'The Magicians' star Jade Tailor hopes to see fans 'heal alongside' the characters as they deal with grief
Season 5 of 'The Magicians' is only a day away, and there's a lot to look forward to! In an exclusive interview, Jade Tailor tells MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) about what to expect in Season 5 - and what to keep an eye out for.
To begin with, Tailor, who plays Kady Orloff-Diaz on the show, confirms that there will be another musical episode this season - possibly the biggest one yet. "It's a big musical episode this year. I can tell you that it comes later in the season this time around," she said. "I think everybody's going to be very surprised because we also have different people that we've never seen singing come and sing, and...people that aren't necessarily human dancing and singing with us."
The moon, which features heavily in the character posters released for Season 5, is also something to keep an eye out for. "There's something big that happens with the moon that changes everything." In 'The Magicians,' spells are dependant on a number of factors - time of the year, hand motions, the weather, and, of course, the phases of the moon. Between the surges of excess magic, and whatever is about to happen to the moon, magic's instability is set to reach an all-time high, and it looks like the world is going to need saving...again.
Apocalypses are a dime a dozen, though, and what's really at the heart of this season, according to Tailor, is how the show's characters deal with the loss of Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph). "I think all of our fans are grieving the loss of Quentin, as are these characters," she said. "I think it's really healing for people to have relatability and to see our characters deal with grieving and what that looks like."
She talked about Kady's own feelings regarding Quentin's death and how she's dealing with it a little differently than the others. "Some of the characters just fall apart over the loss of Quentin, which is understandable given their closeness and their love," she said. "Over the years, they might not have been close but they definitely understood each other and respected each other."
Kady has dealt with grief herself many times through the series, most notably with her mother, and with Penny (Arjun Gupta). "She tends to take that grief and turn it into fuel to empower her to fight for something new and I think that's no different in her response to Quentin's death," she says. "She sees that and she goes, 'I don't want to lose another being. I have to fight for people because I've seen somebody give their life for others.' So there's something she's learned through Quentin and that is this desire to really put her life on the line for the sake of other people."
Quentin's death has, however, opened the door for other characters to take the spotlight. "The other characters get to shine," Tailor said. "We see some love but unexpected, and that's really fun to see - different dynamics and different characters coming together."
One developing romance is particularly complicated for Kady. Kady had been deeply in love with the Penny of Timeline-40, before his death. When the Penny of Timeline-23 shows up, however, he pursues a relationship with Julia (Stella Maeve), having never ended up with Kady in Timeline-23. "We see at the end of last season some things happening, bubbling up between Penny and Julia. That's explored a bit, it's just an interesting dynamic because I think, 'No, it's not Kady's Penny,'" she said. "There's beauty in witnessing Kady witnessing this love that reminds for her own yet isn't. I like that Kady has found her independence."
She later expands on how the show handles the grief from Quentin's death. "I think that it's something that we're sensitive to...we did lose a big character this past year," she said. "But that I think it's important to know we lose people in life. We grieve over people and we really wanted to honor that in the best way that we could. I hope the fans truly see that we've been honoring that loss." She continued, "I hope you learn from that and not focus on his death but really what we learn from his death. He was so deeply loved and he's so deeply loved by his friends that he was willing to risk his life for it."
Besides 'The Magicians,' Tailor is working on a few projects of her own. She's working with Brittany Curan (who plays Fen on 'The Magicians) on producing a documentary called 'Water of Life." She has also written and directed a film called "Within the Silence," that's currently in post-production.
"I'm a domestic violence counselor and I do that cause it's something I'm very passionate about. I wrote a piece about this little girl that witnesses her father abusing her mother and what comes out of that," she said. "We see her go on this fantastical journey through her mind. I want to show how creativity can be so healing for trauma and so it's a really powerful piece and I'm very, very excited about it." She adds, "There's something else about it that I can't really reveal but it represents also the deaf community as well. It was very empowering and inspiring for me to want to write a piece that really honored the deaf community as well."
'The Magicians' Season 5 premieres on January 15, on Syfy.