“The pendulum has swung so far from damsel in distress that we now have so many strong female characters,” Cissy Jones, voice of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Owl House’s Lilth Clawthorne tells me. “That’s great, it’s nice to have a woman that can kick some ass and take some names, but the fun is in the messy, and all that grey in-between. Lilith and Eda have that, and Luz to some regard, but she's very upbeat and peppy. They all have the messy, and getting to play with that is such a joy as an actor. That’s what we are as humans. Nobody is evil, nobody is all good, we all have a little bit of everything, and getting to explore that in someone else’s shoes is really a gift.”
Cissy Jones has been working in the world of voice acting for years now, earning a BAFTA for her role as Delilah in Firewatch while also being known for characters in Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Destiny 2, and countless others. But Lilith Clawthorne has resonated with audiences in a way few others have before. A conflicted witch struggling between professional loyalty and familial belonging, Lilith possesses an emotional centre that few in the series can match. I recently sat down with Jones to dive deep into the character, how she came to be, and what we can expect from the future. Tur🦹ns out Jones and this lovable witch have a lot in common.
“Like any other role, I auditioned and sent it off with a wing and a prayer,” Jones tells me. “I got the callback and was brought in to meet Dana Terrace and some other people working on the show and about four months later I got a call saying I’d 𓆉booked it. I lost my mind, and I mean totally lost my mind. [After production] there was a wrap party nearby so I went and Dana said, ‘It was your work on Firewatch that let me know you can carry an emotional arc’ so we got to work on that and she’s just so much fun. I love the arc that she’s taken, I love the whiplash that people have had with her, but that’s all I can say.”
While Jones doesn’t always know the full unfolding storyline for characters like Lilith thanks to scripts being doled out with little notice, she loves to understand the fictional personalities she’s asked to portray, believing an🏅 emotional connection deepens the performance and allows them to be truly memorable. Fortunately for her, The Owl House’s production was a collaborative one, allowing for ideas to be explored and shared whenever it felt right, even if all of them didn&ღrsquo;t quite land.
“Lilith is naturally a redhead, but she dyes her hair black and she’s putting on airs, and the only person that really gets under her skin is her sister,” Jones explains. 🧜“I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if she had a Russian accent? And then the second her sister gets under her skin, that’s when she reverts back to her normal self and is all ‘Stop pestering me!’ Dana was like, ‘I don’t want that, but I like the attitude’ and so we gave her this royal presence where she thinks everyone should treat her like a queen. She took on that attitude without having an accent, and that’s what makes the break so funny. Shouting ‘Stop acting like a child!’ and jus🍸t breaking from this stoic, austere, well put together woman into a child being mad at your sister again is so much fun.”
Lilith’s introduction was a serious one, with the first season painting her as a villain able to hurt those closest to her. She was loyal to a cause, so much so that it saw a loss of humanity that wouldn't be regained until everything was taken away from her. Jones constantly echoes back to a particular moment in one of the season’s final episodes, where it’s revealed that she inflicted a curse upon her sister that turns her into a horrible monster. Despite this, she wants to cure her sibling, even if it means pulling her into a corrupt system she wants no part of.
“When she says, ‘Then why🐽 were you so easy to curse?!’ I was like, ‘ I’m gonna get real loud in here, can you turn down the gain?,” Jones says. “In the booth I was going through a time in my own head where I was really, really mad at someone, it’s one of those moments that I wished I could have done differently when it happened so this was my chance to redo it. I cried when I delivered that line because it was so raw and straight from the heart and everyone took a minute and was like, ‘Okaay... we’re gonna move onto the next one.’ It’s nice to have support and freedom to go big, because I knew this needed to be a watershed moment not only in the episode but the series as a whole because you find out this deep dark secret and it’s that moment where everything changes, so I knew it needed to be a big one.”
Because the internet is a wonderfully weird thing, when this episode aired Jones was met with trends like ‘#CancelLilith’ on social media with fans decrying what she’d done to their favourite characters. “The interesting thing was that fans were like, ‘I hate Lilith, but you did such a fantastic job on her’ which is amazing because sometimes that delineation doesn’t always happen,'' Jones says. “But to then see people just completely embrace her when she’s an absolute dork, and to see people loving their relationship with Hooty and Luz has been such a joy. It’s nice to know that what we’ve been trying to do has been coming across. We wanted people to hate her, and then we wanted people to sympathise with her. Well I didn’t write the script, they wanted that to happen!”
