Fox’s TV series adaptation of Lucifer – despite its liberties taken from the source material – has quietly gone about garnering a dedicated fan following in its depiction of Lucifer himself (Tom Ellis) and his misadventures on Earth.
For Season 2, he is joined by his dear mother, played by none other then genre stalwart Tricia Helfer. When we spoke to her about her role, she told us that even for an established star like herself, the subject matter still loomed large.
“It was a little daunting!” she laughs. “Everyone says it’s Satan’s mother, but it’s also the mother of Angels, so I think everybody’s expecting this extremely evil character, and she was in Heaven, as God’s ex wife – I love to say that, ‘I’m God’s ex-wife!’ The supreme goddess. So it was a little daunting, but then I related it down to, ‘Okay, what is this woman’s intentions, coming to Los Angeles?’ She’s finally escaped Hell after a very long time – she was banished down to Hell, it’s not like she was ruling Hell, she was held captive – so at the end of the day, this woman is a mother who loves her children and wants to be with them, and also wants what was taken from her: her life, her way of living.
“Her children were taken from her when she was banished down to Hell and held captive, so is there an agenda that she has? Absolutely. Do we know it right from the start? Not so much, it’s going to take a bit of the season to understand what she wants, but once I got over the fact that, ‘Okay, I’m playing this supreme goddess, this celestial being that’s in human form for the first time, and disliking being in human form,” past that she’s just a mother who loves her children.”
Still, no one in Lucifer is innocent, and ‘Mum’ definitely isn’t. While we aren’t sure of her intentions, Battlestar Galactica star Helfer teases that there is much more to her than meets the eye. “With the addition of Mum in Season 2, it definitely adds a family element. Now, we’re going to see a different side of Amenadiel and Lucifer, because their mother is around. They have issues with their father, but from the audience’s side it’s a one-sided conversation. Now, we get to see another perspective from the mother’s side. Are they going to form a bond to fight the mother, or get into disagreements because one of them starts to understand their mother’s perspective, and do they love their mother? They do, so she’s down on Earth with them.
“There’s been a lot of miscommunication over the many, many years, and we’ll find a lot of that out in episode 2 what some of the miscommunication is… even issues like children of divorce. Lucifer and Amenadiel think that a certain thing happened, and it didn’t actually happen that way, and so many years later and many hurt feelings and miscommunications later, another side of the story is presented to them.
“I think what’s really fun for the viewers of the first season already is that we get to see a different side of the boys, of Lucifer, of the Devil. We see a vulnerable boy who wants his mother’s love. But then, as the season goes on, like you said it’s Satan’s mother we’re talking about, so we’re going to see her agenda start to form. Is she worried about killing people along the way to get what she wants? Absolutely not.”
Lucifer: Season 2 will be available to stream on Amazon later in the year. For all the latest TV news, pick up the new issue of SciFiNow.
