Daphne Zuniga joined 'One Tree Hill' in January 2008.
A UCLA theater major, Zuniga has had a successful career as an actress who's played an highly diverse range of film, television, and stage roles. Speaking with Zuniga is both insightful and fun, as she shares her interesting perspectives on her acting experiences, what her dream role would be, the fun she's having play the no-nonsense Victoria Davis on One Tree Hill, and much more!
Daphne-That she's so strong and that she was mean. That's what appealed to me. I don't often get offered those types of characters and it's not a common trait to enjoy playing, but it's what I love about acting is that you can take on something that you don't want to be in your normal life and sort of get it out of your system and explore it. And from the beginning, Mark[Schwahn] told me he wanted Victoria to be the villain, like really no good-heartiness about her. The fact that she was strong and ran a fashion company, I knew that she would be looking sharp...I knew that she would be very direct and I like the idea of playing a woman like that.
Victoria truly has some of the most clever and out of the ordinary lines . Do you have fun with what they give her to say?
Daphne-I feel like that's part of the reason that I really love those lines, I feel like I took them so well that they gave me even better and better lines for the character. They're brutal lines but there's always a sense of humor. She knows how to insult somebody in just the best way. I love reading the script and seeing that I get the juiciest lines. (laughs)I think they know that I like that so I just go for it even more. They'll say let's watch her say this, so I just love it.
Victoria has now gone through an arc with her daughter Brooke, she is much softer yet still tough at times. What's it like going back and forth with her?
Daphne-It's great that there was the arc and this is how I see it; she got closer with her daughter because that couldn't have been sustained. We couldn't have kept it going much longer with me being that mean to my own daughter because as they saw the story, you know Brooke got rid of me, fired me and I just never went away. But I like that we came to terms. I relate to her in the way that I always wanted to before I just never said it and yet I get the great lines with the other characters. I tell the other characters where to go when they're in my face but with Brooke I have a much more balanced story
You work the most with Sophia Bush, you two have a great on-screen connection, how has that dynamic been like?
Daphne- We really have fun. We really like each other. We spend time on and off days together. We'll exercise or go to the beach. We just really were intrigued from the beginning I think with each other. So that was nice. If I had felt none of that or wasn't really interested in her as a person or she me it would be hard to find that like mother daughter really strong bond. We're just so involved with each other. I mean we're working together, 'you're my mother, I need you to be that, to no get away from me I don't wanna be your mom , yes I do, I love you, we're running this business, I need you. You know this as a whole is very complex and so I just really enjoy playing it and I feel like because Sophia and I get along really well we can do it easily.
And now your character gets to connect with Julian, Austin Nichols's character. One scene that stood out was when he threatened to exile Victoria from Brooke's life if she wouldn't change, he seemed to be the first person to ever truly scare Victoria or stand-up to her.
You know playing Victoria's a fine line because of some of her lines and some of her stories are a little over the top that can be perceived as comedic, yet we're in a drama, so I wanna play real. Sometimes I have to wheel myself back in and say play a truthful moment here. I remember when Austin and I had that scene I just allowed myself to really be strong with him, like it's real in the moment if you can feel it, if you're buzzing and tingling and you're really in there, you can feel it as an actor. And since I didn't know him as a person there was nothing. Like sometimes with Sophia when I would have to be really mean with her it's hard because I knew her and I liked her so much. And you know my job was to make her cry and to insult her, and then she'd cry. It was really hard afterwards. We'd both just sort of have to like readjust, like this is what acting is. It's not real. But on the other hand you do wanna draw in real emotion. You're not faking it, you're using real emotion. You're just putting it in places that you don't really feel it. So with Austin I like that he came up against me so strong. I really liked it.
What's a moment that stands out to you from the time you began playing Victoria?
