I missed the first question of the Taylor, Ashley and ‘Jess’ panel due to autographs. I had thought it was a good idea to get most of my photos done on the Saturday and do autographs on Sunday. But it made it a bit hectic. For once, I was doing what I was told – not my strong point. I was almost at the front of the queue for Lyne, when it was ‘last call for Taylor’, then I was directed into Arlen’s queue. But when I was in Olivia’s queue, I was directed to go to the room for Ashley as she ‘had nobody there’. That proved to be nobody except 6 people, all of whom wanted long talks with Ashley. So, I had a chat about the problems of Brexit with one of the staff and a lovely chat with Ashley’s mother. Then back to Olivia. I came in during a very long French translation.
Meaning I missed the very start of Ashley / Taylor / Jess. Jess had joined the panel via a laptop.
Finally, we ‘sort of’ got the Bellweather Unit on stage together.
Question. If the Unit was on a mission and you needed to ‘charge up’, who would you choose?
Jess hadn’t heard the question clearly, so Taylor had to translate. ‘Which one of us would you f*ck?’
Jess decided to go with a threesome and the others agreed.
Moving swiftly on…
Question. What would be one question you hope to be asked in an interview and what would be your reply?
Jess. What is the process to apply for a visa to travel as a South African? She could write a book.
Taylor. If you were Satan and you had to prevent someone from being their highest self, how would you do it? She pictures things like pyramid schemes, promoting arguments about politics, tearing other people apart. A villain taking advantage of other people, like a bank robber or getting people to take part in a pyramid scheme.
Ashley. Would you rather die by drowning or by being burned alive? The short version of her answer was that she didn’t know. But she had been advised that burning was quicker.
Taylor added that she almost found out. She almost drowned by jumping into a swimming pool with the cover on and then she couldn’t get out of the water.
Question. Pick a song that makes you think of the show or your friends.
Taylor chose the song from the Bellweather wedding montage in 1.05. She couldn’t immediately remember the title, but with a bit of help from the audience, she got there. Urchin by Labyrinth.
Jess had a Spotify playlist for every season. She listened to a lot of music at the time.
Ashley had a playlist called Abigail Bellweather. But it wasn’t on Spotify. Ashley called it up on her phone and showed it to Jess on the laptop.
After the convention, everyone wanted to know more about the playlists but couldn’t find them online, so Ashley and Jess put the links on Twitter.
Ashley
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/abigail-bellweather/pl.u-r2yBBDPTP5Jp5D
Abigail Bellweather by ANW – Apple Music
Jess
Here you go Switches all three #MotherlandFortSalem playlists from Spotify …god I miss the show!!!
Season 3: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0W4d4LcosiFhnjiDw64RIw?si=70o8IMd8RkmXLbK00bav1w&pi=u-ISLRzbvCTGWu
Here you go Switches all three #MotherlandFortSalem playlists from Spotify 💝…god I miss the show!!!
Season 1:
Season2 :
Season 3:
For me, the next thing was the Raylla fan meet. Taylor started by telling Amalia that she had used most of her solo fan meet telling us about her trip to Scotland and Danny getting drunk. I joked that perhaps Amalia should tell us about her trip to Berlin. We had all been very entertained by her Instagram posts about taking the overnight sleeper train from Stockholm to Berlin.
Amalia asked me if that was a serious question? I was ‘why not? Yes.’ So she told us.
She had been visiting a relative who lives in Berlin to help improve her German. This relative talks a lot, so she had been getting plenty of practice. She had spoken to an acting coach / director who had said that her German was good enough to work in Germany. But she has an accent, so she couldn’t play a German, she would have to be someone Baltic, such as Estonian or Lithuanian. Which means that she wants to work to get rid of the accent, but that will be a long term goal.
[As an aside, I had been told previously by German fans who spoke to her in German, that she is fluent. Nobody had mentioned an accent.]
And finally we got to the closing ceremony. Amalia had had to leave early so she was not there, but she had recorded a short video for us saying how much she had enjoyed the weekend and thanking the organisers and everyone for coming.
The cast said their farewells. Then we got to the bit we had all been waiting for. When one of the organisers said the words we all wanted to hear. ‘See you next year.’ A lot of very happy Switches.
So see you next year in Paris on September 20 – 21st 2025.
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