Mother. Stripper. Wife.
Mistress. Killer.
Niki Sanders: is she possessed? Mad?
Or does she have an alter ego?
Transcript: Tonone Synch: Nems
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Hi, I'm Ali Larter and you're watching Heroes.
A lads' mag favourite, Ali Larter has been voted
one of the world's sexiest women.
The Jersey girl has carved out a successful career as an actress in Hollywood,
appearing in the box-office hits "Legally Blonde" and "Final Destination".
For Ali, playing both Niki and Jessica means twice the fun.
My character is a single mom and, you know, she's just trying to get by.
She's just dealing with the stress and the pressures of life,
trying to get the bills paid, trying to be a good mother.
Someone like that, what would be the power that would be most useful
to that kind of character?
And I started thinking about the idea of the single mother stretched real far,
this idea of being in two places at one time,
and so the original concept of that was a kind of doppelganger.
And that very slowly morphed into the idea of
this other character to be pure Id,
willing to do anything at all to
kind of protect the mother and son unit.
There is no Jessica, it's just you.
No, I see her in the mirror.
She tells me that she wants to come out again.
It's Tim's answer to the everyday woman
who kind of feels overwhelmed
and feels like they have to be two people.
Look, I know how it's like to raise a boy on your own.
To be stretched so far you wish you could be
in two places at once, I get it.
She's a beautiful, sexy mom
and I created the character based on
seeing her as seeing who she is.
I know in the early stages of the character,
when she is in the Principal's office with Micah,
I have her in this very soft sweater that she sort of uses
and pulls around her when she's with someone,
covering up her sexiness in that moment,
and I really see her, that Niki character,
there's a softness to that character that is so beautiful.
Then she has the stripper element which is her job,
but there's a part always that feels disconnected from it.
She's trying to make ends meet by stripping on the internet,
and she's met by a couple of employees of Linderman's who
are coming in to make good on a loan.
Welcome home.
You realize how deep she's gotten into it.
I'll tell what I'm gonna do. You make what?
40 bucks for every 20 minutes you take off your clothes?
Well, I'm gonna give you a chance to lower your debt a little.
The overwhelming aspect of the situation kind of
brings out Jessica for the first time.
What's the matter, baby? We were just getting good here!
I said, what's the matter?
- Screw you. - Screw me?
As Jessica continues her bloodbath of butchered bodies,
deep in the guts of Heroes is a team of prosthetic artists
who create all the special make-up effects.
Active Nerve is been around since the early '90s
and we've done everything
from "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer", to "X-Files" and a bunch of films.
The perimeter of special effects make-up include everything from
if you see a dead body, that's completely prosthetic,
so that's almost like a prop.
It's built from scratch into entire body like
the frozen guy that you'll see or the burned guy that you'll see.
And the other end of that spectrum is working make-up effects,
which is something that's gonna be applied to the actor,
to achieve an effect that's otherwise impossible.
A good example of that would be Claire's arm being dislocated,
that was an actual rig that sits on her shoulder with her arm behind the back,
and the joint is capable of popping all the way out and all the way back in.
All in one shot, without cutting away.
For Niki/Jessica we've contributed to several effects,
the goriest of which was the scene that took place in her apartment
when Weasel and his bodyguard turn up completely torn apart.
Those pieces that we created for that scene
were played in several other episodes.
Weasel's head was life-cast
and we created just a face of him because we always see him as a part in the trunk,
a part on the floor, a part being buried in the desert.
For Milos we created a body that
was ripped in half and then we filled in all these internal organs
which are laying in the foreground of that shot.
And then we got a bucket and a brush
and we just started to throw the blood around.
That was fun.
Heroes is an extremely challenging show because
every episode is like shooting a feature-lenght film
and they just push the boundaries of what you can accomplish on a television schedule.
And what bigger challenge than having Claire wake up during her own autopsy?
Oh, my God!
She's presumed to be dead,
they have started the autopsy, she wakes up,
closes herself up, gets up and exits the stage left.
This is a complete suit of, I call, "overlay" on her.
These were pinned open so that you could actually see
all of the blood and the ribs, and you got a little bit of stomach and intestins,
everything goes on down there.
It is all very realistic, according to how it is inside a human torso.
On the day, this just lays across her body complete,
it's got a three quarters wrap-around so that you don't see
any edges 'cause there aren't really any edges to hide.
Dick's made a full head-to-toe body-cast of me,
which is an interesting experience, I might say.
Holy sh...
Hayden is an absolute trooper so we love working with her.
Everytime she sees something new that we do she thinks it's cool
and... oh, that's good, 'cause we think it's cool too.
What you call that thing sticking out?
Oh, great!
We made a whole three-quarter torso,
that slides onto her sideways,
is inches up on this side, so, her costume is here
and here so it looks like complete skins, so
in a matter of seconds from a "Oh, my Gods the ribs!",
and then, "Oh, it's everyday on the show, they're right back in".
These cuts are fairly precisions so they called us up
and then the CG was gonna get rid of the blood and that was it
Back on set, Ali's inflicting some injuries of her own.
Motor speeding. Mark! And, action!
If you threaten her son again,
I'm going to put my heel through your skull.
And... cut!
Did that hurt? Oh, shit!