Daphne- I feel like the scene when I do make up to her and I'm about to leave and I tell her I just never knew how to love you but I always wanted to. Mark Schwahn was directing that and he wrote it and he created Victoria so it was very much I wanted to get it right for him. It's great when he directs cause he knows the material inside and out and he knows nuances and so when that happens you as an actor you sort of let your guard down. You just open yourself up and say the lines and let them affect you and that's what happened there and that was just satisfying as an actor, that process. And because he was there, someone would say cut and I'll look to him and say well what do you think? It felt real to me. I remember moments like that where the director will give the times to the actors to really create a moment, cause so much of television is just fast. So I liked that moment as an actor, that scene.
I also liked completely different last year when I'm dancing around in the club ,when I'm having fun and making people laugh, you know that's how a goofball she is. I like when Sophia says to me 'what are you trying to tell me you're a prostitute'! I like that.
What's next for Victoria? Will she be getting her 'lover', as she calls them?
Daphne-Well yeah things are definitely moving in that direction let me just tell you without giving much too away. Victoria is a woman who gets what she wants.(Laughs) And I'm having a lot of fun with it. I feel like the writers on this show have really given Victoria such a wonderful chance to grow and change and flower. When I look back on the first scene that I shot when she was in the limo and ripping this guy and kicking him out of the limo, so serious and so angry no smiles, to now I just feel like there's such a great evolution to Victoria. And it's so fun to play. So I'm having a lot of fun with this part of it, too.
Melrose Place was a very successful show that you had a big role in, and it was a similar genre to One Tree Hill now, what's it like for you being on two young adult drama's of two different generations?
Daphne-You know it's great for me when people come to recognize me, the mothers who are my age, they're fans cause they knew me from Melrose, and their daughters who are sitting there with them love One Tree Hill and Victoria. So it's fantastic to have fans of both generations. Like the kids don't have a clue about Melrose Place, they only know the new one. I mean that will certainly remind you how old you are when you're in a room full of teenagers and they're like what? Who is that?(Laughs)
For all the Melrose Place fans, where is Jo Reynolds today?
Daphne-Well I came back to the new Melrose place, I did 
What do you think would happen if Victoria Davis was dropped into Melrose Place?
Daphne-Well let's see, let's think about it because Victoria really spent time in New York and she's on the Upper East Side. She shops on Madison Avenue, has a driver. She has a very upper-class, high end life. Victoria would look at Melrose Place and just say this is the most pathetic collection of human beings I've ever seen.(Laughs) Like she truly would walk in and she wouldn't have the time off day. She'd be on her blackberry and she'd either buy the building or knock it down. I mean that's what she thinks. These are pathetic examples of human beings. (laughs) They're a waste of everybody's time. That's what she would say, she would never give it another thought. She wouldn't even remember it later. That's how above everything she believes she is.
With all the wide variety of roles you've done, which role do you think you learned the most from as an actress?
Daphne-Well because of my age when I was doing Melrose Place and also I'd never done television before Melrose Place, so I went from doing movies to bam! Full on series, working every week year round. We did a lot of shows on that show. We did more shows than any other show, so we were seriously working, working, working, which I love, I love working. So I have to say about television and about the process of it, I learned everything on there. I mean really so much. And because it became such a popular show I learned more about the business and appearances and fame on that show as well.
And then this one , it's not that I have much to learn it's just I can have a little more fun. I kind of know how things work by now. So it's not that I'm learning, it's just that I still find I guess what I'm only really learning is parts of me that I can really bring to Victoria every week. I need to surprise myself. I need to surprise the audience. I can't become predictable to myself or it gets boring. So it's a different kind of learning curve.
What's a role you would like to explore that you haven't already?
Daphne- I haven't done a period piece, I've done it in TV movies briefly but I'd like to do a period piece and I also want to do comedy. This is why I love bringing it to Victoria. I mean even though she's like the meanest person around, I get to bring great comedy to it which I love and adore. I'd like to play someone who's more care-free and not thinking so much how to be or caring what other people think. That kind of character. And I think in a comedy, I'd get to do that.
Some of your One Tree Hill co-stars have directed episodes, would you ever want to do go in that direction?
