“Essentially a prostitute”: the breakthrough role Morena Baccarin nearly turned down
One of the highest-rated TV shows in IMDb history is one that actually not too many folk this side of the Atlantic know about, but it’s the early 2000s sci-fi western Firefly, starring Morena Baccarin.
A creation of The Avengers director Joss Whedon, it was a space western set some 500 years in the future that, although it proved popular when it was aired in the US in 2002, was cancelled after just one season. It did, however, go on to pick up an Emmy for ‘Outstanding Special Visual Effects’, and it certainly sparked Baccarin’s career, leading her to become something of a comic book and sci-fi legend.
Prior to that role in Whedon’s show, Brazilian-born Baccarin had been at the New York theatre school Juilliard, graduating in 2000 and then landing a role in a little-remembered Jeff Goldblum movie called Perfume, before Firefly gave her the part of Inara Serra, a character described as a ‘high society courtesan’, which quite understandably had her pause for thought.
She told Showbiz Junkies, “Originally, when I heard about the project, I thought it was really cool. Then I heard about my character, who is essentially a prostitute in outer space, I was like, ‘I don’t think I want to do this part’.”
Baccarin credits the show’s creator with talking her around, however, and it proved to be the right decision, because her next role in 2005 was on the Firefly spin-off movie Serenity, named after the spaceship from the show. She added, “I met with Joss, and we talked about who she was. I think she was really the heart of that family. Joss did such a good job of making this character, who was an outsider, and also this sort of glue that kept everybody together on that ship. It was really a privilege to do that.”
In the 20-odd years since, she has made a long career out of the kind of shows and movies that the internet tends to get very excited about, including Stargate SG-1, The Flash and supernatural fantasy Medium, plus the role that really put her on the map, which was the Clare Danes smash Homeland, for which she was nominated for an Emmy.
As if all that weren’t enough to get the assembled online geeks nervously twitching, she’ll also be seen in the big-budget Masters of the Universe live action reboot movie that hits cinemas on June 5th of this year. With a cast of stars including Idris Elba (yay) and Jared Leto (boo), it promises to unite fans who grew up watching the original cartoon and who now should really know better, like me, and a new generation who will probably find Skeletor mildly hilarious.
Baccarin will play The Sorceress in the movie, the keeper of Castle Grayskull, and someone whose magical knowledge is unsurpassed, according to the blurb, which presumably means she either will or won’t be a help to He-Man on whatever quest he might be on. Hopes are high that the Travis Knight-directed movie will be good enough to spark a franchise that runs for several films, especially with a reported budget of anything up to $200million.
Production of a live-action Masters of the Universe film has been in the works for decades, with a sequel to the 1987 original announced as far back as 2009, but the wheels finally seem to be turning.
