As The Gifted prepares for its second season on FOX, newcomer Grace Byers is preparing to take the throne as the new queen of the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle.
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Byers is already known to many FOX viewers for her role on Empire. She’s playing Reeva Payge, a mutant with a mesmerizing voice. Reeva takes up a leadership role in the newly reborn Inner Circle, but Byers reveals she comes from more humble beginnings.
“You see her as wealthy, you see her as refined and sophisticated, very powerful, very much in control, but she wasn’t always that way,” Byers tells ComicBook.com during a visit to The Gifted‘s Atlanta set. “She grew up on the south side of Chicago not just being a mutant in this world but also biracial and poor, and so she remembers that very, very vividly, and so I feel like instead of distancing herself from that, that fuels her into kind of saying, ‘Alright, I can use my power my influence and my wealth to create a world that is better for my people, for the mutants, because I don’t want anyone to experience what I’ve experienced.’ So that makes her the bomb in my book.”
Reeva is a character that has only appeared in a single comic published by Marvel (X-Men Annual Vol 2 #3, published in October 1994). Byers says that while it might have been nice to have some more material to work with, the relatively blank slate has allowed her to better mold Reeva into the world of The Gifted.
“When you’re playing somebody who has already a whole history ahead of them then yes, you can draw from them and you can even have your own interpretations of what those things mean,” Byers says. “But in the same breath it was really lovely to be like ‘Okay, I have facts about her. She’s part of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club. These are some of her beliefs. This is her superpower.’ And then everything else it just made it kind of blend into the world that we’re living in today, and so I think that has been really freeing and I think it’s given me space to kind of find her essence and her energy.”
That said, even if it is playing a relatively unknown character, joining the X-Men’s world is a dream come true for Byers.
“I haven’t been reading the comics so much as to say ‘Oh, that’s Reeva Payge, I know who that is!’ So I definitely had to do some research,” she admits. “But I grew up watching the X-Men and always just wanting to be in that world. And so when the opportunity presented itself I was just like, ‘Oh, my gosh! I’m about to be really a mutant, but I’m about to be a superhero!’ So it’s fulfilling some fantasies for me if you will.”
Reeva may be coming on as an antagonist in the series, putting her Inner Circle against the Mutant Underground, but Byers says she’s not the typical TV season big bad.
“I think she’s definitely more complicated than that,” Byers says, “but I think when you first watch the season you think she’s big bad and then there are more characters are introduced later on that really, to me, are the ones. To me, ‘big bad’ means ‘the one that’s out to be the most dangerous to the world.’ I feel like, although some of what she wants could be considered dangerous, she is an advocate for the mutants, she is an advocate for her people. She doesn’t want to go on a killing spree if she doesn’t have to. If she has to, she will. So I don’t see her as a ‘big bad’ in that way.”
Are you excited about The Gifted‘s return? Let us know in the comments!
The Gifted Season Two premieres Tuesday, Sept. 25th at 8 p.m. ET on FOX.
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Image Credit: Marvel Comics
