ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND: Sophie Lowe, Emma Rigby, and Peter Gadiot Preview the New ABC Series

Just like ONCE UPON A TIME has recontextualized what we know of many popular fairytale characters, ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND will show viewers an entirely new side to the “Alice in Wonderland” tale.

“Well she’s grown up now and she’s strong,” Sophie Lowe (Alice) teased to reporters on the show’s Vancouver set last week. “She’s learned how to fight, and she knows how to look after herself. I think when you grow up, you kind of see your family and your parents in a different light, and I feel like she’s going through that. When you’re little you only see your parents and you think of your parents as God, and then when you grow up you realize that they’re just like you and they have fears as well, and so she just kinds of starts to believe herself and stop trying to convince everyone and just kind of follow her heart. So she’s a woman now, and she can kick ass.”

Those ass-kicking skills will likely be massively needed when Alice returns to Wonderland and realizes that she has quite a few people who are invested in what she does next. Among them? The Red Queen, whom Alice holds responsible for the “death” of her true love, Cyrus, whom Alice fell for during one of her stints in Wonderland. But the Red Queen’s portrayer, Emma Rigby, cautioned that her character might not be all bad.

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ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND: Naveen Andrews on Reuniting with Former LOST Writers Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis, Plus Creating a New Take on Jafar

ONCE UPON A TIME bosses (and former LOST writers) Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis have often relied on former LOST stars for guest spots (or in the case of Emilie de Ravin, a guest spot-turned-series regular gig), and with their new show, ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND, about to make its debut, they’ve called on a familiar face to be a series regular: Naveen Andrews (Sayid on LOST/Jafar on WONDERLAND)!

“Basically, it was like a ten minute meeting,” Andrews told me of how he got involved with the ONCE spinoff. “They told me they created this character, and they said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we got someone like Naveen to do it?’ We had worked together on LOST, and they had written one of my favorite episodes in the fifth season where Sayid is made to take LSD with interesting results [in “He’s Our You”]. And I was available, because I think when they first wrote it, I wasn’t.”

“So I went in and they said, ‘We wanted you to do it,'” he continued. “So it was literally ten minutes. Again, I felt very familiar and safe in terms of their writing. From the things they wrote in that fifth season, I knew they were willing to be daring and dangerous. I think we have a similar approach to Jafar in that sense.”

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ONCE UPON A TIME: Potential Wonderland Spinoff Presentation Finds its Alice, A Love Interest, and Gets Title

And the final pieces of the potential ONCE UPON A TIME quasi-spinoff presentation set in Wonderland have fallen into place: an ABC rep confirms that Sophie Lowe will play Alice, Peter Gadiot has been cast as Cyrus (Alice’s mysterious love interest), and the series presentation is working under the title ONCE: WONDERLAND. The news was first reported by Deadline.

The hiring of Lowe and Gadiot follows Michael Socha’s casting earlier in the day as The Knave of Hearts.

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