By the time our Catalina Sandino Moreno interview comes out, Tabitha’s FROM Season 4 arc will have already been pretty heavy, even the context of this being a dark series. (And that’s putting it mildly.) Before she can process the big revelations in the Season 3 finale, she spends a night with no idea where her husband is, only to wake up the next day and find what she believes to be him hanging from the MOTEL sign. Which, of course, everyone learns the hard way that he’s actually in the barn where her children find him—dead, with that “KNOWLEDGE COMES AT A COST” warning sign painted behind him. After that, she tries to go look for the lighthouse again…without even saying goodbye to Julie and Ethan.
When we asked Sandino Moreno what, if any, part of Tabitha’s story has been difficult for her as an actor, she acknowledged “it’s been a lot.” In addition to recapping everything we pointed out above, she reminded us, “we need to rewind to, you know, she lost a child,” Thomas, whose ghost may or may not have called Jim and Ethan in FROMville, “and the thought of her losing more of her tribe is horrible for her.” So, “that’s why she’s going to do things…to save her children. And not in a rational, composed way, but in a rushed moment.”
Speaking of what happens in Episode 2 with that bag, Sandino Moreno kind of did an impression of that rushed, frenzied way Tabitha tells the kids they “just need to go to the barn” when she thinks that’s a way “to protect them.” But for the actress, “I just don’t feel someone in their right mind, in the right moment, will just send our children alone” like that. And as far as actually staying as Boyd and Jade get that bag down goes, “I don’t think you want to see your loved one” like that. “To [think] that someone that you love is in a bag hanging” and stay behind to witness that, “I would never do it.”
She told us she just “wouldn’t want to be like, ‘yeah, I am, you know, he’s my husband, I need to [be the one to open that bag].’ I’m not that brave—I think that’s for someone that is way braver than I am. But [Tabitha] did it.” Meanwhile, “if she had gone to her children, like I would, then she would have tried to protect them.” And, Catalina Sandino Moreno noted, “it was just so disgusting and vile, how they left poor Jim. So I don’t know, it’s just a lot of—it’s just a lot of emotions this season.”
One place where Tabitha definitely isn’t sticking around to protect Julie and Ethan is her (failed) attempt to go back into the tree. “Listen, I thought so much about that,” Sandino Moreno told us. “I’m like, I don’t understand why she’s leaving her children, especially at this time. But then I know. That she’s in this pressure cooker with a lot of like, grief and pain, and heartbroken, and she just needs to do something. She wants to feel…useful!” Tabitha’s stuck “there watching people die,” and “she needs to do something. And now, she knows that she can go through the bottle tree, and go through the tower, and endure a lot of pain. Because,” Sandino Moreno reminded us, “that was not like, ‘okay, you went through the tower, and now you wake up in Maine.’ No, no, no, no, no. That was very painful for her to do.”
So, even though, “I would never leave my children. Ever…for no circumstances.” Sandino Moreno recognizes that Tabitha’s “feeling hand-tied. She needs to save her children.” That’s why “she feels that she needs to make these crazy decisions.”
MORE: Julia Doyle on her very special (and evil) FROM Season 4 character.
Watch our Catalina Sandino Moreno interview here
What’s the one-word tease for the rest of FROM Season 4: “Intensity.”
Buckle up.
Don’t miss Catalina Sandino Moreno in FROM Season 4. New episodes release Sundays at 9:00pm ET/PT on MGM+.
