Connor’s Headey Does It Her Way
By Cindy White
Source: Scifi.com

Lena Headey, who plays the title role in Fox’s midseason series The Sarah Connor Chronicles, told SCI FI Wire that she appreciated the performance of Linda Hamilton in the first two Terminator films, but that she will have her own personal take on the character.

“Obviously Linda Hamilton is held in great fondness, and quite rightly, but I am my own woman,” Headey said in an interview. “So I am doing what I feel is instinctively right for the role. And, also, this is a TV show, so it goes even further, emotionally. We have to. And we have more time. So I’m giving a nod to Linda out of respect, but I’m going to make Sarah my own.”

The show, which may be retitled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, picks up the story sometime after the events in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and follows the character and her son, John Connor (Thomas Dekker), as they run from a series of terminators sent from the future to hunt them down.

British actress Headey (300) said that the episodic format will allow the audience to learn more about her character than it did from the big-screen versions. “Because you’re going to spend an hour with her every week, we will get to know her better,” she said. “I think the sort of brilliance of how it begins is how reluctant she is to even be a mother in the first place. And she obviously has love for her son, but it begins right there. She’s like, ‘What am I actually doing?’ And on top of that, I have to save him, because he has to save mankind, so it’s a different situation.”

Although Sarah evolved into a strong, confident woman in the films, Headey sees another side to her that she’d like to explore. “Ultimately, I think her vulnerability, which is vast, will be in the series, but you don’t see it at first,” she said. “She has a bigger job at hand. It’s all in front for her, I think. She can’t even slow down for a minute and take a look at herself, otherwise I think she’d probably break.” The Sarah Connor Chronicles will premiere on Fox in early 2008.