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" Hearing that an actor is going to play eight or nine roles in a project tends to set off some &amp;quot;one-man show&amp;quot; warning klaxons, at least in my mind. But when the actor is Tatiana Maslany and the show is BBC America&amp;#039;s Alias-meets-Dollhouse thriller Orphan Black, premiering this Saturday, the prospect suddenly becomes less off-putting. Maslany&amp;#039;s primary role is Sarah, a British grifter who sees a woman who looks uncannily like her jump to her death and decides to empty the jumper&amp;#039;s sizable bank account and move into her sizable apartment. As tends to happen when you steal someone&amp;#039;s identity, there are complications, not the least of which is Sarah&amp;#039;s discovery that she has multiple clones and that someone is trying to kill all of them off. The beautiful Canadian came to Esquire&amp;#039;s office recently to talk about the show, online dating, the similarities between Orphan Black and Dr. Who, and her love of cartoons. ESQUIRE.COM: How did you meet your publicist? TATIANA MASLANY: We met on Skype, so it was bizarre meeting her in person. It was like a blind date, in a way. ESQ: Have you ever gone on a blind date? TM: I don&amp;#039;t think so. Most of my dates have been friends that then became a date scenario. Have you? ESQ: I haven&amp;#039;t. One of my regrets is that I met my boyfriend before OKCupid became a thing. TM: That&amp;#039;s an online kind of... ESQ: It&amp;#039;s an American dating website. It&amp;#039;s free so it&amp;#039;s a lot more casual than Match.com or eHarmony \u2014 it&amp;#039;s just like online shopping. TM: I love that that&amp;#039;s your biggest regret. You&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m in this amazing committed relationship. I really regret that I just can&amp;#039;t click and pick.&amp;quot;  ESQ: No! I would still have wound up with him in this scenario. I just would have tried it before we met. Does Canada have an online dating site that everybody uses? TM: Yeah, I think there was a thing called PlentyOfFish.com for a while, and then there&amp;#039;s like Jew Date or something... What is it called? ESQ: JDate. TM: JDate! Jew Date is maybe not the most subtle way to put it. JDate. That&amp;#039;s what it is. I think I have a friend on JDate. ESQ: I have some non-Jewish friends on JDate. TM: Really? That&amp;#039;s like blasphemous. ESQ: Well, I have an Asian friend who likes Jewish guys, and apparently the attraction is reciprocated. TM: That&amp;#039;s such a weird thing, too, where it&amp;#039;s racially specific... ESQ: It&amp;#039;s a little weird.  TM: Yeah, it&amp;#039;s like you marry into this religion to further the cause. ESQ: You play so many characters on Orphan Black. I think soccer mom Alison is my favorite. TM: She is so much fun to play. She was like the one in the audition that I was most terrified of pulling out because for some reason she highlights everything about myself that I&amp;#039;m embarrassed about. ESQ: Like what? TM: Like be controlling or a perfectionist or uptight. Or holier-than-thou. All that stuff that I am embarrassed to admit that I am, like small-town. It&amp;#039;s like she&amp;#039;s kind of a clown version of a large part of me. So she was super-fun to play for that reason. ESQ: Are you a sci-fi person? TM: I like Futurama. That&amp;#039;s kind of the only thing that&amp;#039;s my sci-fi thing, although I was big into zombies for a time. ESQ: What zombie stuff? TM: Shaun of the Dead was my favorite movie for like six years, and I love George Romero. But I love cartoons like Home Movies \u2014 I don&amp;#039;t know if you know that one. ESQ: I feel like that&amp;#039;s something my boyfriend has shown me. TM: Do you know Brandon Small or H. Jon Benjamin? ESQ: He does Bob&amp;#039;s Burgers. TM: Yeah, and Archer. I love Bob&amp;#039;s Burgers. So Home Movies is all improvised, I think. It&amp;#039;s talking heads, and it&amp;#039;s just so funny. The way people love sci-fi is how I love cartoons. ESQ: I know you went to Toronto Comic Con this year, but the next time you guys go on the comic-con circuit, I feel like it&amp;#039;s going to be insane. TM: It was nuts, and they hadn&amp;#039;t even seen the show. There is just an energy there that is so incredible. That audience is my favorite kind of people because they were all dressed up and totally out, you know what I mean? They are so out about their love of this genre and their insane, encyclopedia knowledge of it. They ask really cutting questions, because they know the world.  