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Cape Town – Calling all comic fans and pretty much anyone who has a sense of humour… The Tick is back and it’s bigger, bluer and better than ever!
For those of you who may not know about it, The Tick is a comic about an accountant named Arthur (played by Griffin Newman) who realises his city is owned by a super villain. As he struggles to uncover this conspiracy, he falls in league with a strange blue superhero.
In a telephonic interview with actress Valorie Curry, I find out what it’s like to play the sister of a seemingly shy guy who suffers from anxiety but who also ultimately ends up working with a superhero.
Meet Dot Everest
In The Tick, Curry takes on the role of Dot Everest, a paramedic/nurse and Arthur’s sister. You may know the actress from the TV series The Following which has a storyline a lot darker than this, but the vast difference in genres is exactly what attracted Curry to the role in the first place.
“Part of what was attractive to me about playing Dot was honestly just the change of pace for me because I’ve spent most of my career playing pretty dark intense characters and I love that, but I wanted to try and flex a different muscle.”
Admiration for Ben Edlund
Another reason Curry joined the show was her complete admiration for creator Ben Edlund and attributes the comic mastermind for having “such a unique mind and such a unique sense of humour and such a love for all of these characters.”
While the 31-year-old was only too excited to join Edmund’s project, she had hardly heard of The Tick comics before reading the script.
Talking about the comic, she remembers it being a “Saturday morning cartoon growing up” and admits she hadn’t watched the short-lived live action series which aired on Fox back in 2001.
But Curry doesn’t see that as a bad thing. “I was really coming into it fresh which I think was nice actually because it is so different this time,” says Curry, adding that while her character did exist in all the comic books and previous TV versions, Dot is new and a lot more complex in this version.
Bonding with her TV brother
When we meet Dot in the series we immediately see that all she wants to do is protect her brother but as the series progresses we will also see that not only is she “very capable, a realist, a fighter and a survivor but she’s also just got a huge heart.”
On her relationship with her TV brother, Curry says it emerged “really organically” and called him a great friend. “We’ve gotten along so well from the very beginning to the point that it was really easy to establish that kind of bond.”
Being a superhero
Curry quite obviously loves being a part of The Tick and loves the comic but her favourite comic superhero is Wonder Woman, and for all the right reasons. “I think what was so wonderful about the embodiment of the character, especially as the first female superhero with her own film of this stature, is that she was allowed to be many things that have been considered contradictory.”
And while many of Wonder Woman’s characteristics may seem pretty normal, Curry thinks being allowed to be all of them at once is definitely a superpower.
“She’s a fighter but she’s deeply compassionate and enthusiastic about life and babies and ice-cream and she’s sexual without being objectified. I don’t think I have ever seen a female character that’s allowed be all of those things at once.”
After reading that, you’d think Curry would want a superpower pretty similar but she’d much rather have the power to access 100% of her brain’s abilities.
“Have you ever seen the movie, Limitless with Bradley Cooper? I want what he has but without the drugs! I want to be able to look through a book for five minutes and just retain all the information in it.”
Watch the trailer for The Tick here:
The Tick will be available on Amazon Prime Video on 25 August. Customers who are not already Amazon Prime Video members can sign up for a free 7-day trial at PrimeVideo.com.
