Before Naomi Scott was Jasmine in Aladdin and Kimberly in Power Rangers, she was part of the ensemble of a red hot 2011 Fox series - Terra Nova. Scott played Maddy Shannon, a member of a family trying to escape the severely polluted Earth of the mid-22nd century. In order to do so, the Shannons join the Tenth Pilgrimage, a group of settlers making the move to Terra Nova, a colony located 85 million years in the planet’s past.
While Scott did have some screen experience at that point courtesy of Disney’s Life Bites and Lemonade Mouth, Terra Nova marked a significant title to add to her resume so early on. Steven Spielberg was a producer on the massive production that apparently came with a $10 million pilot episode tab and then a $4 million per-episode price tag after. Even though Terra Nova Season 1 posted solid ratings, Fox wound up cancelling the show. Why? It reportedly had a lot to do with the heavy costs and production challenges. (Perhaps that wouldn’t have been seen as much of an issue if the show debuted just a few years later.)
During a recent episode of Collider Ladies Night, we took a moment to examine Terra Nova’s cancellation from Scott’s perspective. Scott was still in her teens at the time and wasn’t privy to every layer of the production, but she painted this picture of the situation to start:
“Number one, when you’re a youngster on a show like that, [with] a lot of stuff, you don’t necessarily understand all the politics that are going on. I don’t remember necessarily being as aware of what was going down. I do remember there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen on a show like that. We had such a blast, oh my gosh. But again, it was a very expensive show as well.”
While one might expect a lot of cooks in the kitchen on a network production that comes at such a high cost, it does seem like Terra Nova might have suffered from having a multitude of creative voices that weren’t exactly in line with the show’s original intentions. Here’s how Scott described it:
“You know when something starts out as one thing? I remember there were a lot of political undertones to the original pilot and the meaning, and I think what happens is sometimes that can get diluted into making some type of - not soapy, but it becomes whatever people feel like it needs to be. But sometimes you can dilute something, you lose the uniqueness or the thingy-ness of it and then it ends up not being really for anyone, or you don’t know where to place it.”
While Scott did take a moment to stress her positive experience working on the series, she did note that committing to a long-running show that filmed in Australia wasn’t exactly an ideal scenario for her:
“I just remember having such a blast. And then, you know, it was over. However, I’ll be really honest with you; didn’t really want to live in Australia. I loved Australia. Australia’s stunning, but there’s a difference between working there and then being like, ‘You’re there for eight years on a show that runs for eight years.’ And, you know, remember, these contracts, they were like, ‘Let me sign you up for the next decade.’ Back in the day, those pilots - I say back in the day; it wasn’t like it had been 20 years ago, but it has changed a lot, right? So I was kind of like, this might be - for me personally as incredible as the experience was - a bit of a blessing in disguise, maybe?”
That doesn’t mean Scott was free and clear of disappointment after the show was cancelled. But fortunately, even at such a young age, Scott did have a very positive and effective way to process such bumps in the road:
“That’s not to say, again, that I didn’t love it and I wasn’t disappointed obviously that it didn’t do what it was meant to do, but I would definitely always see things in the sense of, ‘Okay, it’s not meant to be. It’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be.’ And by the way, sometimes you have to say that to yourself when you’re like, ‘But I really wanted that job! But I really felt like that was the one!’ Oh gosh, I’ve had those moments where I felt like, a job, I’m like, ‘This is it.’ And then it’s not, you know? And you’re just like, ‘But I thought? No, but that was … but all the signs were pointing to it?’ You know? So yeah, weirdly enough, I think I was okay. I think I was like, ‘You know what? There’ll be something else.’ I was strangely okay about it.”
Even though Terra Nova turned out to be a short-lived gig, the experience of committing to a series made a huge impression on Scott and impacted how she approached her work moving forward. Here’s how she put it:
“The idea of being like, ‘You have to do this and then you have to do it for ten years,’ that made me feel a little bit trapped. I didn’t like that idea. There was so much I wanted to explore and do that actually after that experience, I said to my team, I was like, ‘I don’t want to just sign up to something for seven years. I don’t really want to do that. Unless it really, really, really makes sense.’”
Want to hear more from Scott? You’ve come to the right place! Catch our hourlong chat with the Aladdin and Charlie’s Angels star in honor of the release of her new audio/podcast series, Soft Voice, in the video below: