“The Fosters” returns for
Season 4 on Monday night with a powerful and unexpectedly timely premiere.
Taped months before the horrific
mass shooting in Orlando, the episode, titled “Potential Energy,”
centers on a campus lockdown at Anchor Beach after Nick (Louis Hunter) brings a
gun to school.
Prior to the premiere, Freeform
will air a PSA in which “Fosters” stars Cierra Ramirez (who plays
Nick’s girlfriend and the family’s younger daughter, Mariana) and Sherri Saum
(who plays Lena, the kids’ mom and Anchor Beach vice principal)
“speaks to the Orlando tragedy,” a rep for the network told
AccessHollywood.com.
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Cierra, Sherri, and castmates Maia
Mitchell, David Lambert and Hayden Byerly all spoke to AccessHollywood.com
during a set visit on June 8, and touched upon their experience working on the
episode and how watching the story unfold affected them.
“It’s the most intense
episode I think we’ve ever done,” Cierra said of the two-parter, which picks
up directly where Season 3 left off – with Nick in turmoil after spotting
Mariana and her ex, Matt (Jordan Rodrigues) kissing.
WATCH: Sherri Saum On Her Emotional Reaction to ‘The Fosters’ Intense Season 4 Premiere
“I think people are going to
be kind of uncomfortable,” Sherri told Access during the June 8 set visit,
of how she thinks viewers may respond to the serious subject matter and how
it’s presented.
For the actress and real-life mom
to 2-year-old twins, the topic left a lasting impression.
“It’s just completely
relevant with what’s happening in the world, unfortunately, today,” she
said.
Adding, “I’m on the show, and
I knew what happened before we filmed it, and I still, you know, get chills
when I see the promo. It’s intense.”
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Hayden, who plays youngest Foster
child Jude, told Access that although “every season leaves on quite a
cliffhanger,” Season 4 enters uncharted territory for “The
Fosters.”
“I don’t think the show has
ever felt genuinely scary or spooky or ominous,” he said.
“It’s kind of [an] intense
and very suspenseful episode, because the entire time it builds around not
knowing where Nick is – not knowing what his intentions are, who he’s going to
hurt,” Hayden explained. “And then you are taken through the
different classrooms and moments that you share within each different character
and what’s going on with them throughout the lockdown.”
As for David and Maia’s
characters, adopted siblings Brandon and Callie Foster, they’re forced to put
their personal drama aside for the safety of others.
“Brandon and Callie get
paired up [during the lockdown], and I think for the first time in a while you
get to see them working together, putting aside all the stuff and just kind of
making sure everyone’s good and safe and they’re kind of a team in those
moments,” David told Access.
Fans of the show are likely
anxious to see how the revelation of Brandon and Callie’s past romantic
involvement – which their mothers found out about at the end of Season 3 – will
play out.
Maia said that while the on-campus
threat makes the drama surrounding Brandon and Callie’s personal relationship
“completely peripheral,” she did hint that the situation is far from
being resolved.
“Everything else sort of
becomes insignificant when the safety of the people you love is compromised,”
she explained of the lockdown aftermath.
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However, she added that it’s
“still something that they’re going to have to deal with, and you’ll see
it more being dealt with in future episodes after that, and for a while.”
Sherri told Access that the
Callie/Brandon storyline puts her and her on-screen wife, Stef (Teri Polo) in
an understandably difficult position, but that she thinks the couple is already
on the same page.
“I think it’s just going to
take a lot of time, because it’s just such a unique situation to have – you
know, [they’re] brother and sister, but obviously they’re not biologically
brother and sister so there’s all kinds of, you know… gray areas,” she
said of Brandon and Callie. “But we, first and foremost, we’re a family
and our kids are brothers and sisters and that is how we’re going to proceed.
So, we’ll do whatever we have to do to make sure they keep their doors closed
and in their own rooms, because we’re a family first.”
“The Fosters” Season 4
premieres Monday at 8 PM ET/PT on Freeform.
— Erin Biglow
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