‘Westworld’ Star Katja Herbers Explains If She’s “Grace” or “Emily”

Westworld‘s newest leading lady, Katja Herbers, has seen your fan theories. The Dutch actress made her big debut on HBO’s hit sci-fi puzzler last week. Then she was “Grace,” a sassy park guest who finds herself on the run from a tiger in The Raj. Later she ran into the Ghost Nation tribe, and last night we discovered that she has a game-changing connection to the park’s history itself: She’s William’s daughter “Emily.” However, even after one episode, her debut was splashy enough that the internet was already speculating that she was something more…

“I was like, ‘Am I going to check Twitter?’ Maybe that’s just healthier: to not read anything. But then I was like, ‘I can’t control myself,'” Herbers told us with a mischievous giggle last week.

“I did read some of the fan theories, which are really fun. There was a whole bunch of people who did say, ‘Okay, she’s Emily.’ There’s some really smart people who put it all together,” she said. “And then I saw another theory where they say that I’m the young Theresa, which I thought was funny. You see a photo of Sidse Babett Knudsen and a photo of me, like ‘They look alike.’ Yeah, I wouldn’t mind. I think she’s amazing.”

Westworld fans found out the truth about Herbers’s character on this week’s episode, “The Riddle of the Sphinx.” She’s William’s daughter, Emily. Or is she still Grace? What’s going on with that?

“From season one, we know that her name is Emily because the Man in Black is her father, but I go by ‘Grace’ in the park. I think my name is Emily Grace and I just use [Grace] in the park,” Herbers explained.

Herbers was a little iffy even now about where her character is going and what she could divulge. Herbert told us, “I’m always unclear what I can say or not say, because I feel like the mystery is so fun, and I don’t know how fun it is for fans to know, you know, that the tiger used to be a guy in a blue suit.”  Still, Herbers did say that up until her first day, she knew “nothing” about the integral role she been casting.

“Once I got the part, I still didn’t know what the role was. But they did say, ‘It’s going to be great. We’re going to start in The Raj…’ and they kind of explained this opening but I had no idea where it was going to go. I did know from the audition scene — it was a dummy scene that they just wrote for the purposes of auditioning – that it was me trying to get to someone. I thought maybe my husband, trying to get that person to level with me, I guess in the sort of sassy way that you see her behave in episode 3.” 

“And then once I got to set on my first day of fittings and meeting people, Lisa Joy took me into her office and she���s like, ‘Okay, I need to tell you some stuff. Yeah, I think I’m going to tell you.’ And then she just told me the whole thing and I was like, ‘God, that’s actually amazing. It’s the best. It’s the best role I could have gotten,'” Herbers said with a glow in her voice.

“I get to work with Ed Harris. He’s a complete dream. The most wonderful actor and most wonderful person. So that was very special,” Herbers said, “And also her connection to everything in Westworld. It’s so..It’s so big. Delos being her grandfather, Logan being her uncle…” In fact, the show hints in “The Riddle of The Sphinx” that Herbers’s Grace might have an important role to play in the park going forward.

Herbers laughed when we asked her if the cast has any tricks for keeping the timelines straight. “No! No, I mean I can’t speak for anyone else. I know that Jeffrey Wright in the first season didn’t know about being both Arnold and Bernard, or about the timelines. But I definitely didn’t know more than the bare necessary stuff. They don’t tell you,” she said with a giggle.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that Herbers said all her scenes were shot out of order. “My very, very first scene that I filmed was the one inside a palace where Grace shoots [Nicholas] before making love. And you know, it was a funky scene to start with. To immediately go, ‘I’m making out with this actor, I have to shoot him, I have to look…or try to be desirable or something?’ And that’s always an awkward thing to try to play,” she said. “So it was challenging, but you know, I’ve never been on a show this big that’s already been a success, so to bring, some extra nervousness with it. I did feel that pressure. And the exterior of The Raj was maybe one of my last days. So it’s funny how’s it all connected  and like the shooting of it is completely all over the place in terms of chronological order.”

“I did all the running and stuff, but there was one bit where a stunt woman helped. She was really great. I really want to mention her name, Jessi Fisher. She ran down those rocks for me, because that was too dangerous for me to do, and she sort of mimicked my natural way of running.”

And the tiger? What was he like to work with? As Herbers teased: “On the day that was a guy in a blue suit who was coming for me. I actually thought that was pretty terrifying. It didn’t take much pretending. I was like, ‘That is scary as hell. I need to run.’”

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