Top 5 Things to Know About ‘Stitchers’ Stars Kyle Harris and Emma Ishta

Stitchers’ Kyle Harris and Emma Ishta dish on their hot new sci-fi show!

ABC Family‘s new sci-fi show, Stitchers brings a whole new meaning to the word “mystery”! The series is summarized where Kirsten (Emma Ishta), a young woman recruited into a covert government agency to be ‘stitched’ into the minds of the recently deceased, using their memories to investigate murders and decipher mysteries that otherwise would have gone to the grave. Working alongside Kirsten is Cameron (Kyle Harris), a brilliant neuroscientist whose passion for the program is evident in his work. Check out our top 5 list of things we’ve learned from its stars Kyle Harris and Emma Ishta from their conference call interview.

5. Emma and Kyle are excited to see a new direction for the network.

ABC Family hasn’t explored the sci-fi procedural before and with the new upcoming shows like Shadowhunters and now Stitchers, the network looking to venture towards that direction. Kyle shares his excitement about joining his favorite network, “I’m excited for them to see a sci-fi procedural show on their favorite network that they’ve never seen before. I think we’re branding a new way for the network and we’re very proud of what we’ve been doing. I think people are going to be able to relate to these characters and whether they’re into sci-fi or procedural or just cool human beings that are smart and using it in cool ways, I think that’s really fun. I think it’s going to reach out to a lot of audiences.” We’re not sure what to expect when it comes to the mystery aspect of the show, but Emma seems confident that fans will see something different for this network. “I completely agree with Kyle. It’s so different for the network, and we’re excited for the audience base and new people who might watch the show to see something different that we’ve been working on.”

4. Emma and Kyle met before they auditioned for ‘Stitchers’!

Emma and Kyle met even before they auditioned for the show a year ago. Emma describe their humble beginnings in New York, “My auditioning story is funny because I knew about Kyle before he knew about anything going on.” Kyle adds in, “We both auditioned from New York initially.” Emma continues, “So we both went into the original casting director and they sent our picture to ABC Family and then I flew out to test in LA. Kyle actually didn’t test in LA, so there were a few other people that had tested for the roles of Kirsten and Cameron. When I went in, Steve Miner, who directed our first episode and he also directed the fourth and the eleventh of the season, started telling me about this guy in New York that they really wanted and they skipped over his audition because they didn’t necessarily love the beginning, but then what he did at the end was so amazing. He was telling me about wanting to get Kyle and how they really hoped it wasn’t too late, so that was interesting.”

3. Emma and Kyle really dig deep into their characters, Kirsten and Cameron.

Emma and Kyle have a knack for understanding their characters’ needs, likes, dislikes and the chemistry between the two. Emma discloses, “Kirsten is a computer science grad student and she gets recruited by this covert government agency to hack into the brains of deceased people. She has this condition called temporal dysplasia that affects her in two different ways. The first way is it affects her ability to comprehend the passage of time, so every moment to her feels as if it’s always been there, like she’s constantly experiencing déjà vu. And it also affects her ability to emotionally connect with herself with her own emotions and also with the emotions of other people.” Kyle describes Cameron’s conflicting emotions regarding Kirsten, “[Cameron] is the head of this Stitchers program that Kirsten is the subject in and you start to see his process. As soon as he meets Kirsten, his world is flipped upside down because now he’s got this beautiful girl inside of his lab that he has to navigate his emotions for, but at the same time feel responsible entirely for because, as you learn throughout the season, there are some things that went wrong in the past in this Stitchers programming and he vows to never have it happen again.”

2. Emma and Kyle have hidden talents!

Emma and Kyle share their hidden talents:

Kyle: I fall at least once an episode on the stage [laughs].

Emma: I am an exceptionally talented cleaner. I’m very good at it. Kyle can sing beautifully; he’s spent a lot of time in musicals. I can sing also, not maybe quite as well, but I can sing. What’s been going on on set? We laugh a lot out there. All of us have a lot of fun.

1. Emma and Kyle were inspired by The Fall and Sherlock Holmes for their characters.

Emma describes how Gillian Anderson from The Fall helped build her character development for ‘Kirsten’ on Stitchers, “There are a couple of examples, I would say Gillian Anderson in The Fall, which is a BBC show and it’s available on Netflix. She did such a fantastic job with this woman who is incredibly complex, has this incredibly complex inner life, but doesn’t give too much all of the time and I definitely was inspired by her performance.Kyle, however, was inspired by Sherlock Holmes: I’d say this in a nutshell— Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch. I just sit and watch Sherlock and Watson traits that they both have that are both Cameron in a way. I watch that show and take both of their traits as characters and wrap it into one as Cameron and that was helpful for me to watch and say ‘okay, I like the way these guys think.’ That’s the intelligent level that Cameron and the rest of the Stitchers crew is at — being prodigy geniuses that are always one step ahead of everyone else.”

ABC Family’s Stitchers premieres Tuesday, June 2 at 9/8c.