Sweet, Sweet “Revenge”: AE Journeys to the Dark Side with Cast and Crew of the New ABC Drama

Emily VanCamp (center) and rest of the Revenge cast

Face it: we’ve all wanted to exact retribution on somebody at one time or another. Probably just not as badly as Emily Thorne does.

“I don’t think her goal is to go and murder people,” said actress Emily VanCamp of Thorne, her character on the new ABC drama series Revenge, when I approached her at the network’s TCA after-party.“That would be almost too easy for them. It’s about suffering.”

In other words, you definitely don’t want to get on her bad side.

It’s not like she doesn’t deserve to be a little bit pissed. After all, if a group of morally-bankrupt, well-heeled Hamptonites had framed your father for murder and left you to fend for yourself in the foster care system, I bet you’d be pretty angry too.

Such is the distressing back-story of Revenge, which sees VanCamp’s character (born Amanda Clarke) return to the exclusive seaside community under a false identity and enact a well-thought-out plan to destroy those responsible for the downfall of her father (James Tupper, replacing Marc Blucas).

“[Her father] left her journals full of evidence [that he was set up],” VanCamp told me. “You can imagine how unbelievably horrifying that would be to realize. …What these people put her through was hell on earth. And so she has the means at that point because she inherits a lot of money from her father…and [she] decides that that’s where she’s gonna put her money. She’s just gonna learn how to take these people down.”

The premise is a modern-day twist on the classic Alexandre Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo, which follows merchant sailor Edmond Dantes (disguised as the titular Count) as he sets out to destroy the three men who had him falsely imprisoned years earlier. During the show’s TCA panel, executive-producer Wyck Godfrey made sure to credit the idea to his producing partner Marty Bowen.

“We went to the studio and the network with the idea of doing a kind of the ‘haves and the have nots’ of The Hamptons,” said Godfrey. “And they rightfully said, ‘Yes, but what’s your story engine?’”

That’s when Bowen came up with the Count of Monte Cristo concept.

“I’m actually taking moments from the book and peppering them throughout the series,” said writer/series showrunner Mike Kelley. “And the fun of The Hamptons…[is that] it’s East Coast royalty, really. It’s America’s answer to royalty, and…in The Count of Monte Cristo he needs to infiltrate royal society. I think I think that’s why it works so great.”

So just how bad are these people?

“She’s quite justified in what she’s doing,” said VanCamp during the panel. “I mean, these people stole everything from her. They are horrible people. They do really bad things. And I think, on some level, you know, everybody can connect with the theme of revenge, whether they act on it or not.”

“I just heard in the green room about something really heinous my character is about to do,” said the still-gorgeous Madeleine Stowe (pictured right), who co-stars as Victoria Grayson, a former lover of Emily’s father now married to Conrad (Henry Czerny), one of Emily’s main targets. “I said, ‘She does what?!’ I mean, it was so shocking. And so I think, you know, the idea that you are in a place that is sunny and bright, and all of these dark undercurrents are going on, there’s a whole subterranean world, kind of makes a really interesting story.”

Complicating matters for Emily will be a love triangle that develops between herself, Victoria and Conrad’s son Daniel Grayson (Make It or Break It hunk Joshua Bowman (pictured below), whose character will be the target of an allegedly gay, “Talented Mr. Ripley”-esque sociopath portrayed by Ashton Holmes beginning in episode three), and a former childhood friend named Jack Porter (Nick Wechsler). Of course, falling in love was never supposed to be a part of the equation.

“It’s a plan that she’s put together for eight years, [to] exact the identity and the architecture of this revenge,” said Kelley. “And I think that what you don’t plan for, what the blueprint doesn’t allow is, ‘Oh my God, Daniel’s an actual person’, and he’s not the little monster that she had in her head. …She’s not completely cut off from her from humanity.”

Nevertheless, Emily’s lust for vengeance is so strong that even the innocent ultimately aren’t safe from falling prey to her machinations. This fact was illuminated when another journalist asked if there would be a “Medea aspect” to her character at any point going forward (Medea being a vengeful sorceress in Greek mythology who ultimately resorts to horrifically amoral acts).

“Boy, that’s interesting,” answered Kelley. “I haven’t gotten there yet, because I’m protective of Emily. So, yeah, I guess that there will be moments where she has to, like, for the larger cause, do something that’s distasteful, but –“

“Oh, but there is,” Stowe interjected. “There is that kind of Medea moment.”

“Oh, you’re right,” said Kelley, realizing his mistake. “Yes.”

Assured Stowe cryptically, after pausing for a moment of laughter from the audience: “Yeah. There is.”

Revenge debuts Wednesday, September 21^st at 10 PM on ABC.