Terri Clark: How are you today?

Rena Owen: I'm good thank you. I'm excited for our two hour premier tomorrow night. Time has gone so fast. My goodness. But it's here, it's here tomorrow night. Obviously, I hope it does very well.

Terri Clark: I hope so too. I really enjoyed it. I watched the two hours and I'm excited to see where it's going because there's so many mysteries involved.

Rena Owen: Yes. I think that's something, as an actor, I thought was one of its strong points, is that everything was always unpredictable including for us actors because we would never quite know what would be in the next script. We got to ask that question, the same question the audience asked is, what's going to happen next? It just kind of gave it an edginess and that unpredictability and that's very much related to Ryn, the leading girl.

She is a totally unpredictable species. I think, I certainly know and I would be surprised, if not everyone else realizes, if that central character did not work, the show wouldn't work. Everything rests on Ryn and she's such a stunning young woman and she's kind and she's incredibly disciplined and studious. She takes her craft very seriously.

Terri Clark: I actually had the pleasure of speaking with Eline this morning, so it's been a fun day for me, getting to talk with the both of you. Pardon me, my voice is starting to go.

Rena Owen: Oh that's okay. Yeah, it happens to all of us. We both come out of that kind of old fashioned school of thought, about the value of training and craft and honing and refining your skills. The show rests on her shoulders. She is the central leading character and she almost is creating a template for the future mermaids, that will come to new seasons.

God be willing, we get to do multiple seasons and she's stunning and she's just lovely to work with. She's so there and she's so present and in charge of her craft. She's a joy to work with and as Helen, most of my scenes are with her, so we forged quite a very strong connection and relationship throughout the pilot and throughout the 10 episodes or the season, I should say.

Terri Clark: I love that. Speaking of training, when I was doing my research on you, I noticed that you're one of nine children and that you started preforming locally at a young age. Is being part of big family like that, is that kind of how you came by wanting to perform?

I know a lot of performers that come from big families, do so almost as a means to stand out initially. Is that kind of how you came about [crosstalk 00:03:45]?

Rena Owen: No. It's a very timely question and particularly coming from a woman and in brief. I was born hypersensitive. I was born a typical creative or artist, whichever word you want to use. I was very hypersensitive. I had a vivid imagination. I had a flair for creativity and it started at a very young age. I mean, I was first published when I was eight years old. I entered a children's poetry contest and I won it. From age five I was always-

Terri Clark: That's amazing.

Rena Owen: Yeah. I was always in the performing arts. At the time it was the, Maori Culture Club and we would regularly entertain the tourists. You've just got to kind of think Hawaii. I grew up in the Bay of Islands, where basically tourists would come during summer and we'd entertain them and school.

As a result of being in that cultural club, I got into the high school musicals. I knew at a very young age, that I had found my place in the world and it was very much in the arts and it was on the stage and it was performing. However, at the end of the 70's, there were three things going on. One, as a woman, my career choices were, I could be a secretary, a teacher or a nurse.

Terri Clark: I know that's what you went to school for.

Rena Owen: Exactly. Secondly, I had no role model. I mean, I'm a biracial girl. My dad's Native New Zealander and my mum's European. You know, we didn't have brown faces on our screens, so it wasn't something I grew up with going, "Well gosh, that's an option to me." I mean, 15 years later with the success of "," that's the thing that pleased me the most.

It told me these were the brown kids and they could be actors and writers and directors and story tellers. The answer to your original question is, no. My need for performing was very much part of my passion and my imagination and my sensitivity. Absolutely, when you're the middle child, we would do things in groups. Sometimes I'd be with the older group and then sometimes I'd be with the younger group.

I was the one in the middle that was the odd one out but I wasn't the odd one out because there was nine of us. I was the odd one out because I was the creative. As my mum would say many years later in those generations, they didn't quite understand artistic children. It's very different now. I was talking to another journalist about this yesterday, how every generation affords the next generation certain privileges.

