Rosa Salazar is about to come Undone. In her upcoming Amazon Original series, the Alita: Battle Angel star plays Alma, a young woman disillusioned with life. All that changes, though, when she is involved in a car accident. Afterwards, she begins to see her late father, who asks her to solve the mystery of his death. With her newfound ability to see behind the curtain, she seeks answers about her father's death -- and may even change the course of history in the meantime.
At Comic-Con International in San Diego, Salazar and series creators Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg sat down with CBR to discuss the new show. They broke down the series and why animation allows them to ground an otherwise fantastical story. Salazar offered some insight into her character, as well as the physicality behind the show's rotoscope technology. The trio also weighed in on working with Bob Odenkirk, who plays Alma's father, and their favorite Mr. Show sketches.
CBR: Can you tell me a little about the story of this eight-episode series?
Purdy: It's about a young woman, played by the talented Rosa Salazar. The character's name is Alma, and she's feeling bored with life. She feels like there has to be more to this than what she's experiencing. She gets into a car accident, and she's approached by her father, who died when she was 11 years old. He says to her, "You're right, there is more to life. And I'm here to awaken these innate abilities in you so that you can travel back in time to save me because my death wasn't an accident, as you've been led to believe. In fact, it was a murder. And I need you to change the course of history." So that's the story in a nutshell.
What made animation the right medium for this story?
Purdy: Well, one thing we explore through this series is this push-pull between, "Am I losing my mind? Or am I having a spiritual awakening and there is more to life that is beyond the veil of reality as we understand it?" So using animation allows us to be in a very grounded realistic world, and then to stretch reality in a way that doesn't pull you out or lose you as an audience.
Bob-Waksberg: That's a good answer. But I also wonder, why not animation? You know, you never see a live-action show and go, "Why was live action right for this story?" You know, I think sometimes shows can be animated, because why not? Stories could exist in all mediums. I think we used it really well, and we had a good reason to justify it. But I was really excited by the idea of, "Oh, this is the kind of story you don't often see in adult animation."
Salazar: Right? It's the kind of way I would like to see these topics talked about as well.
Bob-Waksberg: I would love for the format of adult animation to be more broad than what it has been for the last 30 years, which is very hyper focused on a very specific audience and a very specific kind of humor and a very specific, new you. My little soapbox is I'm constantly trying to push the edges of what an adult animated story could be, or so -- when you're watching -- you're not asking, "Why is this animated?" But you watch and you go, "Yeah, this is a show and I'm enjoying it and I'm loving being taken on this journey."
Rosa, what do you think you have in common with Alma?
Salazar: Do we have tissues? I'm gonna need 'em.
Well, first of all, I'm a smart-ass, as you can gather, and then she is too. She employs gallows humor as much as I do. I think humor is a mask for pain. I think that she is incredibly sardonic. She's sarcastic. She's really quick with these one-liners. And I think that it's because she's suppressing some of this stuff -- grief over the death of her father, grief over the death of the notion that there could be more to life. I think that she's sort of mourning her life already, because it is sort of dead. It is this monotonous, never-ending loop of the same old shit.
I've experienced that. There have been so many times -- probably why I'm an artist -- where I go, "There must be more. There has to be magic. There must be magic here. There are too many coincidences for them to be coincidences." To be able to play a character that discovers that perhaps there is -- you know, there are parallels. There's so many parallels.
I mean, I lost my father. I have a charged relationship with my mother, which this show helped me do a nosedive into that as well. You know, because we go into her mother's story. We start to investigate why this relationship is charged. We don't always see our parents as people with emotional baggage and lives and their own foibles. So it helped me in that respect, but there's so many things I have in common with Alma. But I haven't had the same kind of psychotic break that she has, the spiritual awakening that she's been lucky enough to experience.
I experienced it on a very small scale, and it terrified me. I like what you [Bob-Waksberg] say, when you talk about rotoscope and animation and how it helps us keep something very fantastical kind of grounded and asks you, the viewer, "Well, what if it happened to you? The way you are now, existing in this dimension, in this life? What if suddenly, you could peek peek behind the curtain?" It would be terrifying, right?
How does this supernatural element allow you to really explore Alma as a character?
Bob-Waksberg: It externalizes a lot of the stuff that you're talking about. Like, we're talking about this idea of being stuck in this thing or hoping for something more.
Salazar: It's a tangible notion.
Bob-Waksberg: Yeah, it's like that. Except, yeah, you're running through space as a hospital is forming around you.
Salazar: That's what was so fun about it!
Bob-Waksberg: Yeah, you're kind of physicalizing a lot of these struggles.
Salazar: It was like a Double Dare course through her mind! And it was fun, because I am on a revolving platform platform, you know, being spun around in space, literally, in order to shoot that scene, floating around in space. I got to run down and hop onto tiles in space and run down in a hospital gown through the through the hospital. It did externalize a lot of what she's experiencing in her mind, and that was that was so much fun. It really helped me grasp the idea.
Bob-Waksberg: I think also this is a character who you can latch onto, even if you yourself are not hurtling through space and time, and that her relationships are very grounded and her struggles with her family are very grounded and her boyfriend are very real. And that it is in some ways, perhaps an escalation of feelings that anybody has felt in their life.
Salazar: Absolutely. Well said. You should play Alma!
Bob-Waksberg: You should write it.
Salazar: Oh, I don't know about that.
Bob-Waksberg: Let's do one day where we switch.
Salazar: Okay, Freaky Friday! Coming this fall.
What was it like to work with Bob Odenkirk?
Salazar: Hated it.
Bob-Waksberg: Oh no!
Salazar: You heard it here.
Bob-Waksberg: We've done so many interviews! This is the first I've heard of this.
Salazar: I know. I said he was my idol. But I actually didn't like him at all.
Bob-Waksberg: Did not care for Bob.
Purdy: It seems like you guys really liked each other.
Bob-Waksberg: Yeah, you were very close.
Purdy: He says he likes you.
Salazar: Acting! [laughs] I love him. Always love him. He's why I started in comedy. I'm a huge Mr. Show fan.
Bob-Waksberg: What is your favorite Mr. Show sketch?
Salazar: Oh my god, it must be "The Story of Everest."
Bob-Waksberg: That's a good one.
Salazar: It's got to be! Where he keeps falling into the the set of thimbles on the wall. Or it has to be when they make Montana its own state and and David Cross is the only one that lives there. So he pays for things in the new currency, which was like rocks and leaves. And he pays for something and then he walks behind the counter and he takes the money out... They're all perfect.
Bob-Waksberg: My favorite Mr. Show sketch is young people and companions. You know the one, where the young people and their companions get lost and it's never clear what the difference is between the young people and the companions but everyone keeps talking about the young people and their companions. You've got to see it!
Salazar: Okay, but what about the pedophile episode, where the guy has to ride around town in the car with the loudspeaker and be like, "This guy's this guy's coming!"... I love Bob Odenkirk! I think he's amazing. He's like my dad in real life.
Created by Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Undone stars Rosa Salazar, Bob Odenkirk, Siddharth Dhananjay and more. The series premieres September 13 on Amazon Prime.