Kneel Before Lyta Zod: Interview with Krypton’s Georgina Campbell

Which Super-fan would ever expect to root for a Zod?

That’s exactly what happens when viewers watch Syfy’s Krypton which introduced us to Lyta Zod as played by Georgina Campbell as a likely ancestor of the evil General Zod that we know from the comics and film. A new episode of Krypton airs tonight (April 4) at 10PM ET/PT which made now a perfect time to share our interview with Ms. Campbell from this year’s WonderCon convention in Anaheim, California.

Beware there are some minor spoilers within, and video of the interview can also be found below.

KRYPTONSITE’s CRAIG BYRNE: Can you talk about Lyta’s relationship with Dev-Em in light of her relationship that she also has with Seg?

GEORGINA CAMPBELL: Lyta’s relationship with Dev-Em is really sweet, actually. It really develops over the series. They have a very close friendship. They’ve known each other for years, since they were children, and they both have grown up in the military together. And Lyta — I think having her mom as General is kind of a bit like having your Mum be your teacher. People make fun of her; the military… you’re suddenly kind of ostracized as a bit of an outsider because your parent’s in charge. So she doesn’t really have many friends in the military, and Dev is a friend.

She can confide in him. She can talk to him. Their relationship does grow over the series, as they all take on this journey.

He’s always very much there for her, and he also really understands who she is in regards to her work. I think Seg knows her more on an emotional relationship level, of who she is as a girlfriend and who she is as a lover, whereas Dev knows her as who she is in the military, and what her morals are, and what she wants, and what she wants to do, and what her potential is. He really sees this potential in her to be great, and he’s constantly pushing her to see that she can be this great soldier. She just needs to believe in herself.

Is she concerned that her mother, Jayna Zod (Ann Ogbomo), doesn’t see that in her?

100%. She has a very hard relationship with her mother. I think she has that kind of classic relationship that people have with their parents. They’re very overbearing, and their parents have an idea of who they are. That’s a very hard thing to live with. It happens all the time in real life. Your parent decides that they want you to be a doctor, and actually, you want to be an artist, and you have this very difficult relationship where they’re trying to pin you into something that you don’t want to be. That’s what Lyta and Jayna have. There’s a lot of love there, but at the end of the day, Jayna wants Lyta to behave in a way that Lyta doesn’t want to, and that just causes so much friction between them.

Do you think not wanting to do exactly what Jayna wants is part of the reason Lyta has been drawn to Seg?

Yeah. I think Seg is so much freer than she is. He’s in the Rankless. He’s got parents that really care about him, and they’re really open to him being who he wants to be, and I think that freedom… it’s very exciting to her. He’s got a lot of heart, and I think that their relationship has probably made her more able to articulate her feelings and her emotions than she would have been before,
because in the Zod home, you don’t talk about emotions. There are no emotions. That’s just weakness.

Well, he used to have parents. How does Lyta feel about that, considering her mother had something to do with that?

It’s very uncomfortable, obviously. I think anyone would be uncomfortable with their Mum killing their boyfriend’s parents. But at the end of the day, what’s interesting is that it’s not Lyta’s fault. Lyta didn’t do it. Lyta didn’t want her to do it. And also, it’s not really Jayna’s fault. Jayna is part of the military and she has to uphold military standards, and the execution that she did, she kind of was forced to do. There was no other way that could have gone. So it’s a very difficult situation, because it is horrible, and it’s horrifying, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing that Lyta could have done.

Can you talk about Lyta taking a leadership role in the Sagitari?

She just wants to be heard. She has opinions about how things should be run. She has smart opinions as well. She’s very clued in to the Rankless because of her relationship to Seg. So when this Initiative begins in the military, Lyta knows what’s going to happen if they go in a specific way, so she wants to do damage control. She knows what’s going to happen, but she wants to get involved, and her mother is very disparaging. But she does what she has to do to be heard.

Is there anything you can tease about other characters she might interact to later in the season?

She comes across quite a few different characters. All of their stories really start to intertwine. There’s even an episode where her and Adam Strange join up together, and they see each other… so, yeah. It’s all very exciting.

A new episode of Krypton airs TONIGHT on Syfy. You can find some photos from tonight’s episode below, but first, you can see video of this interview!