Exclusive: Maxim Roy Previews Jocelyn’s Past and Teases Her Future on ‘Shadowhunters’

While Shadowhunters is Clary’s origin story into the Shadow World, this story has been in the making decades before Clary’s foray into this supernatural world within our own. Before there was Clary, Jace, Simon, Alec, and Isabelle there was Jocelyn, Luke, and Valentine.

We had the chance to chat with Shadowhunters star Maxim Roy about the role Jocelyn plays in Tuesday’s all-new episode, which delves into the backstory of the Circle and Jocelyn’s connection to Valentine and Luke. While Jocelyn might be in a comatose state for the foreseeable future she plays a significant role in this week’s episode.

JOCELYN’S PAST│ Tuesday’s episode will introduce fans to the story of the Circle, as well as the relationships between Jocelyn and Luke and Valentine.

Roy said that this is the episode where we can expect to “understand more of how it all started and the relationships between her, Valentine, and Luke – how she was torn between the two and how she was heartbroken by Valentine. I think what we see in present day – it’s just their bad relationship and where it is today – but how did it happen? She’s basically a heartbroken woman. I think that’s going to be interesting for the fans to see.”

Roy also teased that her favorite flashbacks of the season happens in tonight’s episode (“Of Men and Angels”). While she can’t say much she did say that “it’s between her and Luke.”

JOCELYN, LUKE, & VALENTINE │ Clary isn’t the only Fray/Fairchild to find herself in the middle of a love triangle. Jocelyn’s past with Valentine and Luke will come to the forefront in this episode. Roy said that Jocelyn’s relationships with those two polar opposites have shaped Jocelyn into the woman she is.

“It’s one of those typical love triangles – they’re such polar opposites. Luke and Valentine are such different men. I think she’s just torn between these two guys who offered her very, very different lives. It’s the black and white thing – the evil and the good. I think she was really torn between the two.”

Roy also touched upon how Valentine’s betrayal ultimately has shaped Jocelyn into the person we met in the pilot. But it also sounds like there’s hope for Jocelyn to regain that sense of comfort in her life…thanks to Luke.

“I think her heart was really broken by Valentine,” she told us. “I think it shaped her into becoming this very guarded person. I think that’s one of the reasons she’s so overprotective with Clary because she doesn’t want her daughter to be heartbroken by anything or anyone or any world. I think when you’re that hurt in life you become extremely guarded and you shouldn’t be. You should just learn from your experiences. In the next seasons you’ll see her more open. I think she’s become very weary. Thank God that Luke is such a pure heart that he’s going to help her open up again.”

THE CIRCLE │ The story of the Circle has long been a story that fans of Cassandra Clare’s books have been drawn to as it’s provided a starting point for two generations worth of stories. We asked Roy what about this story she thinks really resonates with people, and she pointed out that it’s the whole good and evil of it all.

“In every epic, dramatic movie or script – like Star Wars, for instance – I think it resonates because you have the good and the evil; it’s black or it’s white,” Roy told us. “I think people identify with – like Lord of the Rings. These are worlds that you can place yourself in – you can choose: what side am I on? I think that resonates with everybody – it resonates with me. I’m one of those people, and I feel very comfortable when I watch one of those series where I know who’s good and who’s bad, and I can choose who I want to follow. Or choose the person I identify with.”

MORE JOCELYN IN SEASON 2? │ We couldn’t help but ask Roy if the producers have talked to her about her role in season two, should there be a second season.

“Yeah,” she laughs. “I can’t say anything of course!”

Of course we didn’t expect her to be able to divulge big secrets as we’re only five episodes into the season, but she did hint that perhaps something big is happening in the season finale.

“What I am going to say is that I can’t wait for this season to be over,” she told us. “I can’t wait for episode 13.” “Game-changer?” we asked. “Pretty much,” she teased.

But you can’t blame Roy for wanting to do more than just play a comatose woman with occasional flashbacks.

“We have spoken about it,” she said of her role in season 2. “I have to say I was complaining during season 1. Like I cannot stand being in a coma anymore. I’m not used to that. I’m used to working. It was really hard to have people stand over me and talk about me as I’m floating in the air. So I kept saying, ‘When am I waking up?'”

JOCELYN/CLARY FLASHBACKS │ The relationship between Clary and Jocelyn is one that is incredibly important and yet we haven’t seen enough of with Jocelyn being in a coma and all. But Roy said that she’d like to see more flashbacks next season with younger Clary and younger Jocelyn to establish that strong mother-daughter relationship between the two.

“I would love to see more flashbacks of younger Clary and younger Jocelyn, and especially to establish the relationship that they had and how it was built and the trust and the overprotectiveness of Jocelyn over Clary,” Roy told us. “I’m hoping they’re going to write some of that in the second season because I think that’s really interesting. I think that first scene we see where the monster is coming out of the water because you understand when she made the decision, obviously, but also you can sense who Jocelyn is right off the bat – that mama bear; that feisty, overprotective, nobody-is-going-to-get-close-to-my-daughter thing. I think that’s really interesting and I’m hoping we’re going to get to see more of that in the second season.”

PURE OF HEART │ While Jocelyn is a character that spend a good portion of the series in a coma, we’ve also gotten to know a lot about her during and after that time and what makes her the badass woman we all know and love. For Roy, she most admires Jocelyn’s purity and ferocity that drives her.

“She’s pure of heart,” she said. “She does everything for the right reasons. She’s a fierce leader; she’s a fierce woman. I love that she’s just pure. I would follow her anywhere. She would be my leader. I would follow her with my eyes closed.”

WONDER WOMEN │ With such a great universe created by Cassandra Clare we had to ask Roy what her favorite part about the series was, and it had nothing to do with the supernatural of it all. It had to do with the strong women that populate Clare’s world.

“I love the fact that all the women characters are very, very strong,” Roy told us. “None of them are victims. I love that Cassandra Clare wrote women characters like that. It doesn’t happen often. These are all Wonder Woman for me. These are all women that I admire, and they’re great role models for young women and young men.”

PLAYING THE MOTHER-DAUGHTER DYNAMIC │ While this role has allowed Roy to play a dynamic familiar to her with the supernatural of it all, it’s also provided her a dynamic that she’s unaccustomed to in playing the mother to a now-adult daughter.

“For me personally it’s been interesting to have a daughter that old,” she said, “because I feel like I’m 16 years old, and I don’t have kids yet. But suddenly it was weird to have a young adult as my daughter – that relationship of should I be her friend or should I be her mentor. I kept switching back and forth being protective of Katherine (McNamara) on set, and then being her buddy and confiding in her and her confide in me with boy stuff. But then I would switch back to, ‘No, this is my daughter. I have to protect her.’ So it was hard for me to have this young adult play my daughter. I felt suddenly, ‘I can’t be a mom to an 18-year-old. That doesn’t make any sense. Because I’m sure as hell not mature enough.'”

Shadowhunters airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on Freeform.