Interview: Nathan D. Simmons & Kaelen Ohm React to FROM Season 4 Ending

Nathan D. Simmons and Kaelen Ohm interview FROM Season 4 finale reaction

(Warning: Our interview with Nathan D. Simmons and Kaelen Ohm contains major, major spoilers for the FROM Season 4 Episode 10.)

Elgin (Nathan D. Simmons) and Marielle (Kaelen Ohm) arrived in FROMville on the same bus. And, coincidentally, they’re both the FROM Season 4 finale’s victims. When Fangirlish interviewed the actors, our first question was how each of them reacted to getting the finale script and seeing everything that goes down in the hour.

For Simmons, “of course it’s upsetting.” That doesn’t only refer to what happens to Elgin, but also “seeing how everything, you know, rolls—snowballs.” Still, he shared that he “felt like it was a good end to Elgin’s story and…for the things he’s been fighting with the entire season—the series. So, I felt a bit excited and almost…cathartic.”

As Ohm put it, “I knew [Marielle] was dying, but I didn’t exactly know how. I heard that it was a good one. So, when I read the script, I was like, ‘wow, this is, this is a good way to go…It’s noble. And I like that Marielle goes out protecting Fatima—that feels important. It felt important to me just with her trajectory of when she arrived, and kind of being an intense presence and taking more than she was giving, in a way.” Overall, Marielle “went out with a punch,” and “the story, I found, was amazing. And I love the final moments of the finale. I was really emotional watching that.”

That’s the reaction to the story, but what about creating those intense emotional final scenes for Elgin and Marielle? Nathan D. Simmons described the “disorienting” experience of filming his final scenes. “I think there was a lot of built up emotion. That day was kind of hectic, as well.” He stressed “trying to find…the truth and the honesty in the moments.” He and creator John Griffin “talked about Elgin sticking to his morals to the very end, and like not losing the parts that made him, him.” The goal was “just trying to keep that in mind and not get consumed by the…[feeling of] ‘this is it.'”

Marielle’s death involved a lot of moving parts. She and Fatima have to deal with the earthquake, and then there’s Smiley’s change, and then there’s her…guts. “But once we got onto the floor, like after the slash had happened, I think I sat on the floor for five hours in the blood. I just stayed there.” Despite the cold, “I was just…I was like, ‘this is my last moment. I’m just gonna be here in this moment and just melt in it.'”

Going back to the scene’s “many technical pieces,” Ohm described it as “a marathon, that one.” Once it was over, “I got to have a really good cry on my way back to base camp because I was like, ‘wow, this is the end.'”

MORE: Pegah Ghafoori on how Fatima’s “finally in her element” after that transformation.