I got to do stuff my mother never got to do. Children now or our youth, are growing up knowing that, not only is it okay to be different, it's the aspired for thing. You're defined by your differences. They don't have to hide their quirkiness or their sexuality or those things that make them different and stand

out from the crowd. It's very different times we live in and that's life and that's the evolution of our species.

Yes, I did go nursing. I got accepted for teaching and nursing. I'm going to confess, I was watching a British TV soap called "Angels," and it was all about doctors and nurses. I remember saying to my mum, "Nevermind teaching. I'm going to go nursing." I got this romanticized notion of meeting a doctor. Well I never met a doctor. I never hooked up with a doctor, but I did train for three and a half years.

I did qualify as a general and obstetric nurse. Then I left 21, going on at 22. I did have aspirations of going to med school to become a doctor but the next seven years of my life took a very different course. I ended up in London. I'd played with fire, I got burned. I did a lot of things that you do when you're young and you're dumb. It's a combination of being tightly naïve and arrogant. I remember clearly that age, when you had no concept of the future.

You had no concept of death. What's that word? You're just invincible. That's what you're like when you're 21, 22. I kind of went AWOL, it was my first taste of freedom. The good thing about that is, I was still in my early 20s and it made me realize that I had done nursing, to fulfill society's expectation of me as a woman and it's also with the career that pleased my parents but I still had all this creativity.

I still had all this passion and sensitivity. Instead of going to med school, I enrolled in a place called, The Actors Institute, in London in 1985, end of 1985. I've been doing it ever since and I continue to write. I went on to write stage plays. They got produced and published. As a person or as a creative, really I've seen it as my medicine.

I just have a need to be creative, whether it's through acting or writing. I also found that choosing the path of the artistic path, I knew right back then, that it was [crosstalk 00:09:32].

Terri Clark: I'm having a little trouble hearing you now. I'm sorry.

Rena Owen: Oh. Sorry honey, yeah. Sorry, I should keep the phone close to my mouth. I knew that choosing the arts was going to be the harder career, in terms of security but the wonderful journey I've had with doing what I do is, it is a path of self discovery and I also think that the arts provides a whole lot of healing.

Terri Clark: I would agree with that, definitely. Now you mentioned your writing and I know that you've written a lot of plays and you've done a lot of theater. How do those mediums differ for you creatively from say, doing film?

Rena Owen: Okay. You're breaking up a little bit, so hopefully I'm not the same. Let me just clarify that question. How is acting and writing different for the theater, to doing it for film?

Terri Clark: Yeah. I know you both write and you also do theater. How do those mediums feed you creatively in a different way, than say acting for film does?

Rena Owen: You know, it all feeds into everything. Firstly I'll say that the nuts and bolts of acting does not change. The job remains the same, to be real in imaginary circumstances. The difference for me, in a nutshell is, in theater, you go out to your audience. You project out to your audience and obviously sometimes you're in huge auditoriums. In theater, on stage, you project. You go out to your audience.

With the camera, whether that's for TV or for film, you let the camera come inside. That's the biggest difference is, theater you go out to your audience. Camera, you let the camera come inside, so you need to be open. You need to be available and that comes with a certain vulnerability. As a writer, I had the advantage, when I write or as an actor, I'm always ...

You have to figure out the inner life, of what's going on in the inner life. I try to teach young actors this, the camera does not see dialogue. It does not see words going across the screen, unless it's a subtitled film. What the camera sees, is human behavior. What the camera sees, is what the actor is thinking and feeling. You have to get all of that in place first, in order to understand where the dialogue's coming from.

As a writer, you have to know this and as an actor, that's your job to figure it out. If you haven't written the vehicle, figure out what the writer's intention was. I'm quite a stickler because I am a writer, I always aspire to honor the writer. I always ask permission, if I can adjust the odd word or if I'm kind of not quite getting their intention or where certain things are coming from.

