'Marvel's Runways' star Brigid Brannagh bids adieu to Stacey Yorkes, talks about alien family, time travel and more
Season 3 of ‘Marvel’s Runaways’ is more or less split down the middle, with the Gibborim threat in the season’s first half making way for Morgan Le Fay (Elizabeth Hurley) as the season’s latter half villain.
The Pride, as a group, is more or less done with, and its members are left to deal with their new Gibborim-free lives. Brigid Brannagh, who plays Stacey Yorkes on the show, spoke to MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) about Stacey’s frame of mind post-Gibborim, Season 3’s new dynamic, and her feelings on ‘Marvel’s Runaways’ coming to a close.
Stacey Yorkes’, midway through Season 3, finds herself in a state of shock now that she has her body back, but she’s prioritizing her family. “There's so much love there, but ultimately I really think it's like the aftermath of a bomb, an earthquake, such a great shock that all she cares that is, are they alive?” she says, of the rest of the Yorkes family. “It's just the simplest basic human need — are the people I love still with me?”
For most of the season, that answer is no. Gert (Ariela Barer) and Molly (Alegra Acosta) continue to live with the rest of the Runaways at the Hostel. Dale Yorkes (Kevin Weisman) and Stacey, who were inseparable in the show’s first two seasons, spend a lot of time apart in Season 3.
“It's funny,” she said, laughing, “because Kevin and I had done every single scene together for the first two seasons, so in Season 3, Kevin and I saw each other in the makeup trailer and he's like, I miss you and I was like, ‘I bet you do,’ because I was just making fun.”
“We missed being able to be funny together,” she said. “Our scenes are really light, you know, there's a lot of humor and a lot of levity.” While Brannagh may have missed working with Kevin Weisman during Season 3, she talks about how different an experience it was working with with the rest of her alien family who were possessing Victor Stein (James Marsters) and Tina Minoru (Britanny Ishibashi).
“Kevin and I ad-lib a lot cause he's very much a great comedian and so he loves to, you know, change it up,” she said, “I just try to improv with him...that's super fun but it's totally a different dynamic - Brittani and James Marsters, every one of us is word for word exact, we have our stuff, we tend to be really serious when we're working, so our scenes went really quickly.”
She described the experience as a “well-prepared dance,” saying “I was just so happy to be working with people who are so professional to everybody around them.” While she has had a lot of fun improvising with Kevin Weisman, she also really enjoyed working with actors who were as well prepared as James Marsters and Brittani Ishibashi. “They were never too tired for anything or they were never sort of scooting their feet. They were always really like ready to work and you know, that's not everybody that I've ever worked with,” she said, in appreciation of Marsters’ and Ishibashi’s professionalism. “You can do more things when, when you, when you've already gotten the technical stuff handled.”
She talked about the Yorkes from the comic books, who are the Pride’s resident time-travelers, and whether the show had plans to bring that aspect of the characters from the series. There may have been plans, but when the show’s producers found out that not only was the series getting canceled but that the final season would only be 10 episodes long, they had to shorten many of their original plans.
“I think that is something that that might have been a possibility, but again, everything really did change right before we started Season 3 with them making the season shorter,” she said. “They kind of had to pare down a lot of storylines, which I think was really tough for them to do.”
Even so, Brannagh would have loved to have been able to explore the idea of the Yorkes time-traveling, had there been a Season 4. “Absolutely would have killed for time travel,” she said. “ I didn't sign up for acting because I love monotony, you know? So it's exciting to get to play different things, and time travel, you'd be wearing different outfits, people'd be different, different worlds - I would have absolutely thrived and loved that. Thrived in that and loved that, and I think Kevin would have too.”
She shared some parting words about the season’s end. “I have loved working on this show,” she said. “I had honestly some of the most fun I've had in my life working on this show and I'm really sad to it go...I wish it wasn't ending. I do. I would love to have had another year or two to play Stacy Yorkes just because I've enjoyed it so much.”
She expressed appreciation for the show being able to end on its own terms, as opposed to other series that get canceled before they have a chance to really plan for their own ending, but even so, it’s not easy to say goodbye to a series. “I'm sad to see it go...you know it'll be a good memory now but, you know, some memories I'm willing to have for longer.”
With the final season bringing the show to an end, Brigid Brannah says her farewells to the character she’s played for show’s three seasons.
“I bid adieu to Stacy Yorkes.”
‘Marvel’s Runaways’ final season is streaming now on Hulu.