Oh, it just hurts a lot.
Is it tough? Yes.
No, it's amazing, I mean it's what's great about the show,
that it keeps me challenged all the time, you know,
I'm just putting it out there and hoping that I don't fall on my face.
I imagine that Jessica is a little more fun to play,
because there's no regard for anything.
This fun about Jessica is that, you know, she just want to sleep with you,
she's then laughing at you, she's got no use for you.
An opportunity to get out of debt with Linderman
presents itself in the form of seducing Nathan Petrelli in Vegas.
She shows up and actually can't do it because it's so counter to who she is.
Goodnight.
But the need is still there and
queue Jessica and Jessica does the job that Niki can't do.
Did you forget something?
My father was out there while we were filming that episode
and I remember him looking over.
She was, I think at that point, sitting on my lap in her underware
and dad was just going "This is what it's like for you? This is another friday?".
No matter how cool you think you are, or how tough on all this stuff or how professional,
it's a little bit awkward to get just about naked with somebody in front of a crew.
She was so brave, especially with that horrible body of her.
I don't know how she got the confidence to stand there,
you know, with all the bits flying... ehm... you know.
You have to take your hats off and your pants. No, your hat
to a woman who've been muss that up and
put that forward to make it seem natural and normal,
and what these two character evolve and go through
the things they do in the following episodes.
There's a good payoff for having come through that
in that scene in the hotel room.
A lot of who Niki is represents struggle and loss and
hardship and you start to see Jessica emerge as this answer to that.
When Niki gets to a point where she's overwhelmed,
Jessica steps in and takes over and all bets are off.
How are you going to explain to your son what happened to him
when you didn't honour your agreement?
You think about that, Niki.
Niki's not here right now.
- And cut! - Are you ok?
- You got it, great. - I'm so scared of you
- I was into it. - Oh, you were!
Suddenly things become very possible when you have an actress like Ali Larter.
I have never envisioned Niki and Jessica
being able to occupy the same frame without the artifice of editing.
I thought that clearly gonna have to be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
we cut to one, we cut to.... and at some point along the way
we were seeing that Ali had kind of become both of these characters.
- I loved you, Niki. - No, there is this other person
I can't control and I don't know what is happening to me.
I'm taking Micah and I'm taking the money.
- Goodbye, Niki. - You're not taking anything.
As she develops an alter ego, and Jessica appears,
the helix had to be visible on her shoulder, so
that they required us to create tops and show it,
so that when she turned around you were always aware that it was on her body.
Every sci-fi show has to have a few secrets
and the meaning of this mysterious symbol continues to keep fans guessing.
Well, helix is just an emblem, it's a sign that you see over and over
throughout the show and it's hidden and
probably not everyone will find it, but it's in just about every episode.
You might think you've seen all of them,
but here's a few you may have missed.
We always try to put the helix in there wherever we can, you know.
My assistant, who runs the set,
he actually took the piece of wood that's in Mohinder's apartment,
where the lizard lives, and he formed it into a helix,
so if you look right close that's a helix.
The helix, when we first started they wanted us to
include it in the design everywhere.
I think the last time I really used it was where
Matt goes to the murder scene of Molly's parents
and there was a pool on the backyard and we took the hose and made it into the helix.
And I thought it was great, but I think after that they decided not
to push it anymore and let it be a little more gradual.
So, what does the symbol helix actually stand for?
The helix, for what I know, and may I'm giving away secrets,
is based on the DNA strands.
Am I giving away top secrets?
So the helix is based on the DNA symbol,
but fans are divided as to what it signifies.
Theories include: it's Sylar's symbol left when he murders
or simply the identitying mark of the heroes.
Is it a time marker left by Hiro
so that he knows where his future self has been?
Well, how about the outline of Alfred Hitchcock's head?
But the helix isn't the only mysterious figure in Heroes
the arrival of D.L. Hawkins spells further troubles for Niki.
You find him being referred to a lot
before he actually appears in episode 5.
He's painted as the bad element, the criminal.
He's wanted for murder, he's escaped prison.
And he seems to really be the threat to the Sanders' home.
I know that you want to believe in your father, but I know what's best, Micah.
They're gonna catch him and he is going to go away for a long time.
They'll never find him.
Upon his return, you start to realize
that there may be a little more to him.
Is this how you got out of jail?
His ability to get through things is he speeds his molecules up so fast
that they become, you know, basically, non-solid.
A woman is trapped into a car that's burning and that's gonna blow.
So D.L. comes along and decides to help the lady.
So instead of breaking the window,
he just phases right through the window,
opens the lock, opens the door.
To do this matter of simple actual gag, really,
D.L. reaches through the open window, unlocks it, opens the door.
Terrific. Then we're back to this nice, beauty glass pass
of the window and then we do a special distorsion
that is the D.L. phasing look, creating a little warp in that.
We also shot on the reverse, outside
we have D.L. reaching towards the glass,
we have the rifraction come to meet his hand and then his hand goes through.
D.L. loves his phasing, he always says, you know, his friends would call:
"Dude, a bullet went through your head!", or
whatever you want, "you put your arm through this thing, it's awesome!"
It may be awesome, but ii it enough to save him
from the revenge seeking Jessica?
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