Allison Scagliotti has gone from playing a computer genius on Warehouse 13 to a computer hacker on ABC Family’s Stitchers and she likes playing these type of roles. A few weeks ago, I spoke to her about her new role as Camille on the hit ABC Family show and she told me how empowering it is to her to play characters like this.
The show that airs tonight at 9p is different from anything else that is on ABC Family because it is procedural, but that is not the only thing that makes it different. Most of the leads are played by women and all of them are intelligent. There’s Camille the hacker, her roommate Kristen (Emma Ishta), who has a keen sense of observation, and finally Maggie (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), who is the boss of the top secret project at the mysterious government agency that recruited the two college students.
Stitchers is also a Sci-fi show and even though some of Allison’s most famous roles are in that genre, she told me it wasn’t necessarily her favorite one at first. She explained it is something that she fell into and now she loves it. What made her change her mind? She shared with me. “What I learned to love about so much, is what a large female audience there is. I go to conventions sometime and little girls and their moms come up to me, and they say, ‘Thank you for proving to me (or thank you to proving to my daughter) that it is sexy to be intelligent or that it is cool to be smart. And I don’t have to apologize for studying hard and making straight A’s because you should want that.'” Then she added, “As one of those girls who grew up never seeing characters like that representing me on television, it has always been my agenda to do that.”
That is exactly what she does on this show about her roommate, who is able to transport her conscientiousness into the brains of the recently dead to solve their murders. So what Scagliotti’s part in it all. She describe her character as, “Camille is neither stereotypical computer nerd, nor stereotypical college girl, she’s somewhere in the middle. She’s fun and socially adept, while also possessing the wealth of knowledge that in integral to the team.” Concluding her thought with “It was interesting to sort of fall between the stereotypes and make something all its own.”
Something she has been able to do with both Warehouse 13’s Claudia and Stitcher’s Camille. How do the two roles that seem so similar, differ. She said, “Claudia would smoke Camille in the hack attack, such a superior hacker.” What about her new role? She said, “Claudia is from the streets, but Camille is not from the streets. Yes, she had a hard life and she had to struggle with her parents. She has come at it from more of a text book experience, then my old character. It takes her a little longer, she learned the hard way, instead of the guerilla warfare way.”
What won’t take you long is to fall in love with her character and Stitchers as soon as you watch the ABC Family Show tonight and every Tuesday at 10p.
