Page 11 - Real Style October 2017

ThE QuEEN
Is bAck
i f you didn’t know Lana Parrilla played the Evil Queen (along with her alter ego, Regina Mills) on ABC’s hit fan- tasy series Once Upon A Time, you would never know that she possessed a femme fa- tale streak. Sounding like the girl next door on the phone from Vancouver, where the series is lmed, the New York City-born actress gushes over the beauty of Canada. She likes the view, along with the thoughtful nature of the locals. “I love hiking and walking about and smelling the fresh clean air, drinking the clean tap water,” says Parrilla, who was raised in Brooklyn, and is the daughter of a Puerto Rican baseball player and an Italian American artist. Yet once we bring up Once Upon A Time, which enters its seventh season on October 6, her tone shifts, and she is suddenly all business. Being with the show since the debut season in 2011, the star has
seen many changes.
“[There are] characters who have started off over
the years as villains, and become heroes. There’s
once upon a Time star Lana Parrilla on playing the bad girl gone good.
by FaTima syed PhoTograPhy: ashley barreTT
been a lot of loss, there’s been a lot of hope and a ton of evolution. Relationships that have developed and grown, and some that have fallen apart,” Par- rilla explains.
The upcoming season of Once Upon A Time is set to run this fall without the starring roles of veterans Jennifer Morrison and Ginnifer Goodwin, who played Emma Swan and Mary Margaret Blan- chard. Yet despite these major changes to the cast, Parrilla is still on board, set to resume her famously ery and powerful character. The current season re- volves around Cinderella’s story, and takes place in a small Seattle town called Hyperion Heights. So, what exactly brings an Evil Queen out of the pages of a fairy tale, and into real-life city living?
Parrilla thinks that the evolution of her char- acter has brought her a long way. In that journey, the two halves of her character have united as one. When asked whether she’d rather play evil or good, Parrilla tells us that she enjoys bringing both to the screen.
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