Bell to make on ‘Elle’ of a debut
By Casey Gillis on Oct. 21, 2007
Peter Petrelli meet “Veronica Mars.”
Kristen Bell, who starred on the CW’s cult series for three seasons, makes her debut on “Heroes” tomorrow night.
Her character, Elle, comes roaring onto the scene searching for missing amnesiac Peter — and she’ll stop at nothing to find him.
“She’s a very fierce and intense personality,” Bell said in a conference call Tuesday. “When she wants something, she wants it and she wants it now, which I think is good when you’re working with the good guys and is really bad when you’re working with the bad guys.”
Elle was raised by the shadowy Company, HRG’s former employer and the organization behind all of last season’s abductions.
And unlike the original set of heroes, who only recently discovered their abilities, Elle has had her powers all her life.
“The whole first season has been about these fairly good natured people trying to embrace these confusing abilities and being very conflicted as to how they should be using them,” Bell said. “Elle is not that way at all. She very much enjoys her power and enjoys the emotional power it gives her over other people.”
And even as she does bad things, Elle always thinks she’s doing what’s right.
“She’s a little messed up in the head, which makes her really manipulative and always out to get what she wants,” Bell said.
In other words, she bares little resemblance to gutsy heroine Veronica.
“I have been, I think, crossing my fingers in hopes that I’d get a job soon where I could play someone who was … a little off or perhaps didn’t have the brightest and shiniest of intentions.”
But that doesn’t mean the character won’t have Bell’s signature snark.
In the same conference call, “Heroes” creator Tim Kring said Elle was created before he cast Bell, “but when you do cast an actor, … (who) has as much personality as Kristen has, you try to tailor the character a little closer to who the actor is. So it’s hard to know when one starts to influence the other.”
Both Bell and Kring said she integrated into the ensemble cast seamlessly. It didn’t hurt that she counts Hayden Panettiere (indestructible cheerleader Claire) and Zachary Quinto (the evil Sylar) as longtime friends.
“Every time you join a different job or a different show, it kind of feels like you’re changing schools,” Bell said. “Like when you’re in high school. It’s that kind of anxiety. Like, is everyone going to like me? Is this gonna be fun? Am I gonna do well? And (because of) the warmth that I was greeted with, it felt like I was starting a school that all my friends already went to.”
It’s one friend in particular, Quinto, who Bell said she would most like her character to interact with.
As the villainous Sylar, Quinto “is so unpredictable and so downright evil,” she said. “I would love to see him and Elle face off one day. I think that would be unbelievable.”
And much like Sylar, Bell expects her character to be one that viewers love to hate — at least at first.
“It’s because she was raised by the Company and not by a normal family that you’ll sympathize with her,” she said. “I certainly hope you’ll sympathize with her in trying to understand how her childhood really messed her up, and then, hopefully, she can get a little bit of redemption.”
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