Netflix's Sweet Tooth, based on the comic by Jeff Lemire, has become one of the must-watch shows of the summer. The series is set in a world where a deadly disease has ravaged humanity. Simultaneously, a newly-emerged generation of human-animal hybrid children face hatred and violence. Centering its story on a deer-boy named Gus, the series follows the hybrid as he searches for his mom, tries to rebuild a family of his own and crosses paths with other survivors in a post-apocalyptic world. One of the most important survivors in Sweet Tooth is Aimee Eden, a former therapist who offers hybrids a refuge in an abandoned zoo.
In an interview with CBR, Dania Ramirez, who portrays Aimee, discussed Sweet Tooth's demanding production compared to her previous roles and her favorite comics and anime.
Note: Portions of this conversation have been condensed or reordered for clarity.
CBR: What was it like filming a pandemic apocalypse story during an actual pandemic?
Dania Ramirez: I just felt very grateful not only to get a job during the height of the pandemic but then also to be able to be part of telling such a special story during the dark times that we're all in. I'm really blessed to have the opportunity to work with such amazing creative people -- the creators, Jeff Lemire who wrote the comic, Jim Mickle and Beth Schwartz, and then our producers, Robert Downey Jr. and his wife, were just really passionate about telling this story and telling it from a very hopeful perspective. And having kids of my own, I just thought that was very special and this was a story I wanted to be a part of.
Had you read the comics before auditioning?
Not before auditioning, because the audition came in very fast. It all happened simultaneously... We had just gotten the ruling we had to stay at home for quarantine, so this was one of the first auditions that I had to figure out the at-home self-taping situation... I'm a fan of comic books, but I wasn't familiar with Jeff Lemire and his work, so it was sort of like a blessing because he came in during this time, I put myself on tape, and then I had the meeting with the creators, and then I went on Amazon and everywhere I could to try to get the comics. But for some reason, they were not available, so I wasn't able to get them in time. But once I got the role, I had my agent reach out to Warner Bros. and get me all the copies of the book. Because we shot it during the pandemic, we had to isolate 14 days once we got to New Zealand before we filmed it, so I took that time to get through all the comic books and really dive into the world.
What are your favorite comics?
I love the X-Men. I was part of X-Men from the beginning and that was my introduction to the real comic book world and I really got into reading all of them.
You were in one of the movies.
Yeah, I played Callisto in X-Men: The Last Stand. Callisto was one of the main characters, so you had to dig in and really dive into the comic books to reveal her, you know, the Morlocks and all the backstory. So I really got into the X-Men comics, but prior to that, I was really old-school. I was born in the Dominican Republic. I grew up without TV, so I would read old Superman comics.
How did you get into comic books?
I got into manga from watching anime, and from there I got into American comics.
This is very old-school, but there was one called Cobra, it was an anime from Japan... It was about these three sisters that were like triplets, and they all had this, like, tattoo on them and there were these people trying to kill them and this guy Cobra would go by in his motorcycle and save them... I just can't remember because I was so young, I was really young, but they were really powerful. They would get these huge powers if you put the three sisters together and combined all the three tattoos.
I haven't seen it, but I've heard of it. It's also called Space Adventure Cobra.
Oh, is that it? Because every time I tell someone about it, nobody knows about it. I didn't make it up in my head! [laughs]
If you could be any sort of hybrid, what would you be?
I would love to be a cheetah, or if it was an ocean one, an orca, and I choose these two because there are no human attacks by either one of those animals. I don't know if you know this about the cheetah, but it's really sort of half-dog, half-cat... They're very good to humans, so I feel like if I was gonna choose a hybrid, it would be one that's not harmful to humans but also very agile and could hunt.
Early in your career, you had roles on two shows widely considered among the best of all time: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Sopranos. What was it like on those sets?
It was pretty amazing. I just actually spoke on the Talking Sopranos podcast... [The Sopranos] felt like a family. They set the bar pretty high because a lot of times I came into shows, especially at the beginning of my career, towards the end of them. I was in the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well, and that was also an awesome show to be a part of because I was a fan of the movie... So when I found out that I got the job, this was at the very beginning of my career, it was just a very exciting time for me. And I'm just into vampires and that kind of world, you know? I was always one of those offbeat, kind of dark kids.