You've got to as an actor. There are actors out there that don't do homework, they do just show up. Some get spoon fed and that's just the way it is. Myself and Eline, we have in common that we're both hungry to learn. We both have a hunger for the human condition. We both have an enormous respect for craft. We're always asking, we're always searching, we're always aspiring to be better.

We're always looking for those things that are going to force us to being better. Every creator, every true artist, is always looking for a magic moment and those magic moments, are moments of pure spontaneity. In order to have those moments of pure spontaneity, you've got to be the cure. As Michael Caine always taught us, in order to be secure, you have to do your homework.

Know who your character is, know your lines, know all your dialogue, know your circumstances and then when you get to set, you can let it go and it does itself

and you have space for magic to happen. That would happen a lot with me and Eline because we both kind of work in a very similar way, in terms of just being in the moment and having room to just go with the flow, so to speak and see what comes up in the moment.

We had great directors, we had very good scripts. First and foremost, we had ... You know I love Helen. I really do love this character. I finally for the first time, have gotten a character that can be totally eccentric. I haven't had this kind of ... Yeah, I've played other kind of different nutty characters but they were nutty in a very different way. They were nutty in very dark ways, like in horror films.

I remember one of the most horrific characters I have ever played was, she killed children. She was sick. That's a different kind of nutty and Helen isn't really, even though a character calls her the town nut job, she's not. The only reason they think she's a nut job, is because she's always going on and on and on and on and on and on about mermaids and the fact that they're very real.

Finally when they start coming to land, suddenly they go, "Oh, maybe she's not so nutty after all." She's kind of had this alienated kind of life in a lot of ways because she is different. She is a little odd and she's a little eccentric and she has this passion and purpose. She finally gets out of her shop, as episodes evolve and you do see that she actually has a life within the community and this township of families, that have been there for generations.

That was a part of Helen and the series entire, that I could identify with hands down because I came from one of those small coastal inland communities, where generations worked in the local industry. That in New Zealand was agriculture, so it was New Zealand butter and milk and beef and lamb. My great grandfather, my grandfather, my father, my nephews, my brothers, they all still work in this industry.

In Bristol Cove is the fishing industry. So we also had the fishing industry out on the coastal town. In fact, in high school, I would earn my pocket money working at the tourist resorts, working in the shop like Helen, earning pocket money for the school holidays. I think if I had never left my home town, maybe I'd be a lot like Helen now.

Terri Clark: Well she's definitely very enigmatic and she has this air of mystery around her. I didn't consider her nutty, so much as secretive. She seems to hold everything very tightly to herself. Obviously while she's told tales and stories to the kids of Bristol Cove, we can tell she's holding to a lot of knowledge too but she's not speaking up.

What is it that she's fearful of and what does Ryn's sudden appearance mean for her?

Rena Owen: Yeah. That's good actually and you chose a very good word and I must start using that word more often. She's an enigma. She is holding secrets and she holds a lot of knowledge and Ryn coming to land, is both her dream come true and her worst nightmare. Unlike the ordinary folks of the town, I know that they are top level predators and they will cut your head off.

The younger and that's what I'm pretty much doing in those first episodes is, I'm telling Ben and Maddie, that they don't know what they're dealing with. They have no concept of what they're up against. They don't realize how lethal Ryn is. They want to look at her as a scientific experiment and like a lot of the town folks think of mermaids, as the Disney version of a mermaid.

[crosstalk 00:18:25] pretty but these aren't. These are highly intelligent, top level predators and I think that that's another ingredient, that makes our show unique. To a certain degree, I would often think of it as a True Blood but with mermaids, not vampires. Not as blood and gory as True Blood but in that kind of realm of Grimm, where you've got these creatures.

I just think, I'm going to keep bringing it back to Eline because if she didn't make it work, it would never work for any of us I think what happens with Eline and her performance and the combination of myself or my character is, we get to humanize her. You know, she's humanized throughout the course of the story and of course, I can't give away scene spoilers right now but if people hang in there for every episode, every episode, more is revealed.

By the end of the season, the audience is going to know a lot more of what Helen knows.

