‘Orphan Black: Echoes’: Rya Kihlstedt Says ‘All the Cracks’ Are Starting to Show in Kira & Eleanor’s Marriage

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Orphan Black: Echoes Season 1 Episode 6 “Unless You Trusted Someone.”]

Kira’s (Keeley Hawes) love story gets even more complicated in the latest episode of Orphan Black: Echoes.

After losing her wife, Eleanor (Krysten Ritter, then Rya Kihlstedt) to Alzheimer’s, Kira printed out a new version, Lucy (Ritter), younger and with no memories of their life together. Lucy escaped. Then, a month later, Kira printed out a new Eleanor (Kihlstedt), from a more recent scan, but two years away from developing Alzheimer’s. And now, in the present day, that Eleanor is home and with no idea that she’s a printout. Kira’s lying to her, and Eleanor has no idea what’s going on with her.

But, as it’s revealed after an awkward dinner with their son Lucas (Jaeden Noel) and his girlfriend, Eleanor has been having an affair—it’s just sex, she says. Kira says okay and she wants her to be happy. But that’s just a sign that something’s going on with her, and Kira continues to keep quiet. Eleanor knows they’re not okay and haven’t been in a while, and she notes that Kira looks at her like she thinks she’s going to leave her. What changed? Kira did.

Eleanor is completely in the dark, Kihlstedt tells TV Insider. “We talked with Anna [Fishko, creator] and each other about this a lot because, to me, it felt so layered when you’re kind of breaking it down. You have just the complications and history of marriage, of being with somebody, of being with somebody that long, of when does a marriage get old? How do you fight against that and build [from it]?”

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In some ways, it’s a “new marriage” for Kira and Eleanor, Kihlstedt continues. “This is a new person who—you don’t know how much history is just in your cells. How much do you know? How are you just going on? I don’t think that the new printed-out Eleanor had any idea that this was what was happening. She doesn’t have the history, she doesn’t have the knowledge, and suddenly, there’s a new marriage, if you will, or a new relationship that’s built on and based on a lie.”

Furthermore, Eleanor must adjust to this new marriage without even realizing that’s what she has to do since she doesn’t know Kira’s reacting to her as a different version of her, right? “Exactly,” Kihlstedt agrees. “And suddenly all the cracks start to show. I mean, I believe in general in life that the place where a relationship or marriage begins is the foundation on which it grows, right? If a marriage or relationship begins from any place of dishonesty, that is going to sit in what you build no matter what, and I think this is that.”

Orphan Black: Echoes, Sundays, 10/9c, AMC