Why I fell in love with the actress behind Teen Wolf’s Lydia Martin
My first time through the current seasons of MTV’s Teen Wolf, I was not a fan of Lydia Martin (played by Holland Roden). Holland does this thing with her lips that reminded me a lot of Willa Holland (Arrow, The O.C.), and made Lydia this incredibly unlikable character at first. She was rude and entirely too self-absorbed and it took much longer to warm up to her (which is untrue of similar characters like The O.C.’s Summer Roberts or Gossip Girl’s Blair Waldorf). But when Lydia’s storyline developed and gave her more personality than Beacon Hills High’s very own “Queen Bee,” Holland Roden suddenly was given the opportunity to play a much more complex character – and she ran with it. Thankfully, Lydia Martin is here to stay and is – in my opinion – one of the best teen characters on television right now.
After convincing my parents that they would enjoy the Teen Wolf series, I started my rewatch and learned more about the character and found myself liking Lydia more and more. With the extra features on the series’ first season DVD box set, I was also able to gain more insight into Holland as a person.
Just as an example, on the cast commentary for the episode “Co-Captain,” you can clearly see that Holland takes her job seriously and thoroughly enjoys it. I think I really started to appreciate her as an actress while watching this episode with the audio commentary simply because she took the time to give shout-outs to various members of the crew and explain specific things that were being discussed which weren’t obvious to the average viewer/listener. As someone with a background in film and an interest in working in the television industry, Holland’s support for everyone behind making Teen Wolf such an enjoyable series made an impact.
I think Teen Wolf’s casting director, Wendy O’Brien did a fantastic job! What do you think of Holland Roden?