Terri Clark: Yeah. I have a working theory that, if she's not a mermaid herself, I think that she could potentially be a paranormal creature. Now what I wouldn't know and I realize that's not something that you can tell me, so I'm just going to ask Rena, if you could be any kind of paranormal creature, what would you be?

Rena Owen: Oh, well my all time favorite will forever be Yoda.

Terri Clark: I love that.

Rena Owen: A little fem- I would love to be Yoda's sidekick. A little female Yodette. A little female Yodette. That forever is my favorite character of all time, is Yoda and then after Yoda is E.T. I mean, I'll never forget watching E.T. I was living in London at the time and we went to see the movie in Leicester Square and I'll never forget that moment, where I just started to cry.

You know and those are the movies that you remember, those movies that really touch you in your heart and you having an emotional reaction, you never forget those moments. Yes, I would want to be Yodette, a little female Yoda.

Terri Clark: I love that and bringing up and , you said you're one of six people ever, that have worked with the both of them, is that right and the only female, right?

Rena Owen: That's right. I mean, you can go in the next movie database, it gives you the five males. It's Samuel L. Jackson, it's Richard Dreyfuss, it's Harrison Ford, I believe. I can look it up for you right now, actually.

Terri Clark: Oh, that's okay. I can do that, yeah. That's amazing.

Rena Owen: [crosstalk 00:21:30] only five actors. One of them is quite recent because it was only five for a while and now it's six. I'm the only female and sometimes I'm not on this list and sometimes I am because the role we took ... And it was amazing. First and foremost, George Lucas had seen Once Were Warriors, the New Zealand film that launched me internationally. He wanted me as leading guy in , so we both ended up in Star Wars.

Temuera Morrison plays in episode two and three and I played ... I was originally meant to play Capt. Typho but that role got changed to a male. That was Padme security guard, who wears the eye patch, very cool role, played well by Jay Laga'aia. They said, "George still really wants you in this movie and there's this alien. Would you play an alien?"

I'm like, "Sure." Here's the thing, growing up rural New Zealand, in the decades I grew up, I didn't have a concept of Star Wars. I mean, of course, I had seen the first one but I didn't get into the whole fandom of Star Wars because that just didn't kind of get up to our part of New Island, so to speak. I mean, I'll never forget catching a bus ride all the way to the city, to watch Saturday Night Fever.

Yeah, Saturday Night Fever. When I did Star Wars episode 2, I really went in with a naivete which was great because it was just another job. I was just a creative big kid and I had a fantastic time. George really appreciates people who just treat him ordinary and I had found this to be true of most people, who had been blessed or gifted with talent. That people who do extraordinary things, have a need to be ordinary.

They just want people who are going to treat them just ordinary, like a next door neighbor or something. He liked that, he liked that I'd say to him in the morning, "How are you doing George? What are you having for breakfast?" He's a very ordinary man, he just does extraordinary things. I just finished doing that job and then I came to LA and Steven Spielberg was doing AI in Long Beach.

My agent rang me and said, "Look, the casting director, a big casting direction from New York has called about you." She said, "Stephen needs an actor, a really good actor, who can be part of this big flesh scene. We can't tell you what you're going to be doing, we don't now what you're going to be doing but he's just finding that, using extras, he's not getting what he needs."

She said," He's asked that you would consider doing this, going in there and really, you might just be a little featured background artist or whatever." I said, "I don't care. It's Steven Spielberg, of course I will do it." Listen, I'm going to tell you, this is a reflection of Steven Spielberg. So I go down to Long Beach. I go on set. He comes up to me, he shakes my hand.

He says, "I am a huge fan of Once Were Warriors did a fantastic job." I was so impressed, that he knew Lee's name and pronounced it well and knew his full name. I mean, I was so impressed by that because this is a man that I thought wouldn't know this little film but it's why they were interested in me. Then the DOP was looking at me sideways and then he goes, "Oh my God, I knew you were familiar. That's where I know you from, Once Were Warriors."