Daphne-I've thought about. It's funny because I would think just knowing me that I would want to because I have a lot of ideas. Definitely ideas about how scenes go and what would be funny, what is more truthful. But for some reason I have not even been inspired to even think about it or look toward directing. I feel more like producing and the idea of putting something together and bringing the elements together, like finding a script then working on it with the writers then finding the actors and working on getting the money, to me for some reason that's more attractive than directing. I've worked with Joy[Galeotti], she's a great director. And Paul[Johannson] has directed, I worked with him. I wasn't in Sophia's episode. It was good but she didn't direct me. Next time!
What do you think would be doing if you weren't acting?
Daphne- Nothing. Now that I've done acting for quarter of a century, I have to get that out of my system and it's not out yet. I've never thought of doing anything else. I truly was doing this before I was even in my first acting class. I was putting up scenes in the living room so I know that I was just born to do this. Maybe now it would definitely be something creative. Maybe writing, cause I enjoy writing sometimes. I've written this screenplay and written a couple articles. Maybe I would do a book. I love children so maybe working with kids even. I toured and went to an orphanage in Cambodia last year and just fell in love with these kids. And I love the spirit of children so much. It's so poignant to me and it's so sad to me that adults, we lose so much of our childhood you know when we grow up and children are fearless and full of love and truth and passion and I love that. So maybe I'd be doing children's theater, but that's still acting so..(laughs)
It's very known how passionate you are about the environment. You were recently appointed by the Los Angeles Mayor to the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation.
Daphne-Yes I was! We're just in the formation period of this board. I got a call from the mayor's office and they asked me and I was really surprised. They said they really liked the work that I'd done with these inner city lower income communities and helping with the environment there. And so they have this wonderful plan, if you go to lariver.org. There's this incredible plan to revitalize the LA river which right now is paved over in cement. They have these engineers and these architects to figure out ways that we can make a beautiful landscape river, improve the neighborhoods, put parks in for the people that live there, bike paths, and soccer fields, and make a place in LA that even people that don't live there will wanna come, make it a destination. We're gonna have a climate center so that people can come and learn about the environment and the climate. There are amazing birds there..about a 100 different types of birds. And so it's an incredibly exciting thing to be doing, though it's very involved, it's time consuming but I love it. I mean you see a plan you see a vision, you can't not say yeah. count me in. I wanna be a part of it. The mayor really wants to create a model there so other cities around the country can follow and we by the way are using this model and these plans that are based on success of other cities who have done it. A lot can happen around the river in a city.
It seems like a great and important project. Great of you to take your time for that.
Daphne-What we do now has a direct affect on the quality of the life of 
I feel like a lot of people in our world today are so separate ,like you mentioned twitter, people can connect on twitter. But I also hope that people are really connected in the flesh with other people in their lives and their friends and their community because it's the feeling and the emotion that you get by literally contacting another human being that gives you physical, emotional, and brain chemical energy power of hope and joy and possibility. That's a long long way of saying I love being a part of something bigger than me that has a real beautiful outcome. And I go off on it because I want everyone to have something in their lives, to be lit up on the inside about their own lives with what they're doing in it.
If you could go back in time and spend a day in the life of anyone from history, who would it be and why?
Daphne-Buddha. Buddha sat under a tree for 40 days and he became weakened, and I've had states of grace when I do long term meditation. But to have that for a day, I just wanna feel if he felt anything different and how he maintained it because I have felt it and then it kind of goes away and then comes back and goes away. And I just want to know just once and for all if Buddha experienced a weakening or nirvana and what that felt like. I would love to know.
Is there a final message you would like to say to your fans?
Daphne-I want other people to get involved in their own way somehow. In their own world in a bigger way, in their community, whether it's volunteering or whatever. I genuinely believe in that and we need that.
For much more on Daphne Zuniga's work with the environment, the Los Angeles river project, and to read articles she has written for O Magazine, visit her official website.
SOURCE : examiner.com
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