Watch 'Reign' star Adelaide Kane's EW Pop Culture Personality Test

On Oct. 17, The CW debuts its sexy new period drama Reign starring Adelaide Kane as a teenage Mary Stuart (a.k.a. Mary, Queen of Scots). The half-Scottish Kane auditioned for multiple projects for The CW during last pilot season, and suspecting she’d be a perfect fit for Reign, the network brought her in and let her choose her own scenes to read from the script before casting for that pilot had officially begun. Two weeks later, she was offered the role.

Auditioning for Reign might have been a breeze, but shooting the pilot in cold Ireland while ill with a chest infection wasn’t. “I was on antibiotics, napping between set-ups. It was so hard to do the accent, and act, and run around and be excited and happy when I felt like I was dying,” she says with a laugh. “But everybody was really great about it and took good care of me. We pushed through.” Now she’s looking forward to bringing a vulnerability to the character. “She’s a very strong young woman, very passionate. Her responsibility weighs very heavily on her. So I just want to make her a real person with real flaws and feelings, just another young woman who I think everybody can relate to,” Kane says.

When EW invited Kane in to take our Pop Culture Personality Test, we discovered we could relate to her. She’s a Joss Whedon fan who can talk Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. She didn’t hesitate to share that The Fifth Element starring Bruce Willis is her favorite film of all time. (“Don’t ask me why. I love the blue alien singing opera. I love that film. I love Bruce Willis. That’s it. Every single time it’s on, I sit and watch that film. ‘Leeloo Dallas multipass.’ All the time. I can’t not watch it.”) And when asked to name her geekiest possession, she can top her Game Boy and comic book collection: “You know the anime film Spirited Away? There are little animated balls of soot who carry coal into the big furnace. I found a girl who made the little sootballs out of yarn, and I bought one. He sits on my shelf. I have a handmade sootball from Spirited Away, so I think that would probably be the nerdiest thing I own.” In the video below, she shares a few more confessions, including her childhood desire to become a witch (thank Charmed).

Reign airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.