🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐
When Angelina (Holly Taylor) is introduced on Manifest, she’s locked up by her zealot parents, who misinterpret her “callings” as something sinister. Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) and Zeke (Matt Long) rescue her, and the Stone family take her in.
Unfortunately, Angelina becomes obsessed with the idea that baby Eden is her guardian angel, scaring Stone matriarch Grace (Athena Karkanis) and prompting the family to expel her from their home. Angelina isn’t stopped, however, and comes back for Eden, fatally stabbing Grace and kidnapping the infant.
“A lot of the fans have been very angry at me since they finished Season 3, rightfully so,” Taylor tells Tudum. “I definitely get a lot of hate messages on Instagram and Twitter — my comment section is not the nicest place to be on Instagram, to be honest. But it also just means that people are that invested in the show and they really care about the characters that much.”
Taylor is the exact opposite of her on-screen villain persona. “She’s the sweetest girl to be playing a villain,” Luna Blaise (Olive) shares. “So it’s insane — she’s, like, the littlest ball of joy ever.”
Here, Taylor talks about Angelina’s big moves and her dangerous new powers.
Angelina really became central to the mythology of the series in Season 4. How much did you know about her journey before the season started?
I found out episode by episode. When I first joined the show, I’d try and get some information out of our amazing showrunner, Jeff Rake, but I just kind of gave up with that, because everything that I’d guess would always end up being completely wrong. I loved the idea of reading the scripts and being surprised the same way that the audience is. I had no idea where the storyline was going.
A lot of the time, I’d be nervous going to set, because it would be like, “Angelina has a deafening silent scream that impacts everybody on the planet.” And I’m like, “OK, that’s a lot of pressure, first of all. Second of all, how do you scream silently?” But the writers are always so nice and make you feel comfortable and explain to you what their vision is for it. So you just try your best to make that come to life somehow.
In the two years that passed between seasons, Angelina functioned as Eden’s mother. How did that experience change her?
I think mothering Eden was fulfilling for Angelina. She doesn’t really have anyone that she feels really cares for her and won’t leave her. She feels some kindred spirit, deep connection with baby Eden. She’s called Eden her guardian angel; she thinks she saves her. It’s a very important connection.
We see that Angelina is a human [with Eden]; it’s this humane side of her. She’s caring for somebody else, taking care of them.
I really enjoyed working with the two little Edens that we had, Brianna and Gianna [Riccio]. We had such a great time together and they were so great. So I personally enjoyed it, but I know that people won’t love to see Angelina with a kidnapped baby.
Angelina was really abused by her parents and temporarily found shelter with the Stones... but it didn’t last. Who can she trust at this point?
Angelina is definitely still very lost. She can’t trust people, because every time that she has started to trust someone, it’s turned around on her and she feels betrayed by them. I think she doesn’t really understand the nuance of a relationship and that there can be conflict without that equating to a betrayal. She internalizes everything as a personal attack, because she has been so damaged throughout her childhood. [Then] coming back from the flight and her parents putting her in a dungeon and abusing her — she’s had a very hard past, so it’s hard for her to think that anybody cares about her.
I think that’s also why she connects so much with Eden: It’s a clean slate. She doesn’t know her past. She trusts her and sees the kindness that’s underneath all of the bad things that she’s done.
Angelina cuts deep to try and get Eden back: making Ben see a fake “calling” of Grace, who tries to get him to give up his daughter. What was it like playing those scenes?
When I read that she brings Grace back to use Eden to help push Ben towards making certain decisions, that made me sad. I was like, “This is so messed up, especially putting a child in between the two of them!” Oh my gosh, horrible, horrible stuff. So that made me sad to do.
But also as a human being, I was so excited to see Athena, because she’s really one of my favorite people that I’ve ever worked with. She’s just so nice and so talented. She blows me away, even with just the most simple scenes. I really enjoyed working with her, and I missed that this season. She was great, as always.
What was your reaction to her getting the sapphire embedded in her hand and her ability to summon callings?
I think even the crew, when we all read those scripts about the sapphire and the power that was going to come with it, we were all like, “Are we on a Marvel set right now? Is this the last Infinity Stone that she just had seared into her palm?!” So it was very superhero-esque. We were doing lots of crazy things with it, which I was a little nervous about because of green-screen things and imaginary stuff.
The show has so much deep emotion, rooted underneath all of it. You don’t want the superpower thing, the mythological elements, to take away from the heart of the show and all of the genuine emotion that’s thought out underneath it. So it was challenging, but it was very cool to see this new element added into the Manifest mythology.
How did your physical approach change with her hand being merged with the sapphire?
It definitely changed the physical performance of the character, because I just am so awkward with my hands in general. If I don’t have pockets, I have no idea where to put those things — they are not attached to my brain, whatsoever.
So to have to be so conscious of my hand all the time, because there’s this jewel into it... the special effects makeup department did such an amazing job. It would take hours in the makeup chair to put that thing in it, especially in the second block. It kind of evolves, and you’ll see how it does that, which is very cool. I just couldn’t use my hand for the entire day on set, so it was very weird.
But at the same time, in the scenes, I’m really utilizing it and it’s such a point of power and strength for Angelina, because that sapphire is all that she has left, so it’s always being referenced, it’s always being used. But in my personal life, it was much more difficult.
How will her connection to Cal (Ty Doran) be playing out in the final episodes?
There’s definitely pushback from Cal to bring that connection any more to fruition, because of what Angelina has done to his family and the state that she’s left them in. But I think Angelina is still very persistent on that and feels very connected to Cal. And we’ll see in the second block of episodes that that is for a very big reason. And they definitely are connected, as is everything.
How nervous should the Stones be?
Unfortunately, that’s a pattern that we’ve seen with Angelina: The darker the character has gotten, [the more we see] that she’s very good at manipulating people to get what she wants. And she’s doing that manipulation, from her perspective, for the greater good. She thinks that this is going to lead to the best benefit for all of humanity overall. It’s not like she wants evil things to happen to people just for the sake of it. She thinks there’s a greater good involved.
So, to her, she perceives the Stone family as a family that’s betrayed her, left her behind, left her alone, just like most other people have. So from what she’s learned about them, she can definitely kind of monopolize that information and figure out how to use it against them, sadly.
Are her new powers helping her gain any allies?
I think that Angelina, at this point, would love to be on her own, but she does start to realize with this overwhelming power that she wants and thinks that God has chosen her to have to use other people to get her message across. To fulfill this destiny that she thinks has been bestowed upon her and is her responsibility to manifest. She does have some allies in her corner... they’re definitely familiar faces. But everyone has their own agenda.
Can Angelina be redeemed?
I always held hope that Angelina could be saved and redeemed in some regard, mostly just for my own sanity as I’m reading the scripts. I never think that it can get worse, and somehow it always gets worse. So I’m just like, “Well, maybe this is as bad as it can get, and next week I’ll get a script that she comes back around.” So I always held hope for that, because she’s a good person underneath it all. She just really needs help.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
