Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Impulse’s Maddie Hasson

Maddie Hasson is transporting audiences into the shoes of Henrietta “Henry” Coles in the breakout YouTube Premium series Impulse. Her character is a young woman who discovers she has the ability to teleport after escaping an attempted sexual assault by a classmate. Since its premiere in 2018, Impulse has shattered records with over 65 million views worldwide. And that’s thanks to dynamic characters and raw, vulnerable performances by the cast, led by Maddie Hasson.

PC: Season 2 picks up at the aftermath of Bill Boone’s death. How will that affect Henry and her relationships with the other characters?
Maddie: Henry is faced with a dilemma this season. She has to decide how her decisions are going to affect her perception of herself. She has to decide if one bad thing she’s done is going to snowball into a ton of other bad things. She has to fight against allowing herself to think she’s a bad person. It’s sort of a fight between good and evil, which is really rich and interesting. It’s really difficult for Townes especially to see her struggle because he’s built her up as this hero in his mind. I think he’s coming to realize that maybe she’s just a real person, and that shatters something in him.

PC: We see Henry’s relationship with her abilities change over the course of the two seasons. Can you tell us a little bit about that transformation and how it changed your approach to Henry?
Maddie: Physically, the teleporting has changed a lot. It initially started with seizures, but as she’s gained more control, it’s become more of her eyes rolling back. It’s still messy, and she’s still stumbling, but there’s no involuntary physical response to teleporting. That part has been really fun to get into physically. I used to be a dancer, so I really enjoy the body movement.

Emotionally, her power is tied to her trauma—her assault—and they’ll forever be linked. A big part of this season is her realizing that the people she loves are in danger because of her. She has to face this awful thing that she’s been avoiding in order to control her powers so she can protect them.

PC: When we meet Henry in Season 1, she’s really guarded, and she pushes people away. But by the end, she begins to open up. Which of her relationships changes the most in Season 2?
Maddie: That’s such a good question. A relationship that we focus a lot on in Season 2 is her relationship with her mom. I don’t want to give too much away, but the idea of losing her, quite literally, makes her value her mom and their relationship so much more. It makes Henry realize how her actions affect other people, and it forces her to grow up.

Not that she wasn’t forced to grow up in many other ways from many other events. But this really rocks her. She has to decide, by the end of the season, the best way to protect her mother—whether that’s being close by and taking care of her or taking herself out of the equation entirely and not being in her mom’s life anymore.

PC: As Season 2 begins to open the world up to the larger jumper universe, we’re introduced to new characters like Nikolai. What can you tease about that dynamic? What do Henry and him learn from each other?
Maddie: Nikolai and Henry have an interesting dynamic because they’re like each other’s mirrors. Nikolai sees his past in Henry. Henry sees them looking at it. But for their own reasons, they’re forced into this weird relationship. It was really, really fun to play the different levels of that bond. Callum Keith Rennie is so talented and so much fun to work with. He really loves keeping things loose and trying new things.

When you’re working through a scene, he doesn’t stick to the words. He likes to improv and surprise you. He won’t tell you what he’s going to do before a take. [laughs] Sometimes, you’ll work with an actor and they’ll be like, “Hey, I’m warning you: I’m going to bite your ear or something crazy like that.” Other times, they won’t tell you. Most of the time, I like to be surprised. So in that way, we worked really well together.

PC: We just spoke with your fellow cast members, who sang your praise and said there’s so much love on set, which allows you all to be vulnerable in your performances. Can you tell us a bit about how you guys built that bond so quickly?
Maddie: Aw! I don’t know. [laughs] Every member of our cast is really nice and a decent person. They’re all very talented and take what we do seriously. I think the quick bond probably comes from the gravity of the material.

We are all drawing on real parts of our lives, in turn giving each other real pieces of ourselves and our own experience in these scenes. And there has to be a level of trust there, and it builds a real bond with a person. It’s really beautiful.

PC: If you had to sum up Season 2 in one sentence, what would it be?
Maddie: That’s wild! Season 2 is about deciding what kind of person you’re going to be in your own story. Are you going to be the hero or the villain in your own life story?

To keep up with Maddie, follow her on Instagram. Catch new episodes of Impulse every Wednesday on YouTube or subscribe to YouTube Premium and binge-watch the whole season.