The Sopranos was just fantastic because the writing in it was just incredible, but they also really made me feel at home... I remember when I walked into the first family sit-down scene with Tony Soprano. He was very warm and welcoming. In both [Sopranos and Buffy], the one thing that really stuck out to me was that they did not make me feel like a newbie, and I definitely was a newbie.
Going back to Sweet Tooth, did you get to work with Robert Downey Jr.?
I didn't personally get the opportunity to work with him directly because we shot this at the height of the pandemic, so [both the actors and the producers] didn't have the opportunity to travel back and forth [from the set in New Zealand] to L.A.... [Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey] were back in L.A., so personally, I didn't get to work with them as much.
We also had to shoot it very quickly in New Zealand because of the pandemic, so we had a hard out where the cast had to leave where we were staying sometime in December and we couldn't extend, so we had two full units running at the same time. Christian Convery and Nonso Anozie were most of the time with the first unit and some of the producers were there, and we had some of the other producers from the Team Downey team as well in the second unit, so we were pretty much divided for a lot of the shooting to make sure that we were gonna be able to finish on time. Sweet Tooth is a big show.
I filmed a lot with a puppeteer and animatronics for Bobby and a lot of green-screen. Also with the kids, you couldn't shoot them over a certain about of hours, so we were pretty tight in time to make sure that we got it all in, but Team Downey had a lot of their producers on set and we always felt supported by them, and we had their input because they were getting the dailies every day.
How much of the effects were animatronics vs. CGI?
It was a decent amount of combination between animatronics and CGI. For example, that scene for the opening sequence of when my character comes in in Episode 2... That was a very cool scene to shoot because the camera had to move consecutively and they had to keep continuously adding different stuff, so I remember getting the reference of what we were gonna shoot and it was from a video game. I forget the name of the video game, but Jim [Mickle], the director, had sent me the reference so I had an idea of, like, this was gonna be a long day, we were gonna have one continuous camera, it had to be very precise and everything had to be in a very specific place, and I just couldn't move, so they kept adding more stuff in and I had to go back into the set and just hold the position as the camera kept moving all the way around me and everything had to stay the same. It was a very complicated scene that took all day.
The world that I was a part of had a big combination of [CGI and practical effects]. So when I'm walking outside and I'm seeing all the elephants... that wasn't just inside a studio with green screen, I was in that street and the art department had the buildings all dressed and the cars were made to look old and post-apocalyptic, and so they just had a huge green screen behind me and then I just had to imagine the elephants coming in and the director had a computerized system that showed me what it was supposed to look like so I knew what was happening and I could have the reaction all the way around me even though there were no elephants.
Bobby was a huge deal... I call Bobby sort of like our version of Yoda because there's something about him that it's not just CGI, he was like a puppet/robot, so we had a lot of techno-cranes, everything had to be very specific as far as, like, he had to land in a certain spot for them to be able to move his mouth and his eyes manually. He had a handler that was walking with him in a grey suit, either one or two guys walking him so it looked more like real movement... I'm telling you all this because I know you're into comic books so I think you'd be interested in all the technical stuff. The hybrids, a lot of their features were not CGI. Like, [Naledi Murray, who plays Wendy/Pig Tail] actually had a pig nose, she had to come in for hair and makeup, special makeup in the morning super early to get the pig nose in, and same with Christian for Gus/Sweet Tooth. His ears were robotic ears handled from the side. There was a lot of real technical stuff that went into making the show.
How close are we to news about a second season?
That is the question of the day, isn't it? I will tell you we're all very excited about the way Season 1 has been received and the excitement from not only the fans but also all of the creative people has been overwhelming. The critics have really loved it, so I am optimistic, but there's nothing else I can say except that I'm continuing to focus on spreading the word for Season 1.
Anything you're hoping to see for Aimee in a potential Season 2?
The great thing about Aimee and all the other characters, the writers and creators were really able to keep them three-dimensional and give everyone a real arc. We all started in a place, and by the end of Season 1, we ended up in a different place emotionally... So a lot of that is going to take a toll on us and I'm excited to see what that has turned Aimee into and whether she can get some of that hopefulness back throughout Season 2.
Sweet Tooth stars Christian Convery, Nonso Anozie, Adeel Akhtar, Aliza Vellani, Stefania LaVie Owen, Dania Ramirez and Neil Sandilands, with Will Forte and James Brolin. Season 1 is now available on Netflix.