Aimee Teegarden returns to series TV with a starring role in The CW’s Star-Crossed. The upcoming series is a sci-fi show involving aliens on Earth, focusing on a teenage stranger to this planet (played by Matt Lanter) as he attempts to assimilate into a human high school.
There’s romance, jealousy, intrigue, prejudice, and drama in Star-Crossed – and in high school – and The CW will be launching the series midseason.
The Plot:
When Emery was 6 years old, an alien spacecraft crash-landed in her small town. Whether they came in peace or with more sinister intentions didn’t matter: a fierce battle erupted as humans fought for control over their new rivals, an alien species called the Atrians. In the midst of the conflict, Roman, a 6-year-old Atrian boy, found his way to a shed behind Emery’s house, where she protected him from harm, bringing him food, comfort – and friendship.
In their brief time together, Emery and Roman forged a deep bond, but the authorities wasted no time tracking Roman down and capturing him in a violent confrontation.
Emery has grown up believing that Roman was killed that day. Ten years later, the Atrians have been acclimated to life on Earth, but they are interned in a heavily-guarded camp known as the Sector to keep them separate from humans. Now, for the first time, a group of Atrian teens will enroll in a suburban human high school, with the goal of testing the feasibility of human/alien integration. The eyes of the nation and the whole world are fixed on this historical social experiment, an endeavor fraught with suspicion and fear.
In the mayhem of the first day, Emery is amazed to learn that Roman was not killed by the authorities and is, in fact, one of the Atrian students. Their childhood bond is quickly rekindled – in a school and a society that distrusts everything about the Atrians, Emery and Roman have found each other again. However, their relationship is threatened by the small-mindedness of their respective communities and the political agendas of people in power. While the world around them rages with anger and prejudice, their bond becomes increasingly strong and increasingly dangerous.
As an epic Romeo and Juliet romance unfolds, a violent encounter between Roman’s father and Emery’s father occurs in the Sector. Can Roman and Emery’s love – and peace between the species – survive?
Aimee Teegarden Star-Crossed Interview at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con
What was your first reaction to the script?
Aimee Teegarden: “I was on a plane and I started reading on the plane and by the time I landed, I was so on fire about it. I sent my agent an email and was just like, ‘This is amazing. Let’s set up a meeting. The show is going to be on forever.’ I think that there are so many amazing aspects to the show. Obviously, it’s on The CW, so it’s already open for that teen audience. It has a sci-fi element, there’s romance… It’s set in high school, but the show is not really about high school or about the aliens.
It’s really a bigger metaphor for the prejudice we have as a society currently and in the past.”
Did they tell you an entire season’s worth of storylines for this, or do they just give you the bare minimum to begin with?
Aimee Teegarden: “We shot the pilot, the very first episode, and we start shooting the rest of the season in two weeks. But, I’ve heard some rumblings about what’s going to happen throughout the first season and some storylines, but nothing has been confirmed. I haven’t got the whole scoop on anything.
Typically, as an actor, you also don’t want to know too much about what’s happening in the future unless you’ve already done it because I think you just tend to play into if you know something is going to happen, and then you already start playing into whatever it is. And I think that’s the whole point to TV is it’s suspenseful, and you don’t really know what’s happening.”
After you read that first script, were you thinking about where the story would go?
Aimee Teegarden: “I think what I really took from reading the first script, I just wanted to know more about the Atrians because I wanted to know what’s in the ship, why is the ship here, how big is the ship, how many Atrians landed on the planet? I think there are so many things… Do they have powers, do they not have powers, do some of them have powers, what do the tattoos mean, do they mean something, I’m more into that.
I’ve heard some kind of cool things. I think that between Matt [Lanter] and myself and sort of playing into that star-crossed lover aspect and between an alien and the human, I think that the idea of the two of us bridging that gap between two different beings, it’s a metaphor for so many other things.”
How was working with Matt Lanter?
Aimee Teegarden: “Lovely. He’s awesome. We almost worked together seven years ago on a movie and then the financing fell through, and then he was working on 90210 and I had been working on it – I was only on it for three episodes or something, and then he started the 90210 episode after I did, I think. We never worked together, so we’ve been passing each other along the way. When he came into read, it was like, ‘Oh, hi I know you, but I don’t really know you,’ but he is so lovely.”
You said on the panel that sci-fi was your jam. What got you into sci-fi as a kid? What do you like?
Aimee Teegarden: “What got me into sci-fi as a kid? Star Wars, definitely. I have an older brother, so I was definitely a bit of a tomboy growing up. Anything my brother was into, that was like whatever it was. Star Wars was a huge thing and then obviously Episode I, II and III came out in my lifetime. There is an awesome picture somewhere, my mother made me an Amidala costume – the red costume with the lights at the bottom of it and full head piece – I was probably eight or something like that, and she constructed this whole costume. I had a switch and I could turn the lights on at the bottom of it. It was fantastic. I wish I still had it. She papier-mâchéd it. It was the whole hairpiece thing. I went to the midnight screenings and I wore that. [Laughing] I was that person.”
