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VIFF INDUSTRY: Helen Shaver’s Favourite TV Episode She’s Ever Directed Is ORPHAN BLACK With Twerking

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BBC America image: Tatiana Maslany & Kristian Bruun.

Helen Shaver could run #CloneClub for Orphan Black. Her favourite television episode of the many she’s directed in her career is Certain Agony of the Battlefield with the greatest Orphan Black scene ever — Alison and Donnie twerking on their bed with piles of cash. The script said twerking scene with Alison and Donnie and it was up to her to execute it — “how it was shot…that song we used…I was involved in every aspect of it.” Tatiana Maslany and Kristian Bruun are so funny, she says.

And the Canadian-born Shaver absolutely loves the show. “Women are so much more multi-faceted than we appear on screen, ” she says. Even though the Orphan Black showrunners are both men, the buzzed-about series pays tribute to women like few other series ever have in its premise of a young woman discovering that she has a series of clones, all markedly different from herself  but with the same DNA. And remarkably played by one actress —  the Emmy-nominated  Tatiana Maslany.

“[Tatiana] is one of the most brilliant actors I’ve ever worked with,” Shaver raves. “So many facets of women are expressed through one body.”

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But Shaver won’t be directing Orphan Black in season 4, which began production in Toronto late last month. She had a “Sophie’s Choice” between Orphan Black and her history with and admiration for Jonathan Nolan, creator of Person of Interest, who has the upcoming sci-fi series Westworld on HBO next year  — inspired by Michael Crichton’s book and film. Westworld is about artificial consciousness — and in the HBO version,  the dawn of sin with explicit sex.. Shaver will work with an older, more established A-list cast — Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, James Marsden, Thandie Newton and many more. Shaver’s seen the pilot and says it’s “fantastic”. Plus she’ll get the chance to play in the bigger HBO sandbox.

 

 

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