Sonita Henry’s credit list would make for a must-see-TV marathon on the Space Channel.
Henry played the president’s aide in The Fifth Element, present in that iconic final scene where Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo and Bruce Willis’ Korben get it on in the regeneration chamber.
She was the doctor who delivers James T. Kirk in the heart-stopping opening minutes of 2009’s Star Trek.
She portrayed a colonel (who’s transformed into a Dalek!) in the 2013 Doctor Who Christmas special.
The British-born actress didn’t set out to specialize in fantastical film and television, but she’s found a home in the genre regardless.
Perhaps, Henry muses on the phone from England, the answer to her sci-fi success lies in her ethnic ambiguity.
“I think the reason why I’ve ended up following a sci-fi path is that being mixed race lends itself to futuristic,” says Henry, whose father is English and whose mother is South American.
“I think everyone’s going to be coffee-coloured in the future,” she laughs. “I don’t work in a lot of genres, but in sci-fi, I work.”
In April, Henry will bring her futuristic face – and her time- and industry-tested abilities – to Olympus.
The Vancouver-shot series explores the chaotic and dramatic interplay between humans, Gods, and monsters in Greek mythology.
Henry plays Medea, and if you were paying attention in high school, you probably remember that Medea wasn’t exactly Mother of the Year material: When her husband, Jason of “Golden Fleece” fame, sets out to marry the daughter of a powerful king, Medea kills her own children in a jealous rage.
“Medea is the archetype of every female villainess,” says Henry. “Maleficent is based on Medea. Throughout history, there have been all of these powerful female characters, and they all stem from Medea.”
The events of Olympus take place 16 years after Medea killed her children. Medea is now married to King Aegeus, with whom she has a son.
Medea is a “ridiculously delicious role,” according to Henry.
“Nick Willing, the creator who is just this crazed genius, he was writing as we were shooting, and as he got to know us more as people, he was adding stuff to the scripts, and he just kept putting more and more and more on my plate,” she says.
Olympus tells the story of a small group of humans who banished the Gods to the Kingdom of Hades. The 13-episode series follows Hero as (according to official PR material) “he seeks the truth about his past, which may be intertwined with the Gods themselves.”
Cameras rolled on Olympus back in 2014, and during her four-month stay in the 604, Henry embraced many facets of the Vancouver lifestyle. “I stayed in Yaletown, which I loved, and walked everywhere, which I loved, because I hadn’t done that since I lived in New York,” says Henry.
It’s not quite the life and career path that Henry had envisioned for herself growing up in a small town in England. Although she loved film (“My mother won’t admit to this, but I remember staying home sick from school one day because Breakfast at Tiffany’s was on”), she’d planned on a career in journalism instead.
She was studying film and journalism when, unbeknownst to her, her mother sent her picture to a casting agency after reading in a UK magazine that Luc Besson was looking for talent for his next film project.
“I went up and auditioned, and I didn’t think anything of it, because I’d never acted,” recalls Henry. “I didn’t even do a school play.”
The rest is showbiz history. Besson hired Henry, The Fifth Element became a cult hit, and Henry’s future expanded to include Daleks, a newborn Captain Kirk, and tortured souls from Greek mythology.
If genre casting directors see something in her that speaks to the future, that’s fine by Henry – because the sci-fi and fantasy realm is teeming with compelling roles for women.
“There are so many strong female characters written in sci-fi that you don’t get in drama, and you don’t get in action,” says Henry, who voiced the character of pilot Ellie Langford in the Dead Space video games. “Even in comedy, [women are] usually the wife, or the funny girlfriend.”
And you can bet that Medea isn’t a funny girlfriend. “You can’t imagine what she must have gone through to kill her kids, so she’s carrying that around with her,” says Henry. “You think she’s the villain, but she’s not. You see the real Medea come through as the show progresses.”
Olympus also stars Wayne Burns, Graham Shiels, Cas Anvar, Matt Frewer, and John Emmet Tracy.
• Olympus premieres on Super Channel April 2.
