When Liv eats a victim’s brain on iZOMBIE we’ve see her take on one extreme personality after another. And while Major has occasionally taken on the personality traits of people whose brains he’s eaten, fans haven’t gotten a chance to experience what they’ll see tonight: Major on teenage girl brains.
Liv, Clive and Ravi investigate a fatal car accident involving a father and his angsty teenage daughter. To aid in the investigation Liv consumes the brains of the father and Major consumes the brains of the daughter. Apparently a teenage girl is the “part Robert Buckley was born to play,” Rose McIver said during our visit to the set of iZOMBIE.
“It was so much fun,” Robert Buckley said of the upcoming episode. “The only thing weird about it was how not weird it was. It was not a stretch. It started because there was a bit I do when something minor happens to me and I’m like [in a fake teenage voice], ‘My life is so hard.’ And the writers have all seen it, so when we met with writers over the summer, Diane Ruggerio-Wright, one of our showrunners, was like we have some great ideas for a brain for you. She was like, ‘It’s going to be a teenage girl. Ice skating enthusiast.’ And I was like, “‘Yeah. Done. Of course that makes sense.’ I’d love to say I had to do a lot of prep for it and put a lot of thought into it [but]…None. Just learned my lines and I let that girl out. I’ll tell you what: I came on the first day and I told Dan Etheridge our [Executive Producer], ‘I’m going to do this and you dial me back. I’ll give you more and you pull me back.’ And it was the opposite. ‘You might want to go further,[ [he said]. And I was like, ‘Really?’ It ended up being so much fun. I also haven’t had much of a shot to do much comedy in my career, so this was the first chance to play it big, play it broad, and see how it goes. I loved it. I haven’t seen a cut of it, but I had a blast doing it. It was a lot of fun.”
There have been a few other fun brains coming up in season 3 that the cast has enjoyed according to McIver: “We’ve got a dominatrix brain that’s a lot. Poor Malcolm and Rahul, Clive and Ravi, definitely sort of bear the brunt of that. And especially now that Babineaux knows about Liv’s reasons for the way she behaves, he’s having to kind of put up with things in a different way, so that’s a very funny episode I think. And yeah, I think the brains have integrated very well with the overall storylines this year in a way that is just kind of even more refined. Like the writing is so clever and each time…What’s one last one? Oh, a hot mess brain. That was probably my favorite. Very sort of Amy Schumer/Trainwreck/can’t remember where she’s left anything, hasn’t got anything together. I didn’t expect that to be as easy to play as it was.”
As for Major’s work life, we saw at the end of the season 3 premiere that he had decided to join Fillmore Graves’ mercenary team. However, this new job could cause tension between Major and the other zombies, particularly given FG’s motivations to segregate zombies: “I think what happens is as Fillmore Graves grows and as the concerns about the zombie population grows among the zombie truthers in Seattle, the role that Fillmore Graves gets to take, their take on how to handle this zombie d-day, that is something that will come to shape and challenge everyone’s relationship with Fillmore Graves and Major’s reaction to the firm itself,” Buckley said.
Meanwhile, how will Major’s work for FG be different from his work for Max Rager (besides the murdering, of course)? Well, for one thing, this could actually be good for him: “The main difference between the two is Major was blackmailed into working for Max Rager. It’s something he never wanted a part of and only did against his will. Whereas Fillmore Graves is something he voluntarily joined. His job search was pretty fruitless — he wasn’t in a great place — so his options were kind of limited. But I think what appeals to Major with Fillmore Graves is what he does actually has some value. We’ve seen him, he’s a caretaker, from when he was at Helter Shelter; he likes to look after people. He likes to do work that has importance and value. Fillmore Graves, at least initially believes in what they’re doing. A large part of him wonders about his search for meaning, especially with what happened with the counselor thing. He really hasn’t had much of a life. His love life is in shambles, he has no job, he has no real personal life outside of a couple of friends. He’s trying to find who Major is again. I think he’s hoping by doing this job that could end up being a good use of his time is part of that.”
Don’t miss an all new episode of iZOMBIE tonight (April 11) at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
