Tasya Teles photographed by Liz Rosa

Now that their space boots are firmly planted back on the ground, the new SpaceKru/Skaikru is going to have to come to terms with what they are about to face – who lived, who died, and who will forgive them for things done in the past.

For Echo, it’s going to be a lot to deal with, coming back to the ground. Tasya Teles told us when we caught up recently to talk Season 5, “not only is there Octavia, but there is also Ice Nation and then there’s kind of this new idea of OneKru…so Echo literally has no idea what she’s about to walk into.” For the Ice Nation Grounder turned Space-Station dweller, Season 5 promises to get even darker.

Read on to learn more about the #Becho relationship, coming back to Earth, fan support (and dealing with overzealous fans), plus how Season 5 differs from the seasons that came before.

Did you know that there was going be that future Bellamy/Echo relationship?
No we didn’t. Jason teased that. Jason likes to keep tight lipped about that stuff because he changes his mind so much and we get argumentative or get too excited and then things will change so he tries to not let us know anything. But for me personally I felt like that was kind of the only new relationship that made sense. Raven and Bellamy could’ve been an option but I think that, I think the way it was drawn out so long over the seasons, especially with their first interaction, that that just made sense to me, so I wasn’t like shocked.

It does make sense to me to because you’ve seen them obviously; they have built a relationship over the years. So it didn’t come out of the blue.
No, it didn’t. One thing that endears me to to them is … I mean Bellamy for me, like I used Bellamy in season four. I used Bellamy in season four, he was the only person that could get through to Echo who was otherwise so guarded, and so that gave me a lot of information about, even at like the baseline, there’s something about this man that affects me. Whether she wanted to admit it to herself of not, or recognized it or not.  So with that in mind I was able to build her story-line through season four and her guilt and all of that kind of stuff with Octavia, and I think that Bellamy and Echo have something that they can learn from and offer each other and I think that’s why they’re together.

And you mentioned Octavia, obviously that’s a big concern about coming to the ground. Once they’re able to figure out how to get down and regrouping with her … What is in Echo’s mind about meeting up with Octavia and seeing what will happen?
OH GOD!! [singsong] Daunting [/singsong]. Well, you can imagine that she’s like six years turning this over in her head many, many, many times and I think part of her curiosity is for her concern is: not only is there Octavia, but there is also Ice Nation and then there’s kind of this new idea of OneKru, when Octavia won the conclave and unified everybody, so Echo literally has no idea what she’s about to walk into. She doesn’t know what the alliances are, did the Ice Nation stay Ice Nation, have they become OneKru, has Octavia chilled out, has she not? Her stakes are really high right now cause for the first time she’s in love and she really doesn’t know what to do [laughs] about all of this!

Echo was obviously in a pretty fragile state before that takeoff, going to space. What has six years done for her? What will we see as the season plays out?
I had a hard time going into season five because it required a lot of work, because you take somebody who has lost everything, and even their religion or philosophical life, their whole paradigm has changed. Everything that she knew to be true, she’s now in space, she’s now learning that her religious symbols or her whole fabric of her life is different. So, it was tough. I had to figure out how much took technology, what that meant for her, and there was also the component of friendships and what do friends teach her and what person does she become after doing this for six years, and then marry that or match that with her former self: her warrior self, her Azgeda self. So, I think she comes out of the machine [laughs], she comes out of the oven and she’s definitely softer. I think part of her, she’s aware that once she gets to Earth, she’s worried that she’s going to default back into her former self. She’s also worried about her friends; are they going to abandon her when they connect with the rest of the group because she’s been banished so many times [laughs].  She’s kind of like a young pup like she’s learning to walk in this new self on Earth, but also she still has that Azgeda warrior quality to her that will just never leave.

How much of a backstory or history do you know about what happened in space? Are we going to see a lot of those flashbacks?
There are some flashbacks, not many, but there are some so that we can fill in some of the gaps, but we try to stay moving forward and staying in the present time so we don’t do too many flashbacks or whatever, but we’re trying to catch the audience up with everybody.

It has to be exciting to work with kind of a whole new group now. We’ve seen Echo on the outside dealing with only a few people. Now, like you said, she has these friends. What has it been like working with the kind of different group and that space group together?
[laughs] We were talking about who would do what role? Before we start filming we have to go there for hair tests and makeup tests and figure out our wardrobe so we have to be in Vancouver before we start filming. So everyone’s kind of showing up back to work again, and we run in to each other, go out for drinks, and we’re all kind of laughing and giggling about what people do.  And we decided [laughs] that Raven and Emori have taken on the technical aspect and then Echo is the trainer and then me and Richard, who plays Murphy, had this long running joke where Echo has become the therapist, yet Echo’s someone who’s impartial to drama. She’s very objective. She doesn’t like getting involved in these kind of issues.

