Bayta Mallow Actor Synnøve Karlsen

Foundation season three just dropped its finale episode, “The Darkness,” and it was jam-packed with reveals and twists. When io9 got a chance to talk to Synnøve Karlsen, who plays Bayta Mallow on the Apple TV+ show, we didn’t hesitate, since Bayta plays a crucial part in what happens in the climax, and there’s no doubt she’ll be having an impact on the show’s just-announced fourth season.

If you haven’t watched “The Darkness” yet, be warned! We talk spoilers galore.

Foundation‘s season finale brought the long-awaited showdown between Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), head of the Second Foundation, and the mysterious Mule (Pilou Asbæk). And we don’t use “long-awaited” lightly; Gaal literally put herself in stasis on and off for 152 years so she’d be alive during the Mule’s rise to power. She’s been having vivid visions of their violent confrontation for years.

So when the moment finally arrived in “The Darkness,” viewers were shocked to find the Mule isn’t the Mule at all. He’s just a pirate being puppeted by the real Mule: Bayta Mallow (played by Karlsen), a rich socialite who’s been hiding her true identity all season. Surprise!

Cheryl Eddy, io9: In episode 10 we learn Bayta has a big secret. At what part in the process did you learn her true story?

Synnøve Karlsen: I learned fairly early on. When I was meeting for the role, they had kind of hinted there was something underneath that they hadn’t revealed yet. And then once I officially signed on, they told me exactly who she really was, which was very exciting.

io9: How did you infuse that into your performance? Were there any specific moments leading up to episode 10 that felt like hints to the audience?

Karlsen: It’s really difficult because as I was playing her, she [was] just acting in complete honesty and truth to what she believes in. There’s just one thing that she holds back throughout, so it’s this unspoken thing that she just doesn’t say. I’d say that across the board it was quite easy to play along in a really genuine way, because these were all goals that she really, truly wanted.

What was harder were moments when, say, [the balladeer] Magnifico’s playing the visi-sonor, or Magnifico’s talking about his relationship to the captain. Nobody’s looking at Bayta, and the camera’s on Bayta. And I think in those moments, I just let her feel how she would have felt. Luckily, there were no lines, so it didn’t give anything away.

But I definitely think for the viewer, once they know the reveal, when you go back and watch it, it’ll be pretty obvious. There will be some real moments to stick out. I mean, as a viewer of it myself, although I’m in it, when I watch it back, I’ve been like, “Oh, god, this is so obvious!” But luckily, I don’t think that many people have kind of caught on to the reveal yet. So hopefully I kept it subtle enough.

io9: When she says, “I’m the Mule”—what are the emotions she’s feeling right then? What was it like making that scene?

Karlsen: There were quite a few iterations of that scene, just in terms of length and how the reveal is played out. Ultimately, I think it becomes something of—it’s sort of like when something painful needs to be said, there’s no masking it. You have to say what it is and it felt like a catharsis, really, for me as an actor, and I think for Bayta.

I think she’s truly a good person who believes in what she’s doing; it’s just she hasn’t been able to say this one truth and she’s been holding on to it for so long. I think the [pirate] describes it as a pre-ordained consummation, so everyone is finally in this room and she’s been waiting for this moment our whole life. To be confronted with Gaal and to have Toran and Magnifico and all these people around her and the pirate dead, it’s this moment of “Oh, this is what I’ve been waiting for. And I’m so happy that I can finally be honest about who I am.” So that’s how it felt for me playing it.

io9: She says, “I’m going to explain all of it, I promise,” to Toran, but we don’t get to hear that, beyond the flashback that shows it was her childhood, not the Mule’s, that we saw in episode seven. Can you kind of walk us through what you think her plan looked like?

Karlsen: I had ideas. I think there’s like a really kind of—I don’t really know how to describe it, but kind of like a feral side to Bayta. She has come up through such hardship that she can be super ruthless when she needs to be, and I think she’s also not afraid to almost sell herself in certain ways to be seen and to become famous.

Her backstory was quite important to me in terms of figuring out kind of how she found Toran. I imagine that it was, as I said, a really difficult path. But she obviously had this power that she was kind of crafting and coming to terms with and trying to understand and use to her favor.

I think she met the pirate and it felt quite fortuitous, because he was this person who didn’t really care about being a complete brute. She could use him as a pawn and then also claim rightly or wrongly that she wasn’t in control of him in his entirety, so for any of the truly awful things that he did, she can kind of not take the blame for, in a way. Yes, definitely an interesting backstory, that’s for sure.

io9: Did you work with Pilou Asbæk at all to sort of align your characters?

Karlsen: Yeah, definitely. We chatted a lot. And I studied his scenes almost in the same way that I would study my own scenes, because I was so fascinated by what his character was really doing and the purpose he was serving for Bayta. But as I said, it was quite intentional that she chose someone like him, because she can kind of be absconded from the blame in terms of the kind of terror and cruelty that he enacts.

So it was important to me to find something of a similarity in them but also it was just interesting to see the way that he played it. I also watched a lot of his scenes. I’d come and watch him on set and see what he was doing. Because I think there’s a dual awareness in Bayta, and you don’t really know what’s true and what isn’t. It was interesting for me to have that darkness, almost, in her, that this person is out there doing these things and she’s kind of aware of it but kind of not fully in control of it.

io9: You get the sense early in the season that people underestimate her. She comes off as sort of vapid, and as a result people don’t realize how intelligent she is. Do you think she deliberately leans into that?

Karlsen: Totally, yeah. And it’s in that that she has so much power in a way because she’s so, as you said, semi-vapid. But once you know—I mean, it was so exciting for me reading the scripts, because when you have the knowledge of who she really is, there’s such a different weight to it. You realize how it’s completely not vapid and it’s completely powerful and kind of amazing.

io9: Bayta is a character in the Asimov books, though her story is changed a lot for the show, as is the Mule reveal—in the books it’s Magnifico, not Bayta, who’s revealed as the Mule in disguise. Are you anticipating what the audience reaction might be?

Karlsen: I’m not sure. That’s something I’m a little bit nervous about, but I’m very excited. I think that this is an exciting change. I think that the show has done really well in putting female perspectives into a genre that isn’t traditionally led by many women. So I think that it’s a great twist and I think that it’s exciting. And also, I think it’s fun to be kept on your toes. It’s fun to be entertained and to be shocked and I think this definitely does that. So I hope that diehard fans of the books aren’t too disappointed—but they’re actually excited by this change that’s been made.

Foundation season three is now streaming on Apple TV+.

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