Canadian star of The 100: Marie Avgeropoulos

Canadian star of The 100, Marie Avgeropoulos, plays rebellious teen in new CW sci-fi drama

By Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald 

Marie Avgerpopoulos stars in The 100.

Receiving an unintentionally painful initiation by an iconic droid is as good an introduction as any to the obsessive world of sci-fi fandom.

Canadian actress Marie Avgeropoulos was at the massive San Diego Comic-Con International last year to promote the trippy CW sci-fi drama, The 100. While the show had yet to air, fans were already quizzing its young stars about plot points and characters.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” says Avgeropoulos, in a phone interview from her home in Los Angeles. “At one point R2-D2 rolled over my toes to get by.”

Avgeropoulos, who grew up in the Northwestern Ontario town of Thunder Bay, is not likely to get a reprieve from the surreal life any time soon. The 27-year-old actress became tabloid fodder before her new series even debuted on March 20 (On the CW in the U.S. and Netflix in Canada). Her very public romance with hunky Twilight actor Taylor Lautner, who is her co-star in the upcoming action film Tracers, has made her the subject of such tantalizing gossip-site headlines as “Taylor Lautner Holds Hands With Girlfriend Marie Avgeropoulos on Date Night!” and “Taylor Lautner’s New Girlfriend: 5 Things to Know about Marie Avgeropoulos!”

Meanwhile, should the early interest in The 100 be sustained — and its debut garnered nearly three million viewers — it will easily surpass cult-TV status and potentially catapult its stars to greater fame.

Which wouldn’t be surprising. The 100 seems custom-built for the CW audience, a hormone-heavy mix of sci-fi intrigue and teen angst that features an attractive, multinational cast of young actors and a hip soundtrack of alt-rock.

Set 97 years after a nuclear holocaust, The 100 refers to a group of teenage prisoners who are sent from their space station home to earth as expendable guinea pigs to test whether it’s habitable. It is. Well, sort of. The after-effects of nuclear war has turned the planet into a weird and dangerous place filled with giant snakes, two-faced deer and mysterious natives who hurl spears at our heroes. Still, life is better on earth than on The Ark, the doomed space station that holds humanity’s sparse remains and has adopted Draconian measures to control population.

All of our young heroes have been found guilty of some sort of infraction — some big, some small — that would have resulted in them being put to death had they been over the age of 18. So earth becomes a second chance for them, but also a fight for survival and a study in group politics and peer pressure.

“They really don’t know anything about surviving,” Avgeropoulos says. “They’ve never been on earth before and they really haven’t been given too many tools to deal with it.”

And most are at least a little emotionally scarred. Due to the Ark’s fondness of capital punishment, the teens are haunted by the deaths of loved ones. That includes our hero Clarke (Eliza Taylor), the daughter of the Ark’s chief surgeon (Paige Turco), whose father was executed after being betrayed by his friend. Wells (Eli Goree) is the earnest, well-meaning son of the Ark’s iron-fisted Chancellor (Isaiah Washington), while Finn (Thomas McDonell) is the daredevil anti-hero. Avgeropoulos plays Octavia, a rebellious and flirtatious girl who is surprised to discover upon arriving on earth that her older brother Bellamy (Bobby Morely) has also hitched a ride. For reasons that aren’t initially clear, he seems determined to cut off all contact between The Ark and the ragtag 100, who begin to section off into feuding camps.

“The role of Octavia just jumped off the script for me,” Avgeropoulos says. “I’ve never been part of a sci-fi project before. I’ll try anything once. She was written very strongly. She was a very dynamic and defiant character.”

Who also comes with some serious psychological baggage. People on the Ark aren’t supposed to have siblings due to a strictly enforced one-child rule. So Octavia spent the first part of her life being hidden under the floorboards by her mother. After her mother is caught and executed, Octavia was put in prison.

“I liked how Octavia has been concealed in one way or another her entire life and the social challenges that brings to her character,” Avgeropoulos says.

Power struggles erupt, both on this strange earth and in the Ark, which is quickly running out of life support.

It’s Lost meets Lord of the Flies. Conscientious sci-fi fans may also detect hints of dystopian classics such as The Chrysalids or Brave New World as well, but the series certainly doesn’t require viewers to delve too deeply into underlying themes.

“I was told never to discuss politics or religion,” says Avgeropoulos with a laugh, when asked about the political undercurrents of the show.

Fair enougn. There’s plenty of action and sexy romance to keep us occupied. The 100 was shot in British Columbia, often in less-than-ideal conditions that made the survival aspect of the plot easy to relate to for the actors, Avgeropoulos says.

“We shoot in beautiful British Columbia, in the rainforest,” she says. “With the post-apocalyptic nature of the show, it felt like we were camping the entire first season out there. No cellphone service, shooting through the Canadian winter, through rain or shine or hail. So it (felt) like a real experience, dealing with the elements of survival.”

Not that Avgeropoulos seems to mind. Growing up in Thunder Bay, she was an avid snowboarder and rode a dirt bike. She originally set out to be a broadcast journalist, but decided to “follow her heart” to Hollywood.

She was cast in films such as 50/50 and I Love You, Beth Cooper and earned her CW stripes by guest-starring in Supernatural before landing a starring role on the network’s short-lived horror series Cult.

Avgeropoulos’s fondness for action and “using the set as a playground” came in handy last year, when she studied the intense parkour discipline to prepare for her role opposite Lautner in Tracers, an action film about a bike messenger being chased by the mafia.

“Parkour is essentially being a real-life Spider-Man, with no strings attached,” Avgeropoulos says. “It’s getting from one place to another as quickly and efficiently as possible and not letting anything — including cars or walls or anything — become a factor. You’re moving up and over everything with a lot of style and speed.”

Tracers, which does not yet have a release date, is reportedly where Avgeropoulos met Lautner and quickly became a target for TMZ and other gossip sites. She said the trick to surviving the glare of publicity, which may only get brighter as The 100 continues, is to remember where she comes from.

“I still hang out with the same group of friend as I did in high school,” she says. “I go home as often as possible. As soon as the plane touches down my cellphone doesn’t even work. I try to stay as grounded as possible. I have a really great family around me. I think that’s key.”

Episodes of The 100 are available on Netflix.