So she just would maintain kind of like a cold front and Murphy would follow her around being like, “‘You know, Emori just doesn’t get it. She just doesn’t get it. I mean I try to talk to her, I try to talk to her and go, ‘Echo are you listening to me?’ Okay, well…'” And it’s literally like this whole game where he’s like just standing there nodding like, “Yeah. You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Thanks Echo. I love you man.” And then me, I haven’t said anything. Yeah, so she’s cool, easygoing. In a weird way she does keep the peace and she’s a determined person so if ever the sprits got low, she would just be very pragmatic, “what do we do now.” And Bellamy is also, of course, of the same nature.

What is it like to get into the mindset of these characters, because it’s such world that, you know, it’s so hard to imagine having to through it, but so much of the story is so human to. So what’s it like to get into her mind?
To get in to her mind specifically … last year I got into her body and that’s what kind of opened me up. I did physical work with having a sword on my hip which was weight. So you’d walk with a swagger and you were tougher, and it would just create this toughness about her, and then in this season, her conflict was a lot of uncertainty and trying to maintain her strength, and so she was fighting with herself, I think, a lot in these moments. I think she’s grown up being a spy and living in a world that was very black and white, so she already didn’t trust people, but she knew she was good at her job because she was like, “I’m gonna kill you, or you’re gonna live if you’re useful,” but now everything’s gray and so she’s nervous. There’s definitely a quality to her where’s she’s not so sure she can trust her instincts, and she has to convince herself she can.

Tasya Teles photographed by Liz Rosa

Fans of THE 100 express strong opinions about Bellamy and Echo, and Echo in general. How do you prepare yourself to deal with that kind of reaction, that immediate reaction from fans?
Oh my gosh. Fans are so great! [laughs out loud] I don’t know. It was daunting. I think that was hanging over my head through the whole season, but what I try to do, when I’m online generally, because even if it wasn’t the #Becho thing, it is a very vocal fandom and so whenever anybody gets nasty or whatever I just try to disarm them with some sweetness.  They’ll be like, “Screw you Tasya,” and I’ll be like, “You have a really nice day.” I just hope your day’s filled with sunshine and rainbows!” That stops them right there. [laughs]

When you’re a kid and you’re like, “I wanna be an actor,” you don’t think about having to defend yourself against opinionated fans ten years later.
No, well that didn’t even really exist when I was growing up. That didn’t exist when we were growing up. We didn’t have Twitter and I’m curious. You tell me this…I heard (and believe) that THE 100 has one of the most passionate fan bases, and at a convention someone told me that, and then I was asking someone else about like this, “Oh, oh no it’s all over the place.”

We can kind of judge by viewership and who watches out videos and things like that, and I have to say whenever we put anything out about THE 100, fans are rabid about it!
That’s crazy. They are definitely passionate and we love that. There are some dark days though, where I allow myself to go down a rabbit hole when I’m bored and I’ll click on one thing and I’ll be like, “What!!” and then I’ll click on another thing and I go down this rabbit hole that … I’m like, “You know not to do this; stop doing this!” But I also just have to take healthy breaks. Instagram isn’t the same as Twitter. Twitter, it’s just easier for people to [complain].

What are you saying to people that are asking, is there a theme for this season or some kind of tease that you’re saying, “here’s why you should really tune in to season five?”
Well I think one thing that we love about the THE 100 and about shows in general is well constructed drama, and I’m a big fan of this, where you put your characters in really tough situations and then you have to watch them find their way out of it. Like BREAKING BAD was really good at that. It’s just setting up so much and this is one of those seasons where the characters get put in such tough scenarios, as they do every season, but this season I feel like because of the time jump, and there’s these new clans and pods of families, it’s bringing out different qualities in the characters that we haven’t seen before. Relationships get totally beat up and thrown against a wall. So we’re going to see things we haven’t seen before because the last four seasons, it was a little cleaner than this season.

We were talking to Jason at Wondercon and he was talking about how those first four seasons are like ten months in these people’s lives and then suddenly they’ve had to live these six years and deal with that, and it opens up such a change for everybody.
Yeah. It’s awesome. It’s really dark and I also find that with THE 100, with every season they also push the limits a little bit more, and it’s not a like a teeny-bopper show. You know what I’m saying? They get serious drama. [laughs]

THE 100, which has officially been renewed for S6, airs Tuesday nights at 9PM on The CW.