Lindsey Morgan Keeps it 100
It’s a long way from Kennesaw, Georgia to Vancouver, Canada. And it’s a heck of a lot colder. For “The 100” Star Lindsey Morgan, it’s worth it to play one of television’s most badass female characters.
There’s a scene in the first season of “The 100” where Raven Reyes, the show’s resident butt-kicking genius zero-G engineer, has been tasked with setting a bomb on a bridge while violently ill. It was the first of many moments on the show to test the character’s physical limits. For Lindsey Morgan, the Southern belle who plays her, it was her introduction to the decidedly non-Southern chills of Vancouver Canada where the show is filmed.
“Back in season one I don’t think anyone anticipated how cold it would get,” she said. “They did this really cool crane shot… however, crane shots take a long time. So, I was lying in the snow for a good while and lost feeling in my fingers. I was really worried.”
Not to worry, she regained feeling in her fingers. Four days later. And what’s more, they got the shot.
“As an actor, you go through a lot,” said Morgan. “The content is heavy and dark and emotionally draining, but it’s also physically demanding. We’re out there in the rain — Vancouver is basically a rain forest — the snow, we spend long hours at night in the cold, and of course we’re in these little costumes that aren’t super warm. And all the actors are trying not to eat carbohydrates so we’re all hangry and trying to push through. It’s very reminiscent of the show.”
For those unfamiliar with “The 100,” it’s almost impossible to sum up what the show is and what it has become. The initial premise of the CW post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama centered on a group of young prisoners, the titular 100, who were sent back down to a devastated planet earth after 97 years in space to determine whether it was livable again. From there, storylines have evolved and expanded in mind-blowing ways, with each season bringing a fresh conflict, whether its cannibal cults, genocidal AI or global nuclear annihilation.
The sixth season finds humanity’s last survivors awakening from a century-plus cryogenic sleep to find themselves approaching an entirely new planet. When we spoke to Morgan, it was January in Vancouver and, driven by the brutal winds of a polar vortex, temperatures had dipped into the negatives.
“I feel like I would have gotten used to it after six years,” she said. “I blame the South.”
It’s safe to say that even in January, no one is battling sub-zero temperatures in the South. Having grown up in Texas, Morgan didn’t experience much finger-numbing cold. “You know my favorite part of Texas, and I didn’t appreciate it until I left, was the openness: the wide fields, the horizon and just the land.”
Morgan left Texas at 21 to pursue acting, landing a bit part on the show “Friday Night Lights” and a role in the film “Detention” before getting her break on “General Hospital.” Her role as Kristina Davis nabbed her a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Younger Actress in 2013, the same year she would leave the show to join the cast of “The 100.” But before all of that, even before she moved to Houston at age two, she was a Georgia peach born in Kennesaw.
“I haven’t been able to spend much time (in Georgia)… there’s so much filming and production there, I’ve always felt like I’m going to end up there one of these days. I can’t believe I haven’t been able to film there,” she said, adding again with a laugh, “I’m a little upset you haven’t invited me.”
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