canadian actress Carrie-Anne Moss has carved out an esteemed career in Los Angeles but admits she thinks about moving back home “like every day, all day.”
The Vancouver-raised star, who can be seen in Season 2 of the AMC sci-fi hit Humans kicking off Monday, says the U.S. has been great to her. She’s met “so many amazing friends” and has seen “many people who are really doing incredible things” where she lives, she noted in a recent phone interview.
But her heart lies north of the border and she’s always thought about returning.
“That’s where I’m from and Canada is such an amazing country, and I’m so proud to be Canadian. . . . My husband is a dual citizen, he’s Canadian and American, but his parents are Canadian, so it’s something we’ve been thinking about forever,” said Moss.
“But then the reality is that our kids have been born and raised here, and so it becomes a little more complicated than just an idea of moving to somewhere we think is politically better and has fresher air and less people, and people with a lot of manners and kindness and compassion. It’s tempting. Never say never, and depending on the day of the week and depending on the news headlines.”
Humans is set in a parallel present-day world in which anthropomorphic robots called “synths” are an inextricable part of society.
In Season 2, which is set several months after the events of Season 1, Moss’s character Athena wants to create a new kind of machine consciousness. She’s given that chance when she’s hired by a billionaire tech-company owner, played by Marshall Allman.
Moss said the role provided a new challenge for her: having to act opposite a computer.
Athena often interacts with V, her own data sorting program, and Moss only had V’s female voice and energy to play off.
“They had an actor there with a voice that I felt like I wanted to do those scenes with day in and day out, because I do have a lot of scenes with V,” she said.
“So that was really helpful, to have a person there talking, getting to know her.”
When the actor doing V had to take a day off work and someone else stepped in, Moss realized how attached she was to the voice.
“It’s not easy to do that kind of work, I think, for me, anyway: pretending whatever with a screen,” she said.
“It’s not really what I’m that good at, but I enjoyed the challenge and I enjoyed trying to find ways to make this machine like a real person for me.”
Athena is yet another strong female character for Moss, who got her breakthrough with her butt-kicking role as hacker Trinity in The Matrix 17 years ago.
“That movie gave me opportunity, gave me exposure, was a huge gift for me,” said Moss, who recently reunited with fellow Canadian Matrix star Keanu Reeves and others from the film at his John Wick: Chapter 2 premiere.
“All of the time it took to make it was character-building for me and really life-changing. Then add to that any career bonuses that have come from it, that’s kind of the cherry on the top because it was just such an amazing experience to be a part of.”
The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
