Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Motherland: Fort Salem’s Taylor Hickson

Actress Taylor Hickson is answering the call as Raelle Collar in Freeform’s Motherland: Fort Salem. Set in an alternate America where witches ended their persecution three hundred years ago by cutting an agreement to fight for their government, Motherland: Fort Salem follows three recruits who go from basic training in combat magic to early deployment. One of those young ladies is Taylor’s character, Raelle, who’s a bit guarded and jaded when we’re introduced to her, having recently lost her mom.

Pop Culturalist caught up with Taylor to chat about Motherland: Fort Salem, preparing for her character’s journey, and the show’s empowering message.

PC: Tell us about Motherland: Fort Salem, your character, and what drew you to this project.
Taylor: Motherland takes place in an alternate America where it was said that three hundred years ago our general stepped forward with a proposition to the government during the Salem witch trials: “If you stop killing our people, we will fight your wars for you.” The idea caught on globally and so birthed the current world that is Motherland.

I play Raelle Collar. She lost her mom in the line of duty the year prior so she’s very jaded coming out of the gate. She’s intense, guarded, and loves to challenge authority.

I was definitely attracted to this project because of the general role reversal that’s very apparent throughout the season. As a woman in film, it’s an opportunity to dive into a role that’s something other than secondary like being the wife, the sister, or the girlfriend. We’re always the backdrop to these very powerful male characters. So to have these roles switched and have women driving the narrative really signifies a big shift in our community, society, and media.

PC: The last time we spoke you said that you often write diary entries from the perspective of your character to get into their head. Did you do something similar with Raelle? If so, what did her diary entries look like?
Taylor: Absolutely! Most of us kept diary entries. We worked with our amazing acting coach Deb Podowski. She actually suggested it, especially as we did our chemistry work. We were really fortunate to have great organic chemistry since the beginning. I’ve never had such great connections working with women in film. We’ve got a lot of big female personalities, and we’re all fighting for the same goal.

[Usually] when you’re walking in with the same mindset of having to fight for yourself and hold your own, it sort of becomes a competition. I think a lot of women think about their everyday lives and their successes in that sense. So [this] really taught me a lot about myself and how to share a creative space. We learn from each other. The diary entries were something that our acting coach really pushed for us to use, and, fortunately, I had that in my toolbox already. It’s fun to dive in deeper behind the backstories of these characters and their motivations.

PC: Like you said earlier, when we’re introduced to Raelle she’s guarded, and over the course of the season we begin to see her open up. What else can you tease about her arc in Season 1?
Taylor: My favorite pieces of Raelle that I got to work on were her softer moments and her moments of vulnerability which you really see her get to with Jessica Sutton’s character, Tally, and with Amalia Holm’s character, Scylla. Scylla is my love interest in the show. While she’s quite vulnerable with Tally in a different way, we get to see Raelle’s loving side through her relationship with Scylla. She drops her walls down. She learns how to trust again. She learns that not everything good is taken away from her–or so it seems in the beginning of the relationship. She feels like she’s navigating herself and her strength and fighting her way back to who she once was. She lost a lot of that when she lost her mother.

PC: Unity and sisterhood are two major themes within the series. How did you, Ashley, and Jessica approach the dynamic between your characters and forming that bond?
Taylor: Like I mentioned earlier, we were really fortunate walking into this that our personalities blended in a way that really allowed us to get straight to work without having to develop that sense of familiarity. We were a little too familiar with each other. [laughs] Ashley [Nicole Williams] has a couple of really funny stories of us licking her face or licking something off her pants on the first day. We’re a pretty ridiculous bunch when you put us all together.

But having that sense of unity with that many women is something that I want to see out in the real world. All of the team on Motherland are big advocates for breaking that woman-versus-woman stigma. We really need to support and carry each other. It’s crucial, especially in a time like this, where everyone’s being quarantined. If you don’t work as a team, nobody survives. So I think it really speaks to the current themes that we’re seeing in this exact moment. It’s a really hard time. We need to keep reminding the community and the media that we need to keep that togetherness in order to get through the hardship.

PC: In Motherland, Raelle, Tally, and Abigail and the rest of the recruits find their strength through their voice. Can you tell us about your journey as an artist and discovering your own voice?
Taylor: That’s very much a giant metaphor for women having a voice and female empowerment that’s so present in this narrative. I thought it was really neat that our incredible, creative, inventive, and beautiful creator Eliot Laurence developed this idea that a witch has a different anatomy. We have multiple sets of vocal cords, and we can hear and vocalize above and below what the average civilian can interpret. So we used this tool and our anatomy to create a chance for ourselves.

I thought it was something beautiful because it’s literally giving women the power of having a voice. And again, that’s something massive that we’re trying to push forward. There are so many great messages and metaphors in this series, and that’s another one that I thought was so beautiful: women have a voice. You can be heard. You are validated. You feel important.

PC: There are a lot of complicated and complex relationships within the series. Which of Raelle’s has been your favorite to explore and why?
Taylor: I was speaking about vulnerabilities earlier, and I love my relationship with Scylla. It often feels like two different TV series because my story arc with her is so segregated from the team-building section with Tally, Abigail, and the rest of the group. I think Scylla really softens my character, and you’ll see where I go with her. You’ll see what I learn from her become braided into my team building with the other girls. It’s interesting to see what I learn on both sides and how they interact with the other part of my life.

It definitely felt like a Hannah Montana situation. As an actress, it’s always exciting to explore new relationships and territory, and Amalia was such a phenomenal scene partner. It’s part of the reason why I was so seduced by our part of the story. It was such an honor to develop an onscreen relationship with her. The chemistry was so organic. I keep saying this, but we were really fortunate with how beautifully everyone bonded together.

PC: If you had to summarize the first season in one sentence, what would it be?
Taylor: One sentence? Oh my goodness. This might be better as a run-on sentence. [laughs] Motherland is liberating and has a very edgy twist on a modern reality with intensity, depth, determination in all-consuming relationships and situations.

Make sure to follow Taylor on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Watch new episodes of Motherland: Fort Salem every Wednesday at 9/8c on Freeform.

Featured Photo Credit: Ron Mey