SPOILER ALERT: The following interview contains spoilers from the Creature Commandos season finale. We suggest reading it only after you’ve watched the episode.
 

If Creature Commandos has taught us anything, it is that appearances aren’t everything. Since the premiere, each episode of the show has featured explorations into the backstories of the members of Amanda Waller’s Task Force M. The more we’ve gotten to know each of them, the less monstrous they’ve started to feel. That said, the finale of the show revealed the terrible truth that Circe was right about the true nature of Princess Ilana, voiced by Maria Bakalova. In a last-ditch effort to save the world from the princess’s machinations, Task Force M sent Nina Mazursky to ambush Princess Ilana while she was swimming. But before Nina could strike, the princess spotted her. To our horror, we watched Princess Ilana grab the knife from Nina’s hand, killing her would-be assassin.

We sat down to discuss this bombshell ending of the show with Bakalova, discussing her relationship with the character, what the word “monster” means to her, and what James Gunn is like over Zoom.

Creature Commandos is a show that's about the strengths and tragedies of being a monster. Were monsters something that you had a long time love for before Creature Commandos? Or did Creature Commandos give you a greater appreciation for them?

That depends on what kind of meaning you put behind monsters, because now having the context of who these characters were before they were so-called “monsters,” you understand that they're not monstrous. Yet you have somebody like Princess Ilana, who has probably the most monstrous behavior of them all, and she's a human. We as human beings can be doing monstrous acts of violence and taking advantage of people and manipulating people and wanting to control and have power over countries. So, it’s a very interesting question—who is actually the monster? And can you be born as a monster? Because Nina, for example, is considered a monster just because she is born different. Is that supposed to make you a monster? I don't think so.

Maybe I do have a love for monsters. I do want to know how people turn into monsters, how monsters are created, and what is the origin story of a villain.

Some of the characters you’ve played in the past, like in Bodies, Bodies, Bodies and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, are outsiders with a good heart, but in Creature Commandos, you're playing this beautiful princess with a very sinister motivation. And as you said, she's a monster in her own right. What was it like for you as an actor to make that switch?

It's the best. I think that's pretty universal for most actors. We all want that thing called longevity—to be able to do things for the longest period of time. And the only way to do that, in my point of view, is to provoke yourself and to step out of your comfort zone and to do different things as many times as possible. So, I'm really happy to be able to portray somebody that is not the outsider, who is actually the opposite of the outsider. She's leading a country and not with a kind heart. She's a badass, but she's also a pretty bad person. She wasn't bad before, maybe something made her become bad as a protective mechanism, of coping with tragedy that happened to her. Or maybe not!

I don't believe that people are born evil. People develop evil skills throughout their lives, depending on who they surround themselves with or who their mentors are like. We see Princess Ilana with Clayface, so maybe he's some sort of an influence on her, or maybe she's influencing him. Who knows? But I was really happy to be able to play the bad guy, someone who has control over a country and wants to have even more control. It's a scary place to be at.

We don’t see the full extent of how truly evil Princess Ilana is until the finale, when she kills Nina. How did it make you feel the first time you read the script and saw that your character kills the sweetest person in the whole series?

It made me feel sad for my character. But also, at the end of the day, as much as I try to be objective and not biased, I am a little bit biased because I do want to find some excuses for her doing that. And we had a moment where Nina was about to kill her. So of course, you're going to try to protect yourself. Maybe not by killing them, but by taking the weapon out of them. In her case, she decided to protect herself by just turning the knife in the opposite direction.

It's not fair for Nina to even be put in that situation. Why the hell is she the one who is supposed to be killing Ilana when we all, at this point, know her backstory? We know that she's been treated like a freak just because she looks different her whole life. And now, even though she had finally found some friends—she found G.I. Robot, they killed Nazis together. She found the Bride, they're doing fun things together. She's protecting her. And now, after all of this, where she’s finally feeling something better, Nina's the one who has to do the dirty work. It's actually not fair. It's not fair on the Bride’s side when you think about it.

As an actor, how do you go about adapting to a voice role where the audience can’t see you? Did James Gunn give you any specific direction that really stuck with you?

It's been interesting. It's been interesting to do it virtually because I got to play Cosmo the Space Dog in Guardians of the Galaxy, but I was on set. With Creature Commandos, we were doing this over Zoom at an ADR studio. So basically, you just trust the direction of the people behind the screen. And James is always so clear with his directions. He's always doing such a great work at the script level. You know pretty much which way to take on the material, and how much you can push. But of course, he also has some very recognizable, signature humor. And I think that's probably what has been the best direction for me. To maybe not always take everything seriously, even though Princess Ilana is taking herself very seriously.

At the end of the day, we want the show to feel dark, but also not heavy. And using humor in a soft way, I think, has been important to building a character like Ilana.
 

The debut season of Creature Commandos is now streaming in full on Max.