Spielberg nudged him and said to him, "Yeah, she's doing me a favor." That's classic. I'll never forget it. From Stephen's perspective, I was doing them a favor. The role I ended up doing, was being the ticket taker, that stops that robotic bear from trying to sneak into the flesh fair. There you had it, I was back to back with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

I had no idea that I was only one of only five actors in the world to work with both, until a fan actually wrote to me and said, "Do you realize that there's only five actors who have worked with both?" I said, "No." He said, "Yeah." You know, it's an accolade. Even though both [crosstalk 00:26:18]. Even though my role in AI is a small little cannier role and you don't gt to see the final version of me in Star Wars because they did an extreme computer job on me, to transform me into Taun We.

I had those experiences. Having said that, I would love to be considered for the new Star Wars, to actually play a role where people could see me. I remember, the negotiations went from Capt. Typho to this alien because my mother got quite excited. I said, "Mum, please don't get too excited because you're not going to even see me in the final [crosstalk 00:26:58]."

I was pleasantly surprised by how much of myself I could still see in the performance and the walk. Us Owens have a very distinctive walk and yes, we remained a very, very close family. We've lost one brother but we've always been a very close family and I don't know how my mum did it. I mean, she had back to back pregnancies. She was in the permanent state of pregnancy and I'm going to tell you right now, we had a home cooked meal every night on our table.

I don't know how my mother did it, I really don't but we were Catholic, so you know, there was a lot of breeding going on. Also true and I think this is true for families, even here in rural America, the bigger your families, the more workers you had for the farm. Our grandmother owned a dairy farm. Our grandmother had a very successful dairy farm. We'd work up on her farm and then at summer, I'd work out at the coastal communities, to get my pocket money.

I'm glad for my background because it's kept me very grounded and it was a huge culture shock, when I moved to the city at 18 and I was very, very home sick. So home sick. [crosstalk 00:28:20]

Terri Clark: Oh, I imagine so.

Rena Owen: I was, I was but you know, I then went on to live and work in a lot of different countries around the world and I'm approaching those years, where I kind of do want to start spending more time at home. I'm getting maturer now.

Terri Clark: Is home for you in New Zealand or LA or both?

Rena Owen: It's both. It's an occupational hazard for me. I have a home in New Zealand. I go there and I come here and now we go to Canada a lot to shoot and I recently just ... I just wrapped on a movie in Australia. I am still of the age or it's not even an age thing. I'm blessed to be a working actor, I consistently travel. I do keep a base. My home is in New Zealand and I always have a place here to stay in LA, for the months I come into LA.

LA has been a home to me and I'll forever be very fond of LA and some of my ... You know, every decade of your life, you make your best friends. I mean, I still have very best friends from my years in London and I'll always have the same for LA. I am kind of getting of an age now, where I would like to spend more time in New Zealand and I'd like to have a garden again and a dog and a cat.

I've really been traveling since I left home for 30 years. I've been on the road. It's been a long time. What's nice about when you do a series, a TV series, you're in one place for a substantial amount of time, you can actually get a routine. That's what I like about when I'm back in LA, I can have a routine. Whether that's going to my yoga every morning, I have a routine and I live in a really central location.

I'm very blessed here in LA and I think it's one of the things I like about myself is, no matter where I am, I'm the same person. Whether I'm in LA or I'm in New Zealand or I'm in London, whether I'm walking down the streets or helping the homeless or on a movie set, I'm the same person. I think my background has really helped in that regard. It's just kind of the way I am really.

I think coming out of theater, I learned at a very young age in my career, that acting really first and foremost, we servants. It's to be of service. We're being of service to our audiences in theater and in film, you want to touch the audience or you want to inspire them or you want to make them laugh or you want to make them cry. It's a servantly job and I always keep that perspective on it.

