NIKITA: Lyndsy Fonseca Talks the Change in Dynamic Between Alex and Amanda, Alex’s Decisions and a Potential Season 2

Now that NIKITA’s Alex knows the person who killed father was her mentor/ally Nikita, things are getting serious. I mean, poor Alex…not only did she get outed as a mole, but now she can’t even trust the people she thought she could.

I talked with NIKITA star Lyndsy Fonseca (Alex) right before last week’s episode aired, so while there isn’t directly talk about Nikita’s double-cross, we did talk about about Alex’s journey towards the end of the season, what the new layer of the Amanda/Alex dynamic will bring and a potential second season…

Now that Alex’s secret is out, how does that change the dynamic between her and Amanda? Does that majorly change things going forward?
Lyndsy Fonseca: Yeah, it changes things for the better in my opinion.  You know, I think that [NIKITA creator] Craig [Silverstein] always had bigger plans in his mind as far as where he wanted that relationship to go but he didn’t want to play it too soon.  He was kind of holding on to it to kind of entice the audience at the end. So we’ve been really ready for it. There’s only so many times Amanda can be like, “We need to talk” or “I have a few questions for you,” you know?  And so her discovering this gets really to kind of deepen the connection between them, since you’re really going to start to figure out – you’re going to start to see a lot of different sides to Amanda and I think people are going to be shocked by how it ends.

It feels like if Amanda was totally on Division’s side, Alex would be dead.  So might Amanda have more layers to her character and be more sympathetic toward Nikita than we were previously led to believe?
LF: You know, I think people’s perceptions toward Amanda has never been entirely true.  I think that Amanda is not an evil person and she’s just an extremely intense person, that whatever she believes, she does fully and she’s not a soft-spoken person. But I think you’ll figure out and a lot of other things will make sense by the end of it, where you realize where she’s actually coming from.  She’s just…misunderstood at the moment.

That’s fair.  How is Alex dealing with Jaden’s death?  I mean, obviously the two of them were never really close, but she had somebody killed in front of her, someone that she spent a lot of time with.
LF: Yeah, I think things are just getting extremely scary at the moment as far as Alex’s life is concerned.  Things are happening very fast and she keeps trying to get out and she keeps trying to, you know, have her own life and not get caught up in all of this stuff and also not being told what to do all the time between Division and Nikita.  You know, she’s basically a puppet and I think she’s kind of getting sick of that and because of those feelings, she’s going to start making some decisions in these last episodes and it’s going to be really cool.

Is her relationship with Nathan done for now?
LF: It’s done for now.  I mean, you never know, who knows what they could do if there’s a next season. They [could] bring him back, but there’s just too much going on right now to think about boyfriends. [Laughs]

He is also someone out there who knows her secret…
LF: Absolutely. And I think they left that open for a reason, you know?  I think it’s cool that they did that because you do never know what could happen and he’s just, for his own safety, he’s had to leave the country just so Division doesn’t find him.

Yeah, of course.  We’d like to keep him alive because there needs to be someone in her life who’s not tied to Division.
LF: Yeah.

Has that relationship and watching Michael and Nikita changed Alex’s mind and and influenced her thoughts about whether she could have a normal life or if it’s worth the risk to have normal life?
LF: Um…I think seeing Michael and Nikita together is just another way of showing her that that would be her life if she were with someone in that fight.  You know, if she stayed in this world, that’s what her life would be like. I think the whole season is really been about what she wants to do. I mean, she’s so much younger than Nikita and she has so many more options in so many ways, because she’s not in it as deep, so I think that in the beginning she was just this kind of puppet that was doing it and then she discovered she had something to live for and then she found out all of this stuff…about who actually killed her father and all of this shit’s going to come up and it’s going to basically make her face her choice of, “Holy crap, I have the decision to change my life. I’ve got to do A, B or C”…and that’s how it ends.

For someone so young, she has a lot of the world’s problems on her shoulders.
LF: She sure does!  But you know, it’s interesting because I really do think that if her family hadn’t died and she had still been in Russia and she had been the daughter of this multi-million dollar corporation and she still would have had a whole lot of problems on her shoulders, but in a very different way. So her fate has always been planned out for her.

It’s a little tragic, no matter what.
LF: Yeah. Listen, it makes my life look very simple. [Laughs]

So what can you tease about the finale itself?  We’ve been building all season to Division being taken down, possibly. Might that be happening in the finale?
LF: Yes and no. I think it just changes. I think people will see how things change. I don’t think the show ends on a really intense cliffhanger. I think that throughout the next episodes, so many things shift that by the end of it, you’re like, “Whoa, there’s so many ways it could go next season.”

Have you talked with the writers, “If we come back for a season two, what way are you guys leaning?”
LF: Kind of. Craig’s definitely got ideas and he’s definitely pitched to the network what he wants to happen but I don’t like to know things too far in advance because of the character, I wouldn’t [be aware of them]. So I just try to get little pieces of information only if it will help my performance. Other than that, it gets kind of overwhelming.

There’s a lot going on in the show. Viewers get so much information with each episode, I can imagine that would overwhelming if you knew too much too fast.
LF: Yeah, Craig and I have this understanding where if there’s something I need to know, I want him to make sure that he tells me so I play it right. So if there’s a guy she’s interested in or she’s going to turn on somebody, those things that I need to not just happen overnight, that I need to prepare and understand that arc. But overall, he knows I don’t like knowing.

I’m guessing he might appreciate that a little bit, that way it’s easier for you not to spill the beans in an interview that you know all of this is happening.
LF: Totally.  And there are definitely actors on our show that love to know absolutely everything and whenever they talk, I’m like, “Lalalalala I don’t want to know anything!”

Shane West (Michael) mentioned that he knew a lot of his character’s arc from the pilot, so it must be interesting to have conversations on the set about the show with the varying degrees of knowledge.
LF: Yeah, when I booked the role and we were doing the pilot, I kind of created my own — I filled in a lot of my own blanks as far as the character development goes because obviously not everything can be on the page, but I did talk to Craig a lot about pretty much everything that’s come out in the season.  I knew my character stuff, but I didn’t know the missions, I didn’t know how they were going to play out. But what was important to me was that I knew my history and I knew what my life was like as a child, you know?

Yeah, that’s understandable. Is there anything you’d like to see hopefully when the show gets season 2?
LF: I, at some point, would like to have her find peace and happiness and obviously because of the show, maybe that at some point would get ripped away, but I think it would be really nice to show how she grows to find acceptance, you know?

Yeah, she could have a little bit of a taste of what life could be like before she realizes she’s really bored with it.
LF: Which may be happening.

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How would you like to see NIKITA’s first season end?

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