Halo's Natascha McElhone And Olive Gray Tease What's To Come For Their Characters - Exclusive
Paramount+'s highly anticipated "Halo" series has everything fans of the blockbuster Xbox video game franchise would expect. There's highly advanced technology, a mysterious alien race, and the Spartans, genetically engineered supersoldiers led by Master Chief John-117 (Pablo Schreiber). However, the series also includes plenty of human drama, and one of the most subtle but intense examples is the relationship between Natascha McElhone's Dr. Catherine Halsey and Olive Gray's Dr. Miranda Keyes.
When we first meet the characters, they appear to be rival scientists working on the same military base. Halsey is the brilliant and driven inventor of the Spartans who is willing to do whatever it takes to further enhance her creations. Miranda shares Halsey's ambition and dedication to scientific discovery, but she's compassionate with a strong moral compass that Halsey appears to lack. What's more, we soon learn that Halsey is Miranda's mother, a personal connection that makes their relationship all the more complicated. In an exclusive interview with Looper, McElhone and Gray explained that what looks like a rivalry between their characters in "Halo" is actually more layered than it initially seems.
They have a relationship with 'a thousand layers'
According to Natascha McElhone and Olive Gray, their characters have quite different perspectives on their relationship. On the one hand, Halsey may no longer think too much about her connection to her daughter. "For Halsey, it's actually not deeply complicated," McElhone noted. "She's made a choice to prioritize her work and her responsibility for having built the Spartans, and now in the process of building Cortana, that's where her head is."
On the other hand, Miranda's feelings toward her mother are anything but straightforward. "I think that if there's any rivalry, I don't know that it's an equally felt thing for Halsey and Miranda," Gray observed. "Rivalry is the top layer of a thousand layers in Miranda's head and in Miranda's experience of the relationship with her mom."
In fact, Gray indicated that as more episodes of "Halo" are released, viewers will learn much more about the dynamic between Halsey and Miranda beyond the rivalry we may initially perceive it to be. "It's really interesting because a lot of people have used that word, [rivalry]," Gray reflected. "In a way, it's interesting [how] that was the initial perception of their relationship, because it gives us a long way to go in the show because there are so many more complex and fascinating and painful and interesting layers to their relationship and the way that they operate and all of that."
The first episode of "Halo" is now streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes released on Thursdays.