I have seen the new Kyle XY episode, “To C.I.R. With Love,” that will air this Monday, January 14th, on ABC Family and I think fans are going to really enjoy it. It’s a pretty great follow-up to the literal cliffhanger that we got back in September.

That’s why I was excited when I got the opportunity, along with other TV bloggers and online press folk, to participate in a teleconference with April Matson (Lori Trager) this past Tuesday. I couldn’t wait to hear more about what we can expect from the rest of the season. April was very sweet and talked candidly with us about her character, what’s coming up on the show, her fellow co-stars, and her aspirations for the future.

Getting to Know April
April was born on March 13, 1981, a fact that’s wrong on her IMDB profile. And, even though the trivia on April’s IMDB page claims that her favorite movie is A Cinderella Story and her favorite actress is Hilary Duff (facts that April thinks might have originated from someone posing as her on MySpace), she lists Kate Winslet, Rachel Weisz, and Cate Blanchett among the actresses that she respects and admires. As for movies? Well she blanked on her favorites (making her just like me when I’m asked that question), “Of course I can’t think of any right now. Then randomly I’ll be thinking, I love that movie. When people ask me that, I’m going to say that’s my favorite movie and I can’t. I have no idea. I loved Steel Magnolias.”

Speaking of erroneous facts, Wikipedia claims that April is Stockard Channing’s daughter. She gets the Stockard Channing comparison a lot like this past Christmas when several people she met for the first time at parties commented she looks “freakishly like a young Stockard Channing” and that she reminds “them of her energy.” While April is flattered by the comparison and thinks Stockard is amazing, she wanted to make sure people know that she is not her daughter.

April supports as many charities as she can like AIDS walks and breast cancer 5ks but says that she recently developed “a new special interest in kids with autism because I have recently found out that my nephew has sort of a mild form of it.” Trying to figure out exactly what he had and how to deal with it got her interested in the research and what they’re doing about it. She talked about how “there are so many different theories on how it’s developed and if it’s hereditary” and how she finds it very interesting to watch how it’s helped her nephew learn to function with it. So she wants “to get more involved with that.”

She also admitted that she used to be a vet tech and as a result is interested in charities involving animal rescue. In her own words, “If I weren’t an actor, I would probably be in vet school. I love animals and I have a lot of friends that work with animal rescue groups that I try to help as much as I can.”

Being an animal lover, April has a couple dogs of her own (who were ready for us to stop monopolizing their mom’s time near the end of the call). She talked about how living with Matt Dallas in Vancouver actually helps out with the dogs as they both have them and help each other out a lot in taking care of them. As for Matt being her roommate, April had only positive things to say about him, “He is actually – he is such a great roommate. … We were sort of a good little roommate team. We’re definitely going to be roommates again when we’re out there because it’s nice.” In fact, as she realized that she was saying such glowing things about him she laughed and said she wished she had some major issues to dish about him but that “he’s just lovely to live with and lovely to be friends with” that the only way she’d have some was if she made them up!

Science Fiction and the Appeal of Kyle XY
Though April wasn’t necessarily fan of any specific type of science fiction growing up, she did love shows like The X-Files where ” there’s a mystery of a possibility of things that are – I guess that are sort of possible.” That’s also what she likes about Kyle XY, that “in a weird way you almost could believe that it could be true.” That you can almost buy what is happening because of how it is presented is what she finds interesting about the show.

As for the show itself and how it’s improved this season over last, April guessed that the mystery picking up steam had a lot to do with that. In her opinion, the added elements of danger and the position that put Kyle in, like having to protect the Tragers, helped increase the drama, “It was just the stakes were so much higher, and I feel like that generates excitement. People want to know what’s going to happen and how is Kyle going to get out of it.” She did confess, though, that she finds it hard to tell at times because even when they writers are going a direction that she thinks no one will want to see, “all of a sudden everybody loves it.”

So now that Kyle’s secret is out, does that mean all that drama is gone? Will the show continue to focus on the sci-fi plot or get back to more of the family drama side of things? April thinks, “It does sort of a flip-flop. It’s like right when you get back, there’s all this cool stuff that happens because you find out. Then all of a sudden, it’s like it goes away. I’m not sure why they did that or if they wanted to take a break from it, but all of a sudden it just kind of takes a break from it. And it focuses again on the family and the relationships and Kyle’s relationship with Amanda and what it is for him to be who he is and live in the world as a teenager, which I love that dynamic of the show. At first I feel like it’s a lot of sci-fi stuff, and then all of a sudden it’s completely the other way and you just see him living in the world and dealing with life, which I like both parts of the show. But I hope that it continues to go back and forth that way.”

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