TV.com June 3rd 2010
While she’s probably best known as the original 90210’s Brenda Walsh, Shannen Doherty is no stranger to genre television. She played Prue on Charmed and hosted the pre-Syfy Sci-Fi Channel’s horror reality show Scare Tactics. Now she takes on two roles—one sweet, one deadly—in FEARnet’s animated web series Mari-Kari.

TV.com: What brings you back to the horror genre? Shannen Doherty: They came to me with the show and I read it, and I thought it was really funny, really well written. I thought it would be a blast to play two different characters and make up two different voices for them. And it’s voiceover work, and I haven’t done voiceover work since I was a kid. And it’s on the web. The whole package was super appealing to me.

How did you come up with the different voices for Mari and Kari? I came up with them in the room. I didn’t really sit around my house for weeks prior, trying to come up with the voice, because I didn’t want anything to be 100 percent stuck in my head, because if I get there and the director wants something different, I don’t want to be stuck in one place. So I kind of just went in there with an open mind, and they were really open. [Mari] is bubbly, and she’s constantly positive and thinks everyone is good, and out came Mari’s voice. Kari is my voice, but definitely deeper and more monotone and flat.

You mentioned that you hadn’t done voiceover work in a long time. How is it different from onscreen work? It’s different because you can roll in there in sweats, looking like crap, and you don’t have to sit in hair and makeup for an hour to an hour and a half. And that’s a joy. It was truly one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever had in 29 years of acting. And fun, on top of it all.

You also said that you like that Mari-Kari is on the web. Why does that appeal to you? The web is just breaking new ground. You get more content on the web and things that wouldn’t necessarily make it on network TV. The web is giving people access to sort of decide what they want to watch. And that to me—obviously, it’s a new medium for me. So it’s one that I was anxious to explore.

Having watched the first two episodes, I was surprised by how gory and dark the show is—despite being fun. What was your first reaction to it? Yeah, it’s pretty dark. But it’s on FEARnet. If you’re on FEARnet, I’m assuming that you know that you’re going to get scary and probably dark. So it’s right where it should be. And yeah, it’s really gory. I don’t really know if we’re sending out a message. I don’t think any of us thought about that. I just think we thought it was kind of funny and dark and twisted.

What can we expect from upcoming episodes? Will there be any ongoing storylines or is it all pretty self-contained? I think the storyline is throughout them all, of Mari just being Mari and being naïve. And Kari being evil, yet protective of her sister. And it continues with her in school and the big ending is prom, and what happens at prom. And hopefully another season, because we’ll have to see if, after prom, Kari turns on Mari, or what exactly happens. It’s a continuous story. It’s all about those kids, at that school, making fun of Mari.