Summer Glau–time and the sci-fi is sizzling

I know we’re collectively drooling all over our sensible shoes at the prospect of seeing Lena Headey each week once Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles premieres Jan. 13. But Lena isn’t the only one packing serious heat. Joining her will be the underrated, overly flexible Summer Glau.

But according to a recent Access Hollywood interview, Summer almost didn’t audition for the role of the benevolent teenage Terminator Cameron. In fact, she had never even seen any of the original films in the Arnold Schwarzenegger franchise.

“I had in my mind what I thought they would want for a girl terminator and I definitely didn’t think that I fit that criteria and so I didn’t want to go on the audition. My mom was actually the one who said ‘You’re getting in the car and you’re going to that audition!’ I thought I would get in the room and I wouldn’t look like the rest of the girls. I thought they would want statuesque, icy blondes.”

But she got over her reservations when she discovered that Josh Friedman, screenwriter for The Black Dahlia and War of the Worlds, was behind the project and realized that “the kind of terminator that he wanted to create, was someone that you wouldn’t expect, someone that could hide in society and fit in and look like a normal teenage girl and [who] stepped up when she needed to.”

Summer, whose sci-fi pedigree is impeccable thanks to Firefly, Serenity and The 4400, said she is drawn to the genre because her mother used to read her science fiction stories when she was little. And she said sci-fi demands more suspension of disbelief from its actors.

“You have to be able to really dive in and believe the world that you’re creating and that comes really natural to me. Science fiction actors — sometimes we are on set and we look at each other and we get the giggles because we’re doing something so outrageous and having to say something that’s so [much] bigger than life and it’s really fun for me. As a little girl I always dreamed of getting to do something like this.”

What she’ll get to do in The Sarah Connor Chronicles is kick assailants through walls and generally kick robot butt. But she also has to pose as a normal teenager, pretending to be the daughter of Sarah and sister of John Connor. She hints that despite their brother-sister charade, there could be a little something between the teen and the robot. Is it just me, or is that wrong on every level?

Not that this coupling is better in terms of the faux familial dynamic, but it is better to look at (Photoshopping hat tip to Ida).