The Real-Life Cloning Science Behind TV's Orphan Black

​Fresh off of ten wins at this year's Canadian Screen Awards, Orphan Black is heading into its third season next month. The show's unique take on human cloning is both smart and grounded—and that's thanks to its science consultant, Cosima Herter. Motherboard spoke to her in Toronto.

How were you asked to consult on Orphan Black?

I've known Graeme [Manson, series co-creator] for many, many years—for almost 20 years.

When I was working on my master's thesis, I was writing a lot about Darwin and different concepts of evolution and how we understood that throughout history. Throughout the years, Graeme and I would have conversations, like "what are you working on?" Graeme would say, "I'm working on this project. I have this idea about clones and you know, what would happen if they were let loose in the world, what kind of consequences would this have." I'd be like, "Oh, I'm also working on these kinds of ideas."

It just became a collaborative process that just organically evolved. I became a resource for him to draw on as he was developing this project.

Cloning isn't new science, but what are the things about cloning most people still don't understand?

People have a very interesting idea that cloning equals Xerox copies of something. There are different kinds of cloning. There's reproductive cloning. There's therapeutic cloning.

The kind of technology we make reference to in Orphan Black is somatic cell nuclear transfer. Dolly the Sheep, for example. You're taking one organism, putting its nucleus in another cell and then allowing it to generate to reproduce the animal.

I think one of the things that people feel disturbed about, because it has moral and ethical implications, is that this will eradicate the need for normal—whatever normal is—sexual reproduction. If we're cloning humans: "Oh my God…we're trying to reproduce things in our image! We're trying to control all kinds of reproductive and evolutionary processes! We don't have the right to do these things!" But when you're having children, you're kind of doing the same thing! You're kind of creating copies of yourself.

People also have an idea when we talk about clones, it's The Boys from Brazil [Ira Levin's historical fiction]—that you're going to create these exact replicas that will grow up to be Hitler. I'm not a determinist. I don't think we will be determined wholly by our social fabric or by our genes. They work in harmony with each other.

We have an idea if you clone [an organism], with these specific genes, you're going to have a replica. Well, you also have an organism that grows up in a particular kind of environment. There's this whole field of epigenetics now: How does your social, economic, political, family environment and how do the foods you eat and chemicals you take into your body actually allow certain genes to express themselves or not express themselves.

What is your role in the writer's room?

Basically, I overload them with as much material as I can, and then I let them sift through it.

The writers are remarkably smart. They'll go off and do some research. "Well, we've thought about this, what does it mean if we do this? Is this true science or are we fictionalising it? How can we ground it in reality of the world?"

One of the questions we play off of a lot is: What does it mean to have agency? What does it mean to be an individual? What does it mean to determine one's own fate? Is there such a thing?

It's amazing. Academics don't get to collaborate with people very often. [laughs] I get to talk about the things I love and be challenged by it. How do you get a really complicated idea into four seconds of dialogue between three people? So much has to be sacrificed. That information then has to be presented in different kinds of ways. Visually in the background. The movements of a particular person. It's not a documentary! That's a very interesting process as well.

So with the writers, it's almost like an unleashed lecture.

Yes! That's what it's like. It's like sitting in a graduate seminar with the most keen, interested and interesting people. Talking about ideas and being hammered with questions for days!

What do you like about Orphan Black and its treatment of science?

You kind of can't see what's coming in Orphan Black. Well, that mirrors evolutionary processes in general. Evolution is not superintendent. Organisms adapt and they evolve, relative to the contingent events in their environment. So, too, do all these characters in Orphan Black. The shit that you just can't see coming! That radically changes everything.

But in the background, there are these bigger questions like agency, the unpredictability of life.

Are there aspects to evolutionary biology and other sciences that you can't fictionalise?

The kind of thing we don't do and can't do is make definitive claims. We ask, "What if?" What does it mean to own your own body? Specifically, women and other kinds of marginalized bodies. We're not trying to throw anything in your face and say "Here's the way it is." We're saying, here's one thing, one way to look at it. And you might want to think about the fact that bodies have been owned in many different ways throughout history for many different reasons and often for other people's utility.

Orphan Black applies complex situations to complex characters. You have characters who are gay and lesbian and still trying to figure their out identities. In this regard, how can entertainment help the cause of science?

First of all, these characters—Tatiana [Maslany] is brilliant. I can't do her justice. She's talented and a lovely human being. And all of these different characters are individuals. So when we talk about things like a character's sexuality, you'll notice we don't claim that it's genetically determined or that it's a choice—because we don't know. People are complicated. Choices are complicated. We're not trying to say you are X or Y or Z. You are constrained by your environment and genetics as much as you are liberated by them.

We don't have a gay character because we're trying to appeal to an audience, we have a character that's gay because people are gay! It's unpredictable. And fascinating! We are an amazing species. We want amazing characters because human beings are fascinating.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Orphan Black returns April 18th 9e/10p on Space. ​Catch up now.