Crave Online: How are things between Nikki and D.L. now?

Ali Larter: They are interesting. They're interesting. You're going to find a lot out this year about their past and what happened.

Crave Online: Will the Nikki/Jessica dynamic continue at all?

Ali Larter: They're coming into one character. It's only Nikki and I think the writers are so smart on this show that they really looked at what worked and what didn't. To be able to focus on the one character is I think going to be the best move.

Crave Online: Have they told you where the character will go?

Ali Larter: Yes. I've heard a little bit La Femme Nikita.

Crave Online: Does Nikki still have Jessica's strength?

Ali Larter: That is something that is definitely being explored second season.

It ain't easy being the scariest gal on TV. When Ali Larter has a day off from NBC's Heroes (Mondays at 9 pm/ET), in which she plays dual personalities Niki and Jessica, she isn't kicking back. She's studying martial arts and taking striptease classes. Larter needs to master the "Kill Bill" stuff now that Jessica is an assassin for the shadowy Vegas mob boss Linderman. And the stripping? That's for a secret Heroes twist to be revealed later this season.
"The blessing and curse of being on Heroes is that you never know what they'll throw at you," says Larter, 31. "You have to be ready. Luckily for me I'm a kick-ass kinda gal. I'm also a bit schizophrenic — I need to change and reinvent myself a lot."

Ali Larter never saw it coming. The actress read a television script called "Heroes," inked a deal to join its ensemble cast and shot the pilot. Little did she know that the NBC superheroes-in-the-making saga would fly high, eliciting ecstatic reviews, attracting 12 million-plus


viewers every week and earning bragging rights as the first fall series to receive a full-season pick-up.

"I've been in business for a little while," Larter says, "and at this point I've kind of learned that, for me, I'm just drawn to characters and projects that really inspire me and that I think are going to push me creatively. And with this show I found all of those elements. Really, it's got everything you could hope for.

"At the end of the day, though, you can't look to the future," she says. "You don't know how things are going to turn out. So I just went and I signed on for a project that I loved and did the best work that I could, and it's just icing that it's turned out so well and that people are responding to it."

...

Speaking by cell telephone from Los Angeles, the 30-year-old Larter says that she sees her chief challenge as making each version of Niki credible.

"I'm playing two totally different characters," the actress says. "Aren't there two sides of you? There's a side of you that, when you look at the world, doesn't have to conform to society's rules and laws. That's the side of you that wishes it could seek revenge on all the people that have hurt you.

"That's kind of a shadow, dark side of you," she says, "and then there's the other side of you that, like it or not, has to live in present-day society. That's how I cut the two characters in half. The darker half of Niki is how you'd be if you could live life without boundaries."

GB: Talk about Niki and Jessica and the experience of playing these two very different characters.

AL: Before episode 6, really from the pilot, I felt deeply connected to Niki. She?s a voice I know. It?s more work to play Jessica.

GB: Even though Jessica is more like you?

AL: I know. I know.

GB: Why is that?

AL: Niki is so honest. She?s sensitive to the world around her. She?s my voice for women in bad situations who are trying to do the right thing. There?s something very honorable about her.

GB: And what about Jessica?

AL: Jessica is a struggle, because I have to own my sexuality and my voice to play her. I can?t rely on my emotional life.

TVGuide.com: Now shed some light for me on Niki's ability. I've seen the first three episodes and I'm still unclear about exactly...
Larter: OK, wait until [Episodes] 4, 5 and 6 for me. It really starts coming out then.

TVGuide.com: She obviously has this alternate self, but does it only exist in reflections, or is that just a device to show us...?
Larter: What I'm discovering is that there is a duality to my personality: one side that has to conform to society's rules and laws, and a shadow side that has all these repressed feelings and would love to seek revenge. When you keep those feelings locked away long enough, it becomes very dangerous when they start to come out.

TVGuide.com: Has Tim shared with you the overall game plan?
Larter: I know where we're going, yeah, and when we will ultimately be coming together. What I love about the show is they're not giving everyone exactly what they want. Some people wish that we were brought together in the first episode, but what's interesting is to see what happens naturally. Ours is a theme that has been done in tons of movies and is rooted in Greek mythology, but at the end of the day it's a fresh take, because we are all just ordinary, flawed people.