CONSTANTINE’s Angélica Celaya on Finding Zed’s Purpose

Since her introduction into the CONSTANTINE world, Zed has helped the team with her visions. While those visions occasionally caused her physical trauma, it took Zed collapsing at a hospital last week for the truth to come out: she has a tumor. And despite the risks of not dealing with it, Zed opted to live with it and not chance losing the gift she was given.

“We all know Zed has a brain tumor! It’s really that moment, that human moment, for Zed that we saw last week — okay, I have these visions and I have this tumor, and this tumor is what I have to suffer to do the greater good,” CONSTANTINE star Angélica Celaya (Zed) explained. “And she kept asking Manny, ‘Is this from God, or if it’s not, what is this?’ And just [him] being Manny, and being in his presence, just confirmed that it is from God, and she needs to sacrifice herself for the greater good. Zed’s mindset is suck it up, it’s showtime. She finally feels purpose.”

“She was running away from her family — which we touched a little bit through the season: her family trying to kidnap her — and anyone who is a true fan of [the] “Hellblazer” [comics] knows what that past is, and that her father is the leader of the cult, and basically wants to kidnap her,” she continued. “Zed does not want that purpose. She wants her own purpose, her own journey, her own destiny. And she finally found it last episode, saying, ‘This is what I have to do, I know exactly what I’m doing now.’ That’s Zed’s mindset: time to rock and roll, baby.

While Zed may have found her zen with the tumor, the reveal initially threw Celaya.

“I discovered it the moment I read [it in] the script at like 2 o’clock in the morning,” she recalled. “I’m there, I’m reading it, I’m in shock, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I have a tumor!’ And, honestly, I got really excited, because who does not want that hero moment of ‘I will suffer the consequences for the greater good.’ It made me love my character even more…finally there’s purpose to her life, not just being a sidekick to John.”

Zed’s newfound purpose will be slightly tested when a whole gaggle of familiar people return in tonight’s season finale.

“There’s one returning face she cannot even [bear to] see, and that’s because of her Zed visions,” Celaya laughed. “Jim Corrigan comes back, and Zed keeps having the visions we all saw in one of the [earlier] episodes of him full of bullet holes. And it’s this whole thing of [thinking], ‘I don’t want to see you with bullet holes.’ It’s sort of funny that Zed keeps seeing these visions of him, and she’s like, ‘Darn it, get out of my head! I don’t want to see you dead.’ And I like that.”

“The interactions with everyone else — she keeps seeing Manny[, too],” she continued. “That’s a beautiful interaction, a beautiful discovery we made at the end of the last episode: now she’s able to see Manny. And now she’ll see him again.”

The Manny-Zed interactions only just started, but Celaya has found herself drawn to their complicated dynamic.

“He’s this divine being, and her whole family has brought her up to think she was divine, and God has a plan, and all this stuff,” Celaya acknowledged. “And for her, her parents see God one way [and she thinks,] ‘I want to see God a different way.’ And that’s why she broke free from her family. And now being in contact with a divine being, it’s a lot more than a simple connection, a simple friendship: it’s divine. There was that one moment when Zed told Anne Marie [in “The Saint of Last Resorts: Part 2″], ‘Guess what, John has God on speed-dial.’ Guess what? Zed has him, too, now. I think that is very special to her. It’s a very special relationship. It’s a lot more than John or Chas — it really goes down to a fascination with God, basically, and her purpose in it.”

“Again, the fans that are hard-core ‘Hellblazer’ fans, they know that Zed’s family wants her to be impregnated by an angel,” she continued. “So this is something I read while I was [also] reading the last episode of the season! I’m seeing this relationship, I’m seeing how it’s going, and they rewrote the last episode several times — our connections were different, and then it’s like, wait…oh snap! I read that part of ‘Hellblazer,’ and now doing that last episode, it really left me in a cliffhanger of ‘What are the writers thinking?!’ ‘Is Manny going to be the one? Or Manny’s friend?’ I don’t know what’s going to go on, but I want to know more about that relationship myself.”

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CONSTANTINE’s season finale airs tonight at 8 PM on NBC. And check back after for more from Celaya!

Related:

CONSTANTINE: Matt Ryan Teases the Introduction of Anne Marie in His ‘Favorite Episodes’
CONSTANTINE Will Have a Short First Season
CONSTANTINE: Matt Ryan, Angélica Celaya, and Charles Halford Tease the Arrival of Jim Corrigan and Return of Papa Midnite
CONSTANTINE: Michael James Shaw on Playing Papa Midnite

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