Rebecca Romijn talks The Librarians, Skin Wars, and the importance of strong female roles

Posted on November 2, 2015 in TV, TV & Film

Rebecca Romijn is basically the queen of comic fandom. From the moment she appeared on screen as Mystique in the X-Men films, she has been the embodiment of the strong, confident and in charge (not to mention sexy) super woman. Now, she’s a part of another team of super heroes in TNT’s The Librarians as well as the host and executive producer of the GSN body painting competition series Skin Wars.

Heading into the second season of your hit show, The Librarians, where is the series headed?

It’s limitless. Our world is limitless because of magic so when we get these scripts, we can’t believe what our writing staff comes up with. We have a time loop episode I’m crazy about and an alternate universe episode that turns all of our characters upside down. It’s so fun.

You actually have two hit shows at the same time. What’s it like juggling both The Librarians and Skin Wars?

I love it. On Skin Wars, I get to sorta let me supermodel freak flag fly. On Librarians, it’s the opposite. They’re two very different things and I love them both. I have so much fun on The Librarians and I get to work with RuPaul [on Skin Wars], so it’s a good time.

What is most challenging about shooting episodic television like The Librarians?

It’s usually something logistical like shooting winter episodes during the summer. When we shot our Christmas episode, it was 100 degrees outside and we were bundled up in scarves and coats. It’s really just logistics. Our writer’s room is in LA and we shoot up in Portland, so there are a lot of things that happen on the page that just don’t work out on a practical level. There’s a lot of massaging that happens on our end once we get the scripts on location.

So does that mean you guys are doing improv on set?

A lot, all of us. We are constantly tweaking and making it work for where we are. We have so much fun together. We work seven day episodes so all of our fun goes into our work, and improvising and catching people off guard. We love to catch each other off guard. Of course John Larroquette is the king of the one-liners and he can elicit a different reaction from us all the time by mixing it up. I think people like to see that. Audiences like to see people have a good time.

How important is it for you to be playing such a strong female lead?

Very, especially having daughters. It’s sorta become part of the criteria on the projects I pick. I spend so much time away from my daughters, I want to work on projects they actually want to see. They love The Librarians and they love Skin Wars too. They’re both painters as well. I feel like if I’m going to be away from them for an amount of time, they can at least see what I was doing and we can all enjoy it together. It’s a great time in television for female characters and to get to play this very strong female character, and I consider Mystique one of them as well, as a mother of girls, it’s important.

We love this interview Rebecca did with co-host RuPaul talking about Skin Wars. Be on the lookout for the new season on GSN, and check out The Librarians on TNT this fall.