I'm very blessed to be an actor and it's one of those things I remind myself of is that, 99% of our population is always out of work. When you're getting up at 04:00 AM in the morning and you want to bitch, you don't. You go, "I'm grateful,

thank you. I'm so happy I'm working." This is an example. Tomorrow night, I'll go and watch the two hour premier with Freeform and Real Life Tweets.

Then on Good Friday, I'll go down and work for the LA Mission and that's something I do with my agent every year, when I'm in LA. [crosstalk 00:31:50]. Yeah, I like it. You know, it keeps me humble and I call them brownie points in heaven. I like helping people and it helps me to be grateful. Our industry can be a very ... What's the right word? It can be a selfish industry. Maybe selfish is too hard of a word but you know what I'm saying.

Terri Clark: I understand what you're saying. It's more about privilege for a lot of people but both you and Eline definitely, I hear the gratitude and both of you are very humble and happy with what you're doing and passionate. I can hear that from both of you, so I can definitely see why the two of you have gotten on the way that you have.

Rena Owen: Oh, thank you. Thank you and I think we both just ... Our job as actors, is to portray the human condition. That's what it is and so, in order to do that, you've got to keep yourself very human.

Terri Clark: Well you've done so much. From, like you said, Once Were Warriors, which was your big break out, had to more of the commercial stuff, like the Star Wars and everything in between, across three different places. What is something that you haven't yet done in acting, that you would just love to do?

Rena Owen: Oh, I'd love to do a Marvel comic book Franchise.

Terri Clark: I love that.

Rena Owen: Yeah. I think as our darling dame Judy Dench has said herself, she's slowly but truly going to eventually retire and I think it's an interesting time to have a strong ethnically diverse woman in a similar kind of role. In fact, that's one of the reasons I did this independent film in Australia recently, Escape and Evasion because I so admired ...

My friend contracted me last year and he said, "Look, I'm doing this movie. The character, the major is a man but there's no reason this role can't be a woman. I read it and I said, "Yes, yes, yes." I'd never done that kind of character, Major Pennyshaw and her tagline was literally, poker face. To play that kind of character that doesn't give anything away, was a new kind of character for me and just quite the control freak, without being the control freak.

I'd love to play more of those kind of authoritarian kind of roles. I'm finding and I keep reminding my friends, who are getting this benchmark, that in your 50s ... The 50s are so much better because in your 40s, you're too old to be the young chicky babe and you're too young to be the old wise woman or the old

grandmother but in your 50s, not only are you at a great age, you're more secure in your own skin.

You're comfortable with who you are. You know who you are, you know what you're on this planet for and you relish, you relish every opportunity and every day because it happens. Once you pass 50, life suddenly looks shorter, a lot shorter than what's been behind you in your life. Okay, this is it. This is my life and how you're going to live it. I think that we do ... Well I'm finding with me, it's better work because it's more relaxed.

It's coming out of that space of centeredness, of real inner power. Your 20s to 30s, you've got a lot to prove and you kind of often force it. In your 50s, what I am finding as an actor, the more you relax, the more you sit back on it, the better it is. [crosstalk 00:36:00] Lady M or that kind of role, would be just fantastic right now and of course, I'm a big fan of the Marvel comic book franchises.

There's just so many good ones and I think with Black Panther and films like that, they're just getting better and better. I think if I look at all the best supporting actresses in the Oscars this year, they were all women in my age group. All of them, every single one of them.

Terri Clark: I know. I love that so much.

Rena Owen: Me too honey and I think it's a great time for us. I really do, so I want to relish it. I want to make the most of it and just keep myself in that position, where I'm ready for those kind of opportunities. I feel very blessed because before I got cast in Siren, I was in a point in my life going, "Okay, you're getting a little too old of this game of, never knowing where my next job is. Going in the room multiple times and incurring multiple rejections."

I really was and I'm like, "I'd like to settle down and live a more mature life." I had a process of getting really honest with myself and going, "Well, what is it you would do? What would you do otherwise? What do you really want?" Owning the fact that I still had this desire to work as an actor in America and then boom. Within two weeks, I had booked this job and I had specifically put that out there.

