Perry Mason's Tatiana Maslany Details Her Most Difficult Scene
Tatiana Maslany has been proving herself as a performer for years now. Though she has been acting from a very young age, Maslany rose to prominence on the back of the science fiction series "Orphan Black," where she played several different clones with completely different personalities, often doing entire scenes with multiple versions of herself.
This turned out to be perfect training for her role on "Perry Mason," where she played evangelist and preacher Sister Alice. The larger-than-life character was a force to be reckoned with in the HBO show's first season and remained fascinatingly enigmatic right through to the finale, which left her fate open to interpretation.
While Maslany blew the roof off of nearly every scene she was in, the actor told Gold Derby that it was her first scene that gave her the most trouble during her time on "Perry Mason." "The first scene I did pretty much, or one of the first scenes I did, was the big funeral scene for Charlie," Maslany recalled. "Which is like a huge eulogy that Sister Alice gives or like a sermon that she gives on his death."
Maslany had a lot of pressure to get it right in her first scene
Though viewers who watched "Perry Mason" might expect that the scene was difficult due to how emotionally charged it was, being that Sister Alice is speaking extensively about a baby who has been murdered, Tatiana Maslany told Gold Derby that it was actually about how big the scene was when she was still so new to the character.
"It was like the first time I was stepping into that role, and every cast member was in the audience and all the crew and all the extras," Maslany said. Given the massive scope of the scene and the nature of "Perry Mason" as a 1930s period piece, there definitely would have been a lot of pressure to get it right, which Maslany obviously felt. Still, there was another reason why she was so nervous about this scene in particular.
"There's John Lithgow like front row center, and you know I saw him do a one-man play seven years ago or something and was just like blown away and have been a fan of his my entire life," Maslany went on. "So to stand in front of him and have to be holding, you know holding the attention of everyone, that was definitely challenging." Given how well-received her performance was on "Perry Mason," however, it looks like Maslany had nothing to worry about in the end.