'Halt And Catch Fire' Star Mackenzie Davis On Joe, Tom And The Biggest Moments From Season 2, Episode 3 [VIDEO]

Episode 3 of AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire” Season 2, “The Way In,” was a rough one for Cameron (Mackenzie Davis). The programmer continued to quarrel with Donna (Kerry Bishé), had her work destroyed by Gordon (Scoot McNairy) and had Joe (Lee Pace) – sort of – come back into her life. Mackenzie Davis checked in with International Business Times to let fans know how Cameron is doing after the traumatic hour, revealing why she blames Donna for the whole Sonaris mess and if her new relationship with Tom (Mark O’Brien) could turn romantic.

International Business Times: Why does Cameron blame Donna for the whole disaster with Sonaris?

Mackenzie Davis: I don’t think she’s wrong that there’s probably some sharing of information [between Donna and Gordon] going on and she trusted that Donna would protect the company and not share things with Gordon – she thinks Gordon is malevolent towards the company. This confirmed all her worst paranoias about working with Gordon’s wife and, him being the one who took out her mother board in Season 1, she has a real idea about Gordon having a vendetta against her.

Watch Cameron confront Gordon about Sonaris in episode 3 below:

IBTimes: In Season 1 it was Cameron who went to Donna and asked her to be a part of Mutiny, but now she seems pretty unclear about what role she wants Donna to play. What is Cameron’s ideal working relationship with Donna?

Davis: I think at this point in time the ideal working relationship would be for Donna to handle all of the administrative things quietly so that Cameron didn’t even have to know about it or feel bad about it and offer her expertise when asked for it. But not develop a new project that was going to take away from Mutiny’s games, which is what she wants the company to be. I think she has pretty selfish ideas about Donna’s role and, of course, the reason she brought her on in the first place was because Donna is an incredibly ambitious and intelligent human being who has goals of her own, so they are starting to clash.

IBTimes: Donna often refers to their relationship as a partnership, but it doesn’t sound like Cameron sees it that way.

Davis: I think she says to herself that is [a partnership], but in her heart of hearts she knows that isn’t true right now. She is a star and, though she doesn’t want to admit it, she really wants to be the star and have people make that a reality.

IBTimes: One of the big points of contention is Community, Donna’s social media precursor chatroom. Why can’t Cameron see the value in it?

Davis: I think what appeals to Cameron about her work and coding and this company in the first place is the artistry and the difficulty of the programming language and how elegant it can be and Community is not that. It’s a very simple text-based program that actually serves the function of connecting people, which Cameron purports to love and strive for, but it doesn’t have any of the grace or impressiveness that she holds dear.

IBTimes: Do Cameron’s personal problems connecting with people get in the way of her appreciating Community?

Davis: Yeah, it’s funny because her way of trying to connect with people is through all of these alienating passageways, but to see something that is so one-to-one doesn’t really compute.

IBTimes: Let’s talk about Mutiny’s new addition, Tom Rendon. Tom openly challenges Cameron at points in this episode, but she doesn’t respond with direct anger. She actually seems afraid he has a point. What is he bringing out in her?

Davis: He’s calling her attention to a bit of stagnation. She enjoys being the star, she created the company’s star game and she’s the leader. So, she’s been kind of coasting for a while and he’s the first person who is brave enough to call her out on it. She would give a verbal lashing to anyone else who talked to her like that because she’s usually the smartest person in the room and could tear them to shreds, but she can’t do that here. She just gets p---ed off and embarrassed.

IBTimes: They seem to have a moment when Tom helps her calm down from her panic attack. Is there a possibility here for a romantic relationship?

Davis: I don’t know. I think there’s a respect growing, which I think is one of the things Cameron needs for either a friendship or a romantic relationship. I think she thinks he has the goods in a way that nobody else around her does.

IBTimes: Post-Sonaris, is Cameron going to take Tom’s advice and create something new?

Davis: We filmed a scene for this episode where she goes back to her computer and deletes the last chapter of Parallax and kind of moves on from that part of her life, but it didn’t make it into the episode. I think out of the ashes of destruction the phoenix will rise.

IBTimes: The elephant in the room in Cameron’s storyline is certainly Joe. What is going through her mind when she hears his voice on the phone?

Davis: I think she has really compartmentalized him as just a non-entity that no one speaks of. The last time she saw him was their conversation at her house last year and then she heard from Donna that he lit a truck on fire and went into the woods. That’s a crazy thing to know about a person! So, it was kind of like hearing from a ghost.

IBTimes: We found out in the premiere that Gordon got a letter from Joe. Has there been any communication at all between Joe and Cameron?

Davis: Lee [Pace] and I talked about it a lot actually and decided that they both got letters. Gordon read his and Cameron did not. She just threw it out.

IBTimes: How will Cameron react when she finds out Joe is engaged?

Davis: She’s going to feel a crack in her armor. Finding out he is engaged is the end, it’s going to be hard.

Do you want to see a romance between Cameron and Tom? Tweet your thoughts to @Ja9GarofaloTV.