Disclaimer: This FROM interview has been edited for clarity.
Fatima’s reveal to Kristi that she’s pregnant sent shockwaves through the FROM audience. Given that the show’s opening was a child getting herself and her mother killed by opening a window to let a monster inside, the psychological imprint of the dangers for children living in the town cannot be underestimated. Actress Pegah Ghafoori spoke more about the tendrils of this pregnancy storyline throughout Fatima’s larger story.
LadyJenevia: The biggest development with Fatima this season has been that she’s pregnant. We saw at the beginning of the season that she was very frantic about the new bus passengers being trapped outside. Was that level of visceral emotion being fuelled by her pregnancy? I don’t know if she already had a suspicion that she might be pregnant at that point.
Ghafoori: Interesting! I think so. I think she was still at the stages of, ‘Why haven’t I gotten my period?’ and ‘slash um ‘What are all these new emotions and thoughts and feelings that I’m feeling that I don’t quite understand?’ but that’s so interesting that you say that. I hadn’t thought about it that way. I’m sure, yeah. Every moment, that night makes a lot more sense to me now, yeah definitely.
LadyJenevia: I would have thought that that would have been something either had been talked about or that you had reflected on as the performer bringing her to life but I don’t know, maybe I just overthink the material because of what I do.
Ghafoori: I’m gonna be honest with you. We don’t get the scripts ahead of time. We get them when they’re written and I didn’t have that script at that stage so when I was preparing it, it was a matter of, ‘I need to bring these people inside because I need to help people,’ but a lot of things last season also makes sense if she’s been pregnant this whole time. Maybe she knew, maybe she didn’t know, but yeah.
LadyJenevia: She told Donna that she had been told that she was not able to have children, which is part of the reason why she’s so taken aback by getting pregnant. Was that a detail that you had been informed of ahead of time that you were able to take in internally and put into your performance of the character?
Ghafoori: No, that was news to me. We had discussed the traumatic background that she comes from and I knew nothing good could come could have come from it but knowing that she couldn’t have children medically, it was news to me. Very interesting discovery, I will say, but yeah, I can’t wait to see where they go with that.
LadyJenevia: I wasn’t sure if it kind of played into what we saw more of in season one where there were these notes of free love in the way that she navigated her relationship so that’s why I wasn’t sure if you already had that little little nugget of information in mind.
Ghafoori: No, that’s just how well the show is written. They know what they’re doing even if we don’t.
LadyJenevia: I’m a big fan of romance and I love when good love stories can be integrated into non-romance genres so what do you think it is that has ultimately made Fatima and Ellis fall in love and keep loving each other as much as they do?
Ghafoori: I want to say trauma but that can’t be all it was. I think that the circumstances that surrounded them meeting and Donna… like in my mind, I’d like to think that Ellis was the proxy when they met and it was a little meet-cute and she was struggling. That is enough to allow connecting with someone, like it would make it easier, I’d imagine. He’s also her rock. Ellis as a person, he’s very, very free-spirited and very sensitive and someone who could understand Fatima in that way I think helped falling for him a little bit.
LadyJenevia: In season two, you’ve had to emote a lot more intensely with things like terror, despair, anguish. Can you share a bit about your process as an actor in order to be able to get yourself to the place of being able to express those things? I’ve been taking acting classes and it definitely requires a lot of energy when you really have to go big and make it believable.
Ghafoori: You’re definitely right that it takes a lot of energy, it does. I’m gonna say that the script again is so well written that your job isn’t very hard. Everything you need is on the page and the characters like you said are so well developed that it’s not hard connecting with them. Our actors, it helps that they’re such good actors so just being in a scene where someone’s bleeding onto your hand, whether it’s real blood or fake blood, it brings it out of you whether you’ve prepped the night before or not. Personally, in my trailer I do like to meditate a little bit. I do like to read over my lines and I do like to breathe in and breathe out and get on set and just play and it all comes together. The script, the acting, the characters, the actors, it all comes together to create one performance that connects with people and I love that.
LadyJenevia: Finally, just in a general sense, what can you tease about what’s still to come in these final episodes of season two? I’ve seen as far as episode eight so I’m a little ahead but I haven’t seen everything yet.
Ghafoori: I want to say more questions but that’s just gonna piss people off. Maybe some answers? Maybe some stuff about season three? Oh this is so much fun, I like this game… more chaos, more chaos, some answers.
LadyJenevia: Chaos is entertaining so I will take that and I will run with that.
FROM season 2 is available to stream on MGM+.
Watch my interview with FROM cast members Chloe Van Landschoot and Pegah Ghafoori here:
Watch my interview with FROM cast members Ricky He and Avery Konrad here:
Watch my interview with FROM cast member Nathan D. Simmons here:
Watch my interview with Harold Perrineau and other FROM cast members here: