Q&A w/ Azita Ghanizada, Star of the New Syfy Series ALPHAS

Guest Post by Chris Braak

I sat down with Azita Ghanizada, to talk to her about her upcoming television show Alphas–premiering on SyFy this Summer.

Tell me about the new project.

Alphas is a new series created by Zak Penn and Michael Karnow. Zak was one of the writers on a couple of the X-Men movies, on The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers. The show basically follows a band of ordinary individuals with extraordinary abilities, who use their abilities to solve X-files type crimes, and the group is overseen by a non-alpha, who is played by David Strathairn who is a tremendous actor.

Can you tell me a little about your character?

Rachel is a young girl who has the ability to hyperintensify all of her senses and she has the ability to delineate them. So, she goes into these kind of trances and if she needs to use her super-sonic sound, she can sharpen that one sense and sort of loses touch with her other senses.

Is it just the regular five senses, or does she have, like, super-kinesthetic awareness, too?

Oh, no not like that. Not yet. Right now it’s just the regular five. At this stage were just kind of discovering the various basic abilities that these alphas have. Like one has the ability to push people, and one has this super fight or flight, like he can become super aggressive and move cars and throw people off of buildings.

So, how did they get these powers? How did they come about?

They’ve always had them. They were born with them. These people have just been burdened with these abilities, they’re just something that they’ve discovered at an early age. It’s affected them from an early age and it’s shaped who they are since childhood, and some of them suffer these extreme anxieties and depression, and that’s why this doctor is there to nurture both their superhuman and their human aspects.

Now. I must ask you a question about Philadelphia. So. What do you think about Philadelphia?

I spent every summer in Philadelphia when I was younger. My closest cousin grew up in Philadelphia at the time, and we would come and visit them for a few weeks in the summers, and they would come and visit us for a few weeks in the suburbs of Washington, DC. This was in the mid-80s, and my cousins were in North Philly, and there were a lot of fun neighborhoods, up around Aramingo Avenue. I definitely learned to play stickball and get Italian ice, so those are fondest memories of Philadelphia, Also seeing sneakers that they’ve thrown up on the wires.

Is that not a thing that happens in other cities?

No, in other cities they definitely do not rob you and throw your shoes over the power lines.