BB Exclusive: Fola Evans-Akingbola Breaks Down Siren’s Season 2 Premiere

Last night, January 24, Freeform aired the Season 2 premiere of Siren. The episode was filled with a lot of information and a couple of major reveals, so we reached out to Fola Evans-Akingbola to break down the episode.

Maddie is very skeptical of her mother, but her father’s all for having her home, is that going to cause a strain on her relationship with her dad?
“Maddie and her dad have always had different approaches as to dealing with Maddie’s mom. Even in the prayer, he would always put her mom in his prayers at dinner, and Maddie would think, ‘Can we just not talk about her? She’s not coming back.’ Maddie’s put up lots of walls and protection to deal with the pain, whereas her dad has always remained hopeful. Deep down Maddie remains hopeful, but she just doesn’t want to be hurt again. This season you do see Maddie struggle with how protective she is with her dad. She actually doesn’t want her mom to hurt her dad. And I must say, Garcelle Beauvais, who plays her mom, is the most lovely, wonderful person ever, so it was hard to not like her.”

We see that Ben is really starting to be affected by Ryn’s siren song, is Maddie going to be trying to figure out a way to stop it?
“Yeah. What’s difficult for Maddie is, at the end of season 1, her and Ben’s relationship ended on the rocks. Then with her mom coming back into town, her mom has struggled with addiction in the past. There’s a parallel happening there, with Ben dealing with his sort of addiction to the sirens, calling to Ryn, and the obsession. Maddie’s having to really battle with the question of ‘How caring is too caring?’ Maddie cares so much she puts everyone in front of, before herself and sometimes to her own detriment. She certainly wants to help Ben, but whether or not she can is another matter.”

You will find the rest of our chat under the jump! What did everyone think of last night’s episode?

Source: Freeform

Will we begin to see Maddie put her needs and wants first this Season?
“A little bit. You know what you do see? You see Maddie realize that she does that. I’m rubbish at knowing what I’m like myself, so Maddie’s not yet self-aware enough to know that she’s actually damaging her own self sometimes by being so selfless.

In season 2, it’s a process of coming to a personal self-awareness and realizing, ‘Oh, this doesn’t serve me. This actually isn’t good for me to be like this’. When we put it this way, we start to see Maddie unravel a bit. Her strength and in controlness, which is definitely not a word, starts to unravel.”

It is revealed during the episode that the oil company is driving all the mermaids to land, how is that going to affect Maddie and the team as the Season progresses?
“It’s actually throughout a lot of the episodes, this environmental point of the fight between the protective side of Maddie and Ben, and, obviously, the mermaids want for the ocean and the earth. Certainly there are people in the town that support the oil stuff more. But that’s what I like about Siren. Besides the connection to the mermaids, I think the name of the show is actually also a warning. A warning about the distress and devastation that we’re reeking on this planet as humans, and the show is a metaphor for that. It’s like the literal warning of the hazard of what we’re doing and the oil company, the oil company with its big money, just coming in and doing whatever it likes. It’s a big thing that Maddie and Ben and Ryn have to fight against.”

The mermaids are here, how is Maddie going to deal with that in the episodes going forward?
“Maddie’s feeling like it’s out of her hands. There’s no time for her to really to consider if she likes it or if she doesn’t like it. It just is, and they have to just deal with it. She doesn’t even have a moment to be like, ‘Oh I wish things were different’, because they’re such powerful beings and they’re so new and different. Even these new mermaids that come on land, they’re different to Ryn in terms of each one has their own personality, which I’m so excited for everyone to see. So Maddie and Ben, they don’t really have much of a chance to be considering life, they just have to deal with it.”