Katherine McNamara is currently starring in CBS All Access’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand as Julie Lawry, a small-town girl with a wild streak who also happens to be a not-so-great person. It makes the character a good fit for Randall Flagg’s (Alexander Skarsgard) group of survivors in an anything-goes New Vegas, but also makes her very different from who most fans are used to seeing McNamara play. The actress is perhaps best known for her heroic roles as Clary Fray in Freeform’s Shadowhunters and Mia Smoak in The CW’s Arrow. With both of those characters being very popular with fans, McNamara is no stranger to the power of fandom but she says she’s learned a lot about boundaries from it as well.
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Speaking with Elle in a wide-ranging interview that covered not just her role in The Stand but the horror movie she made during quarantine and other projects as well, McNamara said being part of Shadowhunters and Arrow taught her that there have to be boundaries when it comes to the digital and the real.
“Being part of shows like Shadowhunters and Arrow taught me that you have to realize there’s a clear separation between what happens in the digital world and the real world,” McNamara said. “It’s wonderful that the world can be connected, but we have to remember to appreciate the reality of people sitting here with us.”
And when it comes to fandoms, for Arrow, that took a bit of a hit recently when it was announced that Green Arrow and the Canaries, a spinoff series that got a backdoor pilot during the final season of Arrow last year, was not going forward at The CW. That news was made even harder to swallow when a follow-up report revealed that the series had already explored the possibility of moving to another platform, such as HBO Max, but no avail. Despite this, McNamara says she’s not done playing Mia and she’s open to any possibility to play the character again.
“If they ever want me in any iteration of Mia Smoak, I’m there,” McNamara recently told ComicBook.com. “I’m not done with her yet. So, if they will have me I will be there. But I think the pandemic just threw such a monkey wrench into everything.”
The Stand is now streaming on CBS All Access with new episodes arriving on Thursdays.
