Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer for Netflix
If you watched the first season of Hemlock Grove, chances are you were either intrigued by Shelley or perhaps slightly annoyed by her. Opinions can go either way, depending on how much you enjoy a good mystery and how much you wished they would have just explained what the heck she was.
Hemlock Grove recap: Season 1 is worth the watch >>
As the sister of the mysterious Roman, Shelley was quite the enigma herself. Though she was mute, she appeared to be intelligent beyond her years. Though she was a formidable size, she was as gentle a kitten and meekly followed her mother's wishes. She was disfigured, but her skin had a luminescent quality that literally made her glow from within.
When last we saw Shelley at the end of Season 1, she had been gravely wounded and was seen running off into the woods. Her fate was left up to speculation, though it was an easy guess to assume that she would return.
And return she has, even if she doesn't look quite the same. Netflix has released a new photo from Season 2 featuring Madeleine Martin in the role of Shelley. Nicole Boivin played Shelley in the first season.
Catch up on Hemlock Grove with our Season 1 primer >>
In addition to a new Shelley, Hemlock Grove also has a new executive producer/showrunner, Charles "Chic" Eglee.
Eglee spoke to Huffington Post Canada about the decision to cast a new actress in the role. "The thing is, last year, Shelley as a character was kind of an amalgamation of various production strategies," Eglee explained. "Some of it was a stand-in, and some of it was a 7-foot double; there was the voiceover narration, and it was a little bit ad hoc in the sense that the execution of that Shelley character on a week-to-week basis was on the fly in terms of the effects, how they were actually filming, how they were creating the character."
One way to simplify the process was to find one actress to replace all of the various people who filled the role in Season 1. "It seems to me that this is such an important character, and so iconic and central in so many ways to the chemistry of the show. So we set out looking to go and get really the best actress we could find," Eglee said.
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Be sure to check out Hemlock Grove Season 2 when it is released on Netflix on Friday, July 11.