Lewis Carroll has traditionally been a fantasy writer. He is an iconic, 19th-century cocaine addict who gave us the magical Cheshire cat, the elusive Jabberwocky and the completely insane Mad Hatter. Now, director Nick Willing is giving “Alice in Wonderland” an upgrade with the SyFy original miniseries, “Alice.”
In an interview with The Eagle, Willing and Caterina Scorsone (who will be playing Alice) described an entirely original trip through the looking glass along the lines of Willing’s prior collaboration with SyFy, a science fiction re-imagining of “The Wizard of Oz” called “Tin Man.”
Like “Tin Man,” this will be an Alice for the 21st century — a self-reliant black belt who balks at commitment. When she watches her boyfriend get kidnapped, Alice gives chase and finds herself in an entirely different Wonderland after falling down an equally different rabbit hole.
“We felt that we had discovered in ‘Tin Man’ a new way of reinventing, re-imagining the classics,” Willing said. “We wanted to take another classic that was fantasy-based, and there were none better visually than Alice.”
The idea to revisit Wonderland “grew out of the ‘Tin Man’ experience of translating a classic story that we all know and love and spinning it a different way,” Willing said.
Wonderland is a place befitting its name: fantastic and nothing like the real world. However, according to Willing, it did not have a protagonist to match. The new story modernizes everything.
“In the book [Alice is] kind of this wide-eyed young girl who’s walking through this fascinating land but she herself isn’t terribly fascinating, and in this version the fascinations of the land in some way are in fact a metaphor for the fascinations inside her personality,” Scorsone said.
Aside from young and blonde, Willing saw little of the character in Carroll’s Alice. Scorsone is an entirely new Alice, confident and capable — a rebuilt character from the ground up. Everything about this Alice is unique, starting with her non-blonde hair.
“Essentially, her hair is the first thing you see of Alice in the movie,” Scorsone said. “There’s kind of this shot from the back of her head in the beginning of the film, and so I think we decided that this is a very, very different movie and it’s a very different story. And so the initial visual of a brunette Alice immediately informs the audience that they’re in for a different kind of ride.”
Wonderland itself is now a universe where the flamingoes are hover bikes and Kathy Bates rules over all she sees as the Queen of Hearts.
“Kathy Bates was literally my first choice for the role of the Queen of Hearts,” Willing said. “She is, to me, one of the most spectacular actresses in the world, and I don’t know anyone better to play a vicious character with a huge heart.”
Another major modernization from Alice circa 1860 to Alice circa 2009 is the Mad Hatter. Andrew-Lee Potts’s character is, instead of outrageously insane, a con artist and member of the resistance movement opposing the Queen of Hearts.
Willing has previous experience with the story, as he directed a version of “Alice in Wonderland” in 1999. The “Alice” miniseries premieres Dec. 6 on SyFy.
You can reach this staff writer at bkoenig@theeagleonline.com.
