ONCE UPON A TIME is a pretty intense fairy tale and I pretty much love it. A little freaked out by what is going on this season, but I love it. THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER spoke with Jennifer Morrison. You can read an excerpt of the interview below, but for the entire thing CLICK HERE.

THR: How would you compare “younger” Emma to how she is now? Are there drastic differences?
Morrison: What’s similar is that she was raised in the foster program, she had to survive to make her life work. She had to rely on her own resources to be able to eat, sleep, take care of herself. She definitely still has the damage that exists in her childhood but there is a different .. hopeful may be the wrong word — I don’t know that she’s ever been a tremendously hopeful person before Henry came into her life. She believes that because she’s been through so much by the time she was 18, she almost feels superhuman. “What else can I possibly endure at this point?” There almost an element of I survived so many outrageous situations in my life and I’ve hung through it and I’ve been OK, bring it on, what else is there, I can handle it.
Having a child, some things they just change you, so in that episode, you see her before those things put her on her heels, in a sense. I was actually talking to someone about how I get cramps in my legs when I was playing Emma at 18 because she walked on her toes. And Emma, as we know now, has a very serious walk on her heels. The world has pushed her back on her heels a little bit. She’s so sturdy, you know: “I am here.” At 18, she’s still like a fox. I think that symbolically represents the differences between her during those two times in her life more than anything else.