‘The Bad Seed Returns’ Star Ella Dixon: Emma Has ‘Met Her Match’ In Kate
‘The Bad Seed’ is back. Ella Dixon spoke EXCLUSIVELY with HL about the highly-anticipated sequel, her character’s ‘conflict’ with Emma, and more.
Emma Grossman’s chaotic (and often murderous) antics will continue in The Bad Seed Returns, which premieres September 5. Emma gets the chance to start over at a new school, but she’s going to be closely watched by Kat, played by Ella Dixon, who knows exactly what Emma is up to. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Ella about Kat and Emma’s interesting dynamic.
“Right away, you have that conflict with Kat coming in and kind of back into Emma’s life,” Ella said. “I think Kat is incredibly tough, and she’s been through a lot in life. There’s a lot of vulnerability to her that I think she’s not quite letting on about, and it’s that vulnerability that really kind of drives her mission in a way to confront Emma. It’s that conflict and that tension that we see throughout the film that really kind of puts Emma in a condition we’ve never really seen her in before.”
Ella stressed that viewers will see Mckenna Grace’s Emma in a “very different place than she wants in the first film. She’s living with her aunt. She’s kind of acclimated to what it’s like to be a teenager. She’s a part of the dance team and navigating life as a high school student. In a sense, she’s much more blended in than we saw her in the first film, so you’re kind of flipping the character on her head a little bit.”
However, Ella adds that Emma is “much more unpredictable, and she’s much more sly about the way that she goes about things. Again, there’s just that disruption that comes with Kat where we see her in a place that’s very different where she’s really met her match. I think that’s going to play out in a very interesting way.”
The young actress was intrigued the most by Kat’s “vulnerability” in The Bad Seed Returns. “It was one of the biggest things I’ve learned as well just that in every human, in every situation, everything we ever do, stems from vulnerability of some kind,” she continued. “It depends on the person and how that vulnerability is expressed, but it’s always there. To really understand that and begin to explore that within Kat and how that’s playing out in her life and her circumstance was really powerful for me. I think it really helped in my understanding of her and my understanding of the story.”
Despite Kat and Emma’s adversarial relationship, Ella thoroughly enjoyed working alongside Mckenna. “McKenna’s such a great person and such a gifted actor and writer,” Ella told HollywoodLife. “To be able to share the screen with her was so much fun. She inhabits the role of Emma in such a powerful way.” The Bad Seed Returns will air on September 5 at 8 p.m. on Lifetime.