‘Westworld’ Season 2: Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton On Their Strong Characters

Rarely do shows and movies portray strong female characters in a truthful light, so Thandie Newton and Evan Rachel Wood are grateful that HBO’s “Westworld” does exactly that.

When asked during the SXSW panel how it felt to play the smart and sassy Maeve Millay, Newton answered: “Normal! It felt normal. Sigourney Weaver in ‘Alien,’ that was ages ago. I named my kid Ripley because that’s a woman I recognize.”

As for Wood, she didn’t “feel confined” or try to make herself “smaller” because of her role as Dolores Abernathy, according to Variety. In fact, she learned more about herself when she took on the role.

“Last season was a trip because life was imitating art in kind of a big way. That’s why I love working with Jon and Lisa,” Wood said of showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. “Everyone’s heart is in the right place. We’re doing this for a reason, and it became glaringly obvious why last year.”

“I’ve always said playing this role completely changed my life and transformed me, and it’s hard not to go through this same evolutionary shifts as the characters because you’re on the journey with them,” she continued. “And you don’t get to know what happens to them, and you don’t get to mentally prepare, and the existential crisis there is very real.”

On the other hand, Newton appreciated the fact that she got to play the “truth” in Maeve. “Very often the truth of the characters I play as a woman is that she’s powerful, she’s intelligent, [and] she’s able to multitask. So I want to give it up massively to the [expletive] men on our show to have the generosity of spirit, to have the sophistication, the progressiveness to put a platform up for women,” Newton said.

Wood earlier teased that “Westworld” Season 2 has quite a number of surprises up its sleeves. “You are really, really in for it,” she shared when she appeared at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, Canada. “I had no idea, I thought, ‘God where are they gonna go from here, how are they gonna top this?’ — first five minutes of the first episode, [I thought,] ‘Oh, they’ve done it!’”

“Westworld” season 2 premieres April 22 on HBO.