Alice Krige might be playing the Witch in Gretel & Hansel, but the horror-tinged reimagining
of the classic fairy tale isn't the first time that the veteran actress has played an
iconic baddie.
In 1996, Krige appeared in Star Trek: First Contact as the villainous Borg Queen, a role
she reprised in Star Trek: Voyager and a couple of spin-off projects.
With the Borg playing a significant role in Jean-Luc Picard's latest adventures in the
CBS All Access series Star Trek: Picard, we thought it'd be interesting to ask Krige about
her time as the former Starfleet captain's arch-nemesis.
While talking with Looper about her role in Gretel & Hansel, Krige shared her thoughts
on what it takes to bring a memorable villain to life, saying,
"I'm interested in what it is to be human and to be alive.
Your job as an actor is to try to bring the humanness, the frailty, the bit that we all
recognize."
However, when it came to playing Star Trek's Borg Queen, finding the humanity in the character
presented some difficulties, since, as Krige explained,
"I don't think she is human.
No one has told me this; this is what I have come to myself, [but] I think she was an entity
that happened at the moment of creation.
And she's always been that and she always will be, and it is entirely abnormal."
"Human.
We used to be exactly like them.
Flawed, weak, organic."
In addition, when it comes to larger-than-life roles like the Borg Queen or Gretel & Hansel's
Witch, Krige noted that it can make the task of grounding those characters particularly
challenging, saying,
"You are allowed to live life through those characters as large as it is possible to write
it [...] They're archetypes.
Somehow they crystallize or distill the human condition [...] It's about catharsis, about
the insoluble problem of being human."
On the other hand, villainous parts do provide Krige with a sense of freedom.
As the actress revealed to Looper,
"With other roles, you need to try and be just like someone you'd meet in the street.
You're not going to meet [the Witch or the Borg Queen] in the street.
So every now and then, to be given the chance to live in the magic forest is wonderful because
it crystallizes on certain levels what we all face as human beings in a very, very bold,
in-your-face kind of way."
But even though Krige seems to have a good handle on her dark characters, playing villains
still can take a severe mental toll.
As an actress, Krige has to live inside her characters' heads for weeks, or sometimes
even months.
When she's playing characters like the Witch and the Borg Queen, that's not necessarily
a nice place to be.
In fact, Krige almost didn't accept the role of the Witch in Gretel & Hansel because she
was wary of spending so much time in the dark.
In 2006, Krige played a cult leader named Christabella in Silent Hill, and it left quite
a mark on her psyche.
Speaking of her experience on Silent Hill, Krige said,
"I didn't anticipate with Christabella how dark she would be.
You take something on, and you can't do half-measures.
You have to go inside that space, right?
And the last few weeks it was just Christabella mad and burning people.
It was a dark space to go to."
"That is where the darkness lies.
The demon is in the bowels of this building.
It hides behind the face of an innocent."
Thankfully for her own well-being, the actress has since emerged from that dark space.
Thanks to Gretel & Hansel director Osgood Perkins' gentle touch, Krige felt totally
comfortable inhabiting her latest villainous role.
Speaking about Perkins' approach, Krige said,
"I knew that he would come to the Witch without judgment, and that he would illuminate who
she was and what she became with understanding and compassion.
Osgood was always looking at her point of view, with her pain, with her compulsion,
her grief, her shame, her exhaustion."
Ultimately, that human perspective is what helped separate the Witch from the Borg Queen
in Krige's mind.
As the actress noted,
"By the end [of Gretel & Hansel] you had a human being who didn't start off in this place,
but who wound up in this place.
Sometimes we make decisions all alone, and we live with them for the rest of our lives.
And that's what happened to the Witch."
That's a far cry from Krige's take on the non-human Borg Queen.
Looking back on her iconic Star Trek role, Krige said,
"I wouldn't like to spend my life inside the Borg Queen, but it was a great adventure to
live inside her."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about Star Trek are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.