QUANTUM LEAP Post-Mortem: Margarita Matthews on Ben and Addison’s Step Forward and Her Favorite Part of ‘A Kind of Magic’

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Wednesday, December 6 episode of QUANTUM LEAP.]

Ben (Raymond Lee) and Addison (Caitlin Bassett) took a big step forward in their friendship on the Wednesday, December 6 episode of QUANTUM LEAP.

In “A Kind of Magic,” a lack of easily searchable information about the 1692-era Ben was in led to Addison breaking the rule the exes established: She joined him as a Hologram to share the town’s drought was about to end, and he could use that to his advantage.

After successfully completing the mission, Ben admitted to Addison he had been scared of working with her—but now he was concerned he would become the bitter man who couldn’t work with his ex.

And so Ben had an important question for her: “Will you be my Hologram?” Ben asked before he was taken to his next location.

“We were like, hey, this is a very real issue when two people are dating, and then they break up, but maybe they work together or they still have to run in the same circles,” “A Kind of Magic” writer Margarita Matthews tells Give Me My Remote. “How do you navigate that? What’s the mature thing to do? What’s the very real thing to do? And how do we represent all of that in the context of something that is a little bit life and death? So it was about us really wanting to honor the reality of it. And moving the story forward, without compromising what was true for Addison and for Ben, emotionally.”

As Ben and Addison navigated the tricky waters, Matthews acknowledges, “We’re really lucky [with] Ray and Caitlin—these characters have really become their characters now that we’re in season 2. In the beginning of a show, you’re kind of telling the actors this is what it is, and this is how it would be, and this is what you’re gonna feel. By the time you get to this place, they’re embodying these characters in such a way that we’re now writing, imagining what they would say and how they would say it. And so they’ve become inseparable from those characters.”

“Honestly, at this stage, you’re not saying, ‘Well, this is how you’re going to do it and make sure you convey this,’” she continues. “It’s coming from their profound understanding of who these human beings are. I’ve definitely been on set before and I’ve had to watch them interact and been moved emotionally, little tear in the eye, because it’s just so authentic. They’re sharing their emotional truths so generously. At this point, I think the synergy is just kind of there.”

When it comes to picking her favorite moment from the episode, Matthews points to the opening sequence.

“I think the minute you leap in, you’re like, ‘Oh, we are not in Kansas anymore,” she says. “And that is a fun thing that we get to do in our show: Every week, you’re in a new place. But this, you also felt the genre shift, and you really felt like you were in a CRUCIBLE-type story. And I’m just really proud of what we were able to accomplish.”

“If you look around, we’ve got animals; there were cats on set!” she continues. “That was my favorite part: when we had to get the cat to act. We had two cats doing their thing. We had chickens, goats. We had all that going on. I think people don’t might not understand how difficult it is to work with all that. We had horses. We had a cat that was afraid of the horse. And then amidst all that, we had those human beings, doing their thing. And I just really, really love our Greek chorus, those three girls that constantly talk over each other—they’re saying what the town is thinking. I’ve really grown to love all the scenes with those girls because I feel like they are such a good representation of not only that town, but it becomes a metaphor for sort of how we exist today. It’s like social media; one person says something and then someone takes off with it, etc. And I think that ended up being my favorite—that sweeping shot up to the church. It just set the stage for what you were about to experience.”

QUANTUM LEAP, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC

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