I thought, "I just want a character that I just write for the way I am, with my own [inaudible 00:37:46] and my own kind of enigmatic ethnics of my ..."I just want a character that I’ just right for the way I a, with y ow idiosyncrasies and my own enigmatic aspects." I booked this role and it always is though. It's always perfect timing and one thing leads to another and it's great. My mum said this to me because every decade, I've wanted to throw the challenge because it's challenging.

It really is challenging and it takes a lot of faith to hang in here but there's one thing I know, that if you persevere, talent always prevail. Talent will prevail as long as you persevere. My mother always said this to me when I'd get disillusioned and say, "Just remember, dame Judy Dench and dame Helen Mirren, did not get their Hollywood breaks, till they were well into their 50s."

Terri Clark: It's true. It's true.

Rena Owen: Here I am. Here I am, having a go at it and I've obviously got everything crossed, that Siren will do well for all of us.

Terri Clark: I hope it does really well too and that you get a lot of seasons out of it. You mentioned Escape and Evasion, do you have any other things coming up, that you would like to share with our readers?

Rena Owen: If I may, last year, I did a character and I was really ... It was just such a juicy job, before I went up to Vancouver for Siren, I did a very juicy role in Seth MacFarlane's, Orville. She was quite a trail blazing role. Her name was Heveena and this whole species in Orville, the Moclans, they're a male society, they don't have females. Then you find out ...

The story progresses and you find out why they don't have females, is because females are considered an inferior species. If a baby is born that is female, they go through the whole gender change. There's a baby on ... It's very relevant, I mean it's a very clever show. This whole story line is about a baby is born and they want the doctor on born the spaceship to give it a sex change and the doctor refuses.

In order to win this case, they have to find out if any female Moclans survived and they find me, my character, Heveena and they bring my character into the courtroom and I give a whole monologue. It's a long juicy monologue, about my life as a female Moclan. It's episode four and it's called, "All About a Girl." If it works out date wise, if it works out schedule wise, then yes, my character could return for the Orville.

Terri Clark: Oh, very cool. Well I will definitely look for that episode. I'm not caught up on that. I have started watching some of the episodes but I haven't finished it, so I will definitely get caught up and look for that one.

Rena Owen: Yeah. Episode four, "All About a Girl." It's about a girl and the story line is about the Moclans wanting to give their little baby a sex change. I think it's the thing I like about Seth MacFarlane and his Orville, it's really ... Mind you, we have a similarity in Siren here, as we deal with issues that are contemporary issues in today's society. I mean, gender is one of those things we deal with with the character of Ryn. She has no gender.

She has no gender. The other great thing is, our females, our mermaids, are all mixed ethnicities. They don't have a concept of color, creed or gender. They're just a species.

Terri Clark: I noticed that. [crosstalk 00:41:54] Yeah, I noticed that. I think that's a beautiful characteristic that they gave the [crosstalk 00:42:02].

Rena Owen: I think so too. It's like, the question's not asked because it doesn't need to be asked. You know, we're not ready for that in our human civilization. We're definitely not ready for that. We've got a long way to go, before we can put aside creed and gender and color and culture and all of those things. If anything, that ...

There's a whole different subject but that wouldn't really happen, until the whole world's in strife and then people just realize their people and all of our blood runs red and we need each other to survive. Let's hope that is thousands of years in the future.

Terri Clark: Yeah. Hopefully, well like you said earlier, we keep evolving and each generation, they get wiser and wiser about those types of things. Hopefully, we'll keep tearing down a lot of the concepts and showing people that everybody should be loved, period and that's it.

Rena Owen: That's beautiful and that's what it is. That's 101, our basic fundamental need as a species is, we need to love and be loved. It really does all come back ... As hippie as it sounds, it's true. It's all about love. It is love that [crosstalk 00:43:33]. Yeah, it just is love and let's hope that we'll have more of it in the world and we don't have to be afraid of what we don't know about.