All that Jaz
With the second season of Gen V on the horizon and a music album in the works, Jaz Sinclair, who plays Marie Moreau in the spin-off from superhero drama The Boys, talks about how she’s dealing with stardom, the appeal of magical stories and why she’d be a terrible influencer.
Jaz Sinclair has been a presence on the small screen for more than 15 years, following up early appearances in shows such as in Revolution, Rizzoli & Isles and The Vampire Diaries with a long-running role in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
Yet it’s only now, as the lead actor on Prime Video’s Gen V, that she’s having to deal with the price of fame – being recognised in the street.
“I feel like my career has happened at a nice pace for me, for my personality,” she tells DQ. “I like that it’s [been] gradual. I like that it’s in spurts. I like that I get to be anonymous a lot of the time. Not so much anymore. Now people recognise me for sure. People used to recognise me and be like, ‘Did we go to high school together?’ I’d be like, ‘No, you don’t look familiar.’ Now people know me by name.”
Set in the “diabolical” world of The Boys – in which monetised superheroes (aka ‘supes’) are as popular as celebrities and as influential as politicians – Gen V centres on the prestigious superhero-only Godolkin University, where students train to be the next generation of heroes, preferably with lucrative endorsements of their own. But beyond the typical chaos of college life, the pursuit of popularity and good grades, they find the stakes are much higher when superpowers are involved.
Sinclair plays Marie Moreau, a ‘hemokinetic,’ meaning she is able to control blood with her mind. In season one, eight years after a family tragedy, she is accepted at Godolkin. There, powerful figures try to use her for their own agenda as she and her friends discover some secrets of the college and a secret experimental facility.
Now in S2, which arrives on Prime Video on September 17, the mysterious new college dean enforces a curriculum that promises to make students more powerful than ever, while Marie reluctantly returns to college, burdened by months of trauma and loss. With war brewing between humans and supes, both on and off campus, the gang learns of a secret programme that goes back to the founding of Godolkin and may have larger implications than they realise. And, somehow, Marie is a part of it.
“If you love S1, you’re really gonna love S2. I honestly think it’s great,” Sinclair says. “The tone is a little bit darker, at least at the start. In the trailer, they show ‘Make America Super Again,’ which nods to what’s going on in the world and just the impending doom feeling of it all. So our show touches on that a bit. It’s still just as funny. There’s love and stuff. But overall, our characters have been through so much now that we’re a little bit more jaded.”
As for her character, “she makes some bad decisions and thinks she’s doing the right thing, and maybe she is, maybe she isn’t.”
The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke has made no secret of the show’s reflection of US politics and how authoritarian superman Homelander (played by Anthony Starr) is a metaphor for Donald Trump. Yet Sinclair still marvels at how The Boys and Gen V continue to reflect the “political chaos” in America and around the world in such a timely way.
“We film these things a year, two years, before they’re released, and then they keep releasing [it] right when this stuff is happening [in the real world] so there’s a bit of magic involved in why that keeps happening,” she says. “But I love the satire element of it. I love the political elements of it. I love that our show isn’t scared to touch on taboo things from both sides. It’s really great. I’m not saying one side isn’t obviously right and one side isn’t obviously wrong. But I like that about the show.”
Being number one on the call sheet, Sinclair says she takes great pride in setting the tone on the set of Gen V, which like The Boys is known for its mix of practical and visual effects that bring to life some of its most astonishing and grotesque sequences.
“I’m very intentional about that,” she says of leading the show. “The tone I set is that we’re on time, we’re prepared and we’re nice to each other, coming to set every day in good spirits, being kind to everybody, knowing everybody’s name, knowing your material, being really prepared, having all my notes… I definitely try to set what I can of the tone and I take pride in that for sure.”
But as a lead character, she also has to balance working “crazy hours” with ensuring she does a good job for the show and her collaborators in front of and behind the camera. “So the challenge for me is finding time on the weekends or beforehand to really prepare for each scene, really get into the character work and really show up prepared while also balancing eating food, sleeping and everything.
“Then there’s also the fact that it does bounce around chronologically, and understanding that, in one day, I might be doing a love scene and then crying in the evening or doing a fight scene or whatever, and figuring out how to balance my energy so I don’t spend it at the beginning of the day and can achieve all of that.”
The recipient of the International Golden Nymph award for most promising talent at this month’s Monte-Carlo TV Festival, Sinclair is drawn to “timeless” stories, and particularly gravitates towards classical tales and folklore.
“It’s amazing to me when a story from hundreds of years ago is the same now,” she says. “When you read folklore, it speaks to different aspects of your psyche that we think are so unique to our time, but are actually just a part of the human condition in general. I would like to tell stories that are universal and tap into the experiences we’ve been experiencing since humans have been humans. That would be really cool.”
But taking on Gen V after Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Sinclair doesn’t mind staying in a familiar genre. “No, I love magical stuff,” she says. “If you want to put me in some sci-fi shit, put me on a spaceship, put me in Indiana Jones, I just love it. I love a really well-built world. That’s why I gravitate towards these magical worlds, because they challenge the rules of the world that we live in, and I like anything that makes you think expansively and mystical realism. All of that I love.”
Away from the screen, Sinclair is hoping to accelerate her music career after just finishing an album under her artist name, Jasimi. “I’m very excited about it. That’s where my heart is,” she says. “I’d love to start performing and continuing to write songs – and then also I want to do some movies. It’s been a while since I’ve done a movie. That would be really fun.”
Until then, she’s hopeful that Gen V will continue to run for several more seasons. “They’ve set up the universe so beautifully, it’s so expansive already. I’m a grown-up, so eventually I would like to leave college. But if we do leave college, there’s a lush landscape for us already set.”
Whatever the future holds for Sinclair, she doesn’t see herself becoming an online content creator or social media influencer any time soon.
“I’m much too shy and I’m not good at my phone. I don’t want anybody to know anything about my life ever,” she laughs. “I would be the worst influencer in the world. Love them. I have my influencers that I love, but I watch them [as] a fly on the wall. For me, I would not be good at it. That’s my honest answer.”
Like Gen V? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
The Umbrella Academy: This series follows a dysfunctional family of superpowered siblings as they try to prevent the apocalypse.
Misfits: A gritty, irreverent series that focuses on a group of young offenders who gain superpowers after a freak storm.
Invincible: An animated series about a teenager discovering his powers, with brutal violence, complex characters and mature themes.
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tagged in: Gen V, Jaz Sinclair, Prime Video, The Boys