Sofia Vassilieva: growing as an actor and a person

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Sofia Vassilieva: growing as an actor and a person

An inherited gift

From article: Child actors: Sofia Vassilieva, ‘Medium’, By Lisa Rosen, Los Angeles Times

Sofia Vassilieva NBC’S “Medium” centers on Allison Dubois (Patricia Arquette) and her psychic abilities — in her dreams, she sees how people were killed. A great part of the show’s charm comes from the fact that Allison is also a wife and mother, and the realities of family life constantly butt up against her more surreal gifts.

Sofia Vassilieva plays her oldest daughter, Ariel, who struggles with the realization that she has inherited her mother’s talents.

Vassilieva, who gives her age as 15 1/2, has been acting since she was 8, and has played Ariel for four seasons. “Every episode, Ariel’s been developing more and more, and coming into her role as a girl in society, an older sister and somebody who has psychic abilities. So it’s always been very interesting for me to develop that balance,” Vassilieva says.

Growing as the character grows

“For Ariel, it’s a constant battle between being normal and being like her friends — caring about the little things, the dance or clothes or hair — and constantly trying to figure out what this [ability] is and how to respond to it.”

In preparing for a scene, Vassilieva takes a step back, looking at where Ariel has been in the previous moments as well as the previous episode.

And she knows never to play just one idea; “in reality the way we may react to something one day can be entirely different than the way we react another day.” Most of her scenes are played opposite Arquette, who she says makes the process very easy by virtue of both her talent and her compassion.

“She comes in with so much love and energy, she’s so unbelievably great to be around,” Vassilieva says. The young actress can’t wait to see where her character will go next. “I continue to be really, really eager to go in and do more and have more story lines, and I think that’s the beauty of it — as the character is growing, you’re growing as a person.”

Los Angeles Times / The Envelope, June 4, 2008.
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