Wynonna Earp creator: "It really feels like we have come back from the dead"

Los Angeles Times

Emily Andras' beloved Syfy series was renewed for Season 4 exactly two years ago this week. On Sunday, Wynonna Earp's fourth season will finally premiere after a roller coast of events, including financial troubles and executive turnover at production company IDW Entertainment. “It really feels like we have come back from the dead,” Andras tells the Los Angeles Times. “I feel like we’re rising like a sexy, gay phoenix from the ashes a little bit. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a lot of pressure because the fans have been waiting so long for this premiere. I just really want them to feel like it was worth it.” Andras recalls the loneliness of knowing Wynonna Earp was in trouble, before those troubles became public. “It was a little bit isolating,” she says. “I had this piece of information and it felt like torture.” Then she learned that some at the production company hoped waiting out the clock would get IDW out of its commitment to making more episodes. So Andras rallied the "Earpers," one of the most passionate fanbases known for collective niceness, tweeting: "Don't f*ck with my family" in February 2019. “I was quite mad about the way things were going, quite honestly,” Andras says. “And then the Earpers kind of blew up.” Andras credits Earpers for saving the show but also for feeling like they have an ownership over Wynonna Earp. “I really thought it wasn’t fair to tell the fans that the body was in the morgue when it was still in the operating room and there was a chance to save it,” says Andras. “I felt passionately about that and I felt like I was willing to take the knocks of being the one to say, ‘We need some help.'" In a separate interview with USA Today, Andras says not even the coronavirus pandemic could stop the show. After filming was halted in March after completing half the season, Wynonna Earp became one of the first Canadian series to return to work this month. "You can't kill this show with fire," Andras tells USA Today. "We’ve just been through so many trials and tribulations to try to get Season 4 done, what's a little pandemic? Honestly." Andras adds: "The most important thing is that the cast and crew and I have long realized that this is a really special show. To see what it has come to mean to the fans, you don't get that too often. I don’t want to be jaded about the industry, but this is the one. It feels special."

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• Melanie Scrofano describes the challenges of shooting Wynonna Earp with coronavirus precautions: “We’ve had our COVID orientation,” Scrofano tells Now Toronto. “We have a risk management company taking care of us and making sure that we’re safe. (But) even just going from province to province has been bizarre … the shift in mentality from Ontario, where you have to wear a mask indoors, and then you come here and you don’t have to wear a mask. People still do, but it’s just looser. So that shift was weird. And it makes me wonder what the shift to shooting will be like, because we have all these norms that we do without thinking. And how is that going to translate to the work?” Scrofano adds that the cast and crew will be put in different zones, or bubbles, that don't interact with each other. Still, Scrofano says she and her co-stars are still contemplating how they'll perform with each other. “Like, for example, how comfortable is another actor with me getting close?” she says. "'Can I touch you?' You know things that I would have never had to think about before – unless it was an intimacy scene – I now have to really go, ‘Okay, what is your comfort (zone)? What’s your tolerance level?’ It’s going to be a real interesting shift.” Scrofano adds that everybody is practicing social distancing, even off the set. "We’re all very cautious; we almost lost our baby already, we’re not going to put it in danger," she says. "All these people that work with us in the crew, they deserve to have this job (laughter) and we shouldn’t be taking it away from them with our stupid behavior.”
• Scrofano says "we come out swinging" at the beginning of Season 4: "I think this season is eventful — in a lot of different ways — from what I’ve seen," she says. "I’ve read up to Episode 8 and they’re all sort of really eventful. Sometimes it’s quirkier, and sometimes it’s more like life-or-death. I mean, it’s always kind of life or death but sometimes you’re laughing while you might almost die, and sometimes you’re crying."
• Scrofano on the two-year delay: "You know, a serious roller coaster for sure," she says. "It's just been a really great learning experience to watch the Earpers fight for the show, and see people fight for something that they believe in, but to do it so gracefully and graciously and respectfully and lovingly. It's really taught me a lot about what wonderful humans there are in the world."