Reign Q&A: Adelaide Kane Previews Mary’s Big Mid-Season Finale Revelation

For months, Adelaide Kane’s Mary, Queen of Scots has had to fend off threats against her life coming courtesy of her potential mother-in-law, Catherine de’ Medici (Megan Follows). And, in Thursday’s mid-season finale of “Reign,” Mary is going to find out why Catherine’s been so deadly determined to keep the pair apart.

Nostradamus’ (Rossif Sutherland) prophecy — that Mary will cause the death of Catherine’s son, Prince Francis (Toby Regbo) — is something the young Queen will learn just as her wedding to her life-long fiance seems poised to take place.

The Queen herself — Adelaide — addressed the upcoming reveal and how it will shake Mary, when AccessHollywood.com spoke to actress during a break from filming earlier this week.

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AccessHollywood.com: We know that this week, Mary learns about the prophecy. How is she going to take the news?

Adelaide Kane: She’s skeptical at first, but certain events take place in our mid-season finale that slowly bring her around to believing in Nostradamus’ powers of prophecy and visionary powers and I think she has a dawning horror that he might be right. … So I guess we’re gonna see her slowly come around to the fact that there might be a supernatural element, this element of prophecies… and you see her start to maybe question what she always thought she knew is true. I think it’s horrifying for her.

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Access: Is this going to make her understand Catherine’s behavior a little bit more?

Adelaide: I think so. I think that she’ll understand Catherine better. I think Mary has been slowly coming around to understanding Catherine as a woman and what motivates her a lot better throughout the last few episodes. I think she doesn’t want to understand Catherine. It would be much easier to take her and write her off as this evil villain, but she’s not that. She’s like this incredibly complex, incredibly strong, loving and in some ways damaged woman and I think the more you get to know Catherine and everything she’s been through and what motivates her, the more difficult it is to vilify her. … Mary is inherently a very fair character in that she treats everybody fairly and she wants to give everybody like the benefit of the doubt. She wants to understand before she condemns, so I think she’ll definitely start understanding Catherine’s motivations behind the attempts on her life and all of the horrific stuff that Catherine has put her through throughout the season.

Access: So, Clarissa, the woman in the walls of the castle… at one of the events for TV writers, your producers suggested Clarissa’s motivations may be a bit murky and we will learn more about them. Will we learn about them in this episode?

Adelaide: We will. We learn more about Clarissa as the season progresses. She is a very sort of ephemeral character. We don’t know much about her, we don’t know how she got here. She is very murky. There’s also like a debate over whether she’s kind of a fully formed human being in the sense that we understand she’s an incredibly damaged young woman and the way she thinks of things is not necessarily the way you or I would pop things out logically in our own mind. We’re definitely going to get to know her better as she becomes a little bolder in her endeavors throughout the season. She’s going to become a little bit more proactive in trying to achieve the things she wants to and her motivations will remain very unclear for a while, but we do slowly start to get to know her better. She’s a very interesting character.

Access: Rossif Sutherland is so great as Nostradamus. What’s it like to work with him and what’s he like? I know he’s a musician as well. Is he fun on set, because he’s so serious in the role?

Adelaide: He’s not that serious in reality. He’s such an interesting man and he’s really just a gentle giant. He’s so bloody tall. We’re all so short and he’s like 6’3”! He’s like ridiculously tall and gives the best hugs! … He’s very sweet and he always checks up on everybody and he always has his little dog… with him, this little snaggle-toothed terrier he carries around in a bag and she just adores the ground he walks on and follows him everywhere. … He’s a really great actor. It’s lovely to watch him think. He appears to think a lot in his performances and he’s got that great voice too. … But yeah, he’s so interesting. He always has a story. He always remembers what everybody’s up to. He’s lovely. He’s really lovely.

Access: One of the storylines this week involves Bash and his mother trying to legitimize him. If Bash was legitimate — if Mary had these two guys to choose from, and they were both royal — do you think she might go for Bash instead of Francis?

Adelaide: I don’t know, to be completely honest. She has built Francis up in her mind as her husband — you know, mentally and emotionally committed to him since she was very, very young. I think if she had known going in that she would have the option between the two of them, I don’t know if that would be any different. I believe in the concept of a soulmate and someone that you love with all your heart. I believe you can have more than one, personally. … She’s still very young, so who’s to say? She could be in love with Francis first and if they were equals, she could have fallen in love with Bash later down the line or vice a versa. I honestly don’t know. She clearly has a connection to both brothers, but for very different reasons. … She set herself up to love Francis and maybe they were meant to be together from the outset. I honestly have no clue who she would have gone for if they were both on equal footing.

The mid-season finale of “Reign” airs Thursday night at 9/8c on The CW.

— Jolie Lash