Tim Minear

Kristin Lehman ("Corinna Wiles")

IGN TV: Were you a car person before you got this part?

Kristin Lehman: I drive a Prius. I do like to drive. But I gotta tell you, I don’t do a lot of driving in the show, so what I’m learning to be is a good passenger. I think that’s really quite a fabulous issue for me, in terms of wanting to be the backseat driver. I don’t get to do it in this show. I’m only driven all around, so it’s kind of interesting.

IGN TV: What’s it like doing all the green screen scenes? Is it strange?

Lehman: You know what, it’s not so much strange, it just requires even more make believe than what we’d normally be conjuring. But we’ve got some really great directors who really help us through it. In the beginning it was kind of a strange animal, and we didn’t know if we could trust it; the results we’d be getting. So we’d all watch out for each other. And now I think we’re really smooth and in love with the process, to tell you the truth.

IGN TV: Can you tell me about your character?

Lehman: Her name is Corinna Wiles, and I was thinking about her name the other day. And she’s pretty wile. She really suits her name. She stows away in Alex Tully’s truck, who’s played by Nathan Fillion. Chooses the strongest and most handsome man to align herself with; become the barnacle to him, and she kind of advances through the race with him. I think she’s really smart and her past is really tied to this race, so her investment is pretty deep. She’ll do what she needs to do to get what she needs to get.

IGN TV: There’s a gentleman who seems pretty upset with you on the first episode.

Lehman: Yes! Brian Bloom. Oh, he’s so marvelous. Such a marvelous bad guy. Yeah, he stays upset with me for a long time. That’s something I can tell you for sure. We’re going into episode seven, and he’s in fact still mad at me, so yeah. [Laughs]

IGN TV: Most of your scenes are with Nathan. How is it working with him?

Lehman: He is a laugh a minute, gracious, respectful leader. It’s marvelous to get to work with him. It’s great.

IGN TV: I’m a big Tim Minear fan. How is he to work with?

Lehman: Well this is my second time working with Tim. I worked with him about ten years ago on a short lived series called Strange World. And it was great when he called me. It’s a bit of a reunion of sorts. You know Nathan has worked with him before, and then for me to get to work with him again was really great. His writing is so drenched in both realism and grandeur. It’s so nice to be able to do his words. And he really listens to actors and I think respects the collaboration process, and that to me is key.

IGN TV: Have you gotten to work with many of the other actors besides Nathan and Brian yet?

Lehman: We’ve spent quite a bit of time with Kevin Alejandro and J.D. Pardo, who play the Salazar brothers, and their storyline is magnificent. They’re so great! They’re so great to get to work with. Their acting styles are so different and it’s really great to be exposed to other actors, especially because we’ve got a large cast. And when you’ve got a large cast it means you’ve got opportunities for great plot because where there’s good characters, there’s good plots. So for now I have only intersected with Kevin and J.D., and Nathan and Brian, but we’re going into episode seven, and I think I may get to meet some other scary, shady characters as well.

IGN TV: Do you like to ask a lot of questions about what’s to come?

Lehman: You know what, these scripts are so complex that I spend most of the time trying to figure out the current script, as opposed to what’s to come. Because they’re kind of explanatory and once you understand it, you can get where you’re going, but we spend a lot of time, in fact, saying, "Can you remind me how did we get here?", and, "Now does he know about this," and, "Does he know about that?" So we’re really on a script by script basis.