While Lilith Clawthorne’s arc from a powerful witch to a loser who sits around eating ice cream and wearing dorky t-shirts has been an easy one to understand, Jones loves how Dana Terrace and the writers weren’t afraid to create layered characters dealing with serious themes that both younger and older audiences can resonate with. “It was its own form of therapy for me,” Jones says. “[Lilith is now for💝ced to ask] who am I? I don’t have magic, and for me it’s all about going through these moments where you feel this incredible loss and you have to question everything you thought you knew about yourself and everything that comes with that. It’s great to go big with grief, and you can’t help but pity her.
“Eda turning into the Owl Beast is also a metaphor for working through chronic illness, and how does that feel? It’s very mature, and I think the fact it’s connected with so many people on that level is because it speaks to the fact we need it, we need that kind of stuff. Not only with the LGBTQ representation, but there’s a lot of characters who are BIPOC, it’s not just your standard fare which is really, really cool. You know, it’s time. Being able to be a small part of it, and the reaction I get from the fandom is just astounding. The amount of messages I’ve gotten from people who have said the show gave them the courage to come out, or because of it they’ve found their first girlfriend. It’s really special. I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, that wasn’t available. Nothing was. They’re also hiring correctly. Raine Whispers is played by a non-binary actor, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Avi Roque plays them and is just amazing. They’re so kind and so ex🔯cited to be a part of this show and ar꧟e so gracious with the fan reaction.”
Lilith’s relationship with Eda is one of the show’s deepest, a massive achievement given all of the dialogue was recorded separately without the chemistry that comes with natura𒐪l interaction. While the siblings try to kill each other several times, they eventually understand the value of family, and putting aside old rivalries is far more important than dooming one another to an early grave. “I’d love to meet Wendy [Mallick],” Jones tells me. “I grew up watching her on television and she’s so enormously talented. She just gets it, she knows how to make a character pop. I’ve studied Eda a lot, and Wendy’s portrayal of her, and the choices she makes, like when she says ‘Help Mama up’ are so funny, it’s not what people would normally think when seeing a line like that.”
While The Owl House is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:being cut short with the third season being replaced by a selection of short specials, Jones said the reaction to the show gives her hope for the future and the media young viewers nowadays have access to can help make society a better place. “I have young kids and my daughter came home and said one of her counselors used ‘they’ pronouns and I was like ‘Awesome, how do you feel about that?’ and she said ‘I don’t feel anything about it&rsquo🍨; and now it’s just not a thing, and I love that. It gives me hope.”
Having covered animation extensively over at TheGamer in recent months, I’m well aware that The Owl House has a passionate fandom, one that is relentlessly supportive towards the show’s future and those involved with its creation. Jones, too, is aware of the intense dedication of the fans. “I’m consistently amazed that people have the time and skill they have to put into the drawings they send me,” Jones says. “There’s clay mugs, people are making their own merch, somebody even made a three-foot stuffed Hooty. I’ve neve🎃r experienced something like this fandom before, and it means so much that they put so much work into being a part of it.”
As for a personal message to the fandom, Jones is quick to sing their praises: “I just want to say thank you. None of it matters if it doesn’t have a fanbase and the people out there calling for more of The Owl House or to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:save The Owl House or even just talking about it. It matters, and I may not be able to get back to every message, but it means the world t🦋o me and everyone else. Keep talking.”
While Jones couldn’t spill many beans about Lilith’s future in the show, she was happy to break down what the role means to her, and how it’s been to have them be so well received. “The thing I love about this character, and what’s been so rewarding to me is that I get to go through every possible emotion with her. From rage and vengeance, to despair, happiness, joy, and everything in-between whether it’s regret, shame, or guilt. Being able to do that with an animated character is really cool, and something you don’t see very often, especially with women. So to get this hugely emotional beast of a character, pun intended, has been amazin▨g, and has challenged me to dig real deep into the places where I’ve needed to go to get there.”