Calgary Expo 2019 Rose McIver Panel

April 28, 2019 at 2:00am
By Jason Stettner

At the Calgary Expo 2019 there was a Rose McIver panel just off of the path from the Stampede Corral. At this setup she went over her career, the latest upcoming season of iZombie and the past as well. To open things up she discussed growing up, and good old New Zealand. How it’s a small world and you tend to run into other folks from the land.

When she was first getting into iZombie, she read only an hour of a graphic novel for the audition. She didn’t exactly know what the premise was, and with pilot season everything is hectic. You’re never sure where things will go with shows and it’s always a risk. Basically worked for five years with a close group after only an hour of reading material.
Continuing on with iZombie, the brain tweak was actually something they came up with as time went on. The surprise brains actually made the show get harder every week. Instead of being able to relax into her role, every time is a new challenge. This was especially difficult when characters would have certain cross-overs just by their general design.

She has a fun one to tease for the upcoming season and that’s Fitspiration. Basically a fitness maniac. The curve balls also just kept coming, she’ll also be a salsa dancer in this season. They’re like, you can totally dance-ish, right? The most fun she had with the character of Liv in iZombie was the dominatrix. A very, very quick reply to the question was presented. When it comes to interacting with fans, it’s really moving and she essentially cries at the drop of a hat. She notes that they don’t know how the audience feels while making a show, and through social media, or well personal interactions you get a full sense of that.

Moving past eating brains for now, A Christmas Prince on Netflix really blew up more than she expected. They actually just finished shooting the third one in Romania. That lasted long, back onto the iZombie train. These following details were presented through a series of fan questions. When it comes to the brains, they’re made with gelatin, corn syrup , sweet and sour stuff with a bit of hot sauce thrown in occasionally.

Looking at mishaps, the best was with Rahul Kohli. He’s very serious and is always attempting to feel out the environment to perform his method style of actign. During this one scene he was measuring body parts with a ruler. He then put it in his mouth and was tapping it with his teeth. Once it was taken out, their morgue consultant ran over and said to never do that again. It was a ruler from her actual morgue. He was then called death breath.

In iZombie, Liv’s brother hasn’t been seen in many episodes and that will actually be wrapped up in an important, big plot for season 5. It will deal with her family in general and it’s apparently really interesting. She was very surprised when he returned to the set, as many years have passed and he’s grown up.

A question about accents was asked, in regards to how she does them. Tips, she’ll usually get a dialect coach for anything out of her comfort zone and mentions that Youtube is an incredible resource to start with prior to spending money on it. The apparent perfect sandwich for her is Vogel’s Bread, which is a New Zealand type thing, apparently like a religion over there. It features hearty, whole grain bread with marmalade, cheddar, some avocado, a bit of hot sauce and it is lightly toasted. Another fun fact is that she was supposed to be on Chopped for a Halloween special, which didn’t end up happening.

Things get somewhat miscellaneous from this point out. The funniest brain was the dominatrix, and the best was the Dungeons & Dragons episode. Most she’s ever laughed. For Once Upon a Time, in the Tinkerbell episode she disappears and she joked about a spin-off. Though generally she would have liked more of a back story there.

The hardest brain was the old racist guy, hard to do someone so unlikeable as it wasn’t much fun. The hardest coming up was the genius brain, from the next season. If you didn’t know, she was in Power Rangers. She has fun doing some stunts and got rather fit, but a padded stunt double did most things. Growing up she loved the Muppets, and also likes both versions of the Office. She also likes Sister Act, and the best Muppet movie is where they take Manhattan, in her opinion. That about sums everything up, we have additional panel and other coverage from the show in our hub.

View our Jeff Goldblum Panel Coverage
View our Calgary Expo 2019 Hub