ESQ: Do they ask you clone questions? TM: One woman was like, &amp;quot;Clones often stand for the fragility of human nature, so did you go at it with the sense that the greater story was about immortality?&amp;quot; I was just like, &amp;quot;I was excited to play a soccer mom. I&amp;#039;m just excited to dress up in different outfits.&amp;quot;  ESQ: Now that you say that, it kind of reminds me of the horcruxes in Harry Potter. TM: Totally, totally. That&amp;#039;s something I would geek out about for sure. ESQ: You a Harry Potter fan? TM: Big time. I was very sad when I finished reading the book, because there was a void, like, &amp;quot;What are they doing now?&amp;quot; I haven&amp;#039;t found any book that&amp;#039;s got me like that in a long time. ESQ: I was resistant to The Hunger Games because it&amp;#039;s ostensibly a book for twelve-year-old girls who don&amp;#039;t get out much\u2014 TM: It&amp;#039;s actually pretty wicked, though. ESQ: It&amp;#039;s amazing TM: I read the first two Hunger Games books, and I was like, &amp;quot;This is political, dark shit.&amp;quot; It really gives credit to young people that they can understand it. Even though it&amp;#039;s told in a kind of really accessible way, the story it&amp;#039;s telling is dark. ESQ: A little like Doctor Who. Your show reminds me of it in some ways, because like the Doctor, if your part hadn&amp;#039;t been cast just right the show would have fallen apart. I think people are going to respond to it in a similarly obsessive way. TM: I hope we get even a fraction of those fans because that show has been on for what, forty years? It&amp;#039;s like voracious fandom, and it would be nice to just have a little bit of that, even just a trickle-down. They are great fans, too \u2014 they love the world. And it&amp;#039;s good quality programming. It&amp;#039;s not lowest-common-denominator, it&amp;#039;s not boring, it&amp;#039;s not all pretty. It&amp;#039;s interesting. And it&amp;#039;s that escapist thing, too. It&amp;#039;s so wonderful to get to escape into a fantasy.  ESQ: Your show has the fantasy of stepping into a new life, but I love that it stays grounded in the reality of being totally out of your element while pretending to be somebody else. TM: It&amp;#039;s such a neat thing to watch Sarah struggle through, and it&amp;#039;s written so well that she keeps having to adapt and improvise and fly by the seat of her pants. Every time she thinks she&amp;#039;s getting out, she&amp;#039;s just falling deeper into having to lie, lie, lie. And I think one of the cool things about her is that as much as she is very accessible, she&amp;#039;s super-manipulative. ESQ: Which character is the hardest for you to play? TM: There are a few later in the season that are quite difficult. They all kind of grow, and the more we peel them back, the more complex and instinctive my performance feels. ESQ: It&amp;#039;s not just an accent and a wig. TM: Exactly. You really start to delve into their separate lives. Shifting between the characters is the hardest, you know what I mean? Committing fully to this person&amp;#039;s worldview and their physicality and their demeanor and the way they see things and the way they speak and then shifting halfway through a day to do the other side of the scene. ESQ: Any project you do after this is going to feel easy. TM: I know. I don&amp;#039;t know what the next thing will be, but it can&amp;#039;t be simple. I would just not know what to do with it.  ESQ: It wouldn&amp;#039;t be stimulating. As hard as this is, it&amp;#039;s the role of a lifetime. The nine roles of a lifetime.  TM: Absolutely. I kind of scared myself right now thinking I&amp;#039;ve peaked and that&amp;#039;s it. I&amp;#039;ll have to go into retirement. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a21175/tatiana-maslany-orphan-black/?click=top>