Once Upon a Time 100th episode: Cast reveals favorite memories from shooting the pilot

In honor of the ABC fairy tale drama’s landmark episode, EW hit the set of Once Upon a Time, where the original cast and executive producers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis shared their fondest memories of shooting the pilot.

“I can remember distinctly that it wasn’t the first day that I filmed on the pilot; it might’ve been the second or the third,” Dallas says. “It was the wake-up scene where Charming kisses Snow. She wakes up and she’s surrounded by the dwarves in the woods and she’s in that wood-log coffin with the glass top on it. You can see her lying there looking very beautiful and very Snow White-esque. He rides up on the horse. We were filming deep in the woods in this beautiful place. On that day, right when we started shooting that scene, it started to snow. It was symbolic of the whole scene. We were shooting, in live action, one of the most famous and well-known fairy tale scenes that there is, the true love’s kiss, and it just started to snow. It was a special moment.”

“We decided that the coffin would be a hollowed-out tree,” Kitsis says. “We really hollowed out a tree. We were two hours away, there was no cell service, it was snowing, and we brought Ginny out in that gown. We knew her from Big Love, and we were fans, but we weren’t really friends yet; we barely knew her. We wrote the part for her, she said yes, [and] we were shocked.  We brought her out to the set and there she sees she has to be in this dress in the cold getting snowed on and lay in this hollowed-out tree trunk. She has this look on her face. She goes, ‘Is that the coffin?’ and we said, ‘Yes.’ Inside, I’m like, ‘Oh God, this is going to be a problem.’ We were like, ‘Yeah, what do you think?’ She just looked at it and goes, ‘F—ing awesome.'”

“I would say the first time we meet the Evil Queen at the wedding,” Parrilla says. “That was my first day as her. It was my first day in full costume, hair, and makeup. I remember being very nervous and had my music playing on my iPod and I was really focused. I just wanted to do great and I wanted to do great for Regina. I wanted her to be the character that they’ve created and so much more. I remember when those doors flung open, even though they weren’t really there, just looking up and making that entrance was something that was very powerful for me as this character. I learned that that’s what she does; she knows how to make an entrance. That’s how she intimidates people. It was the fun; the joy in it and also the real truth of this pain and anger and resentment that she’s been carrying all these years.

“That was very informative for me moving forward with Regina and playing the Evil Queen, how she holds on to the past and she lets the past dictate her future and the choices that she makes, but she was in a very particular place in that time in her life and she didn’t have love. She wasn’t happy. Even though her father had been giving her that message and trying to show her a better way, she didn’t respect him. She never trusted him and she was blinded by her hatred and resentment for Snow. It’s only when we jump forward into Storybrooke when she adopts Henry, she learns from him that she can be happy. He brings that happiness into her life, but ultimately it’s the love that does.”

“It was the wedding,” Kitsis says. “There was just something about Lana in that costume, and Snow and Charming, and seeing all the people and dwarves come in. I remember we were cranking Ziggy Stardust — me, [pilot director] Mark Mylod and Adam — from behind video village just to get everyone excited, because we wanted it to be a Bowie wedding. There was something about, ‘Wow, this was an idea that Adam and I had 11 years earlier,’ and to see it actually coming to life was one of those rare times where one of your dreams come true.”

“I was only in two scenes in the pilot,” Carlyle says. “The introduction of Rumplestiltskin in the cell was a massive moment that established the character from then on. That’s a great memory for me. Where we shot it as well, that wasn’t shot in the studio. It looks like it when you look at it because that set was recreated for future episodes. We first shot that in the Britannia Mines, which is in Squamish just outside Vancouver below the surface of the earth. It was quite an interesting place to go to work. It certainly helped the atmosphere in that scene. That was my biggest memory of the pilot and creating the voice and the character that Rumplestiltskin then became.” 

“One of the moments I’ll never forget was being on location for Rumplestiltskin’s jail cell,” Horowitz says. “We had written the part for Robert Carlyle. We had been huge fans forever and had been dying to work with him. We were so thrilled he had agreed to do this part, but we hadn’t seen what he was going to do. He was in the cave, he was in his costume and in the rehearsal he didn’t do anything — he was saving it all for camera. When the director yelled ‘Action’ and he dropped down from the shadows and yelled out at Snow White, it was the most startling transformation.”

“It was such a blur,” Morrison says. “I was still working on How I Met Your Mother when I was shooting the pilot, so I was going back and forth between the two shows. I was delirious the whole time, I feel like. I remember when we were shooting the scene where Emma pulls into Storybrooke with the yellow bug for the first time with Henry in the car, and he’s been talking non-stop the whole journey from Boston. She gets out of the car and slams the door. ‘All right! Enough!’ There was just something about that moment where I think that was the first time I really felt Emma in my bones. There was just something about that scene where it all clicked. It felt like a part of me.”

“The pilot was so magical,” she says. “As a professional, blowing up the nursery when the curse hit was a pretty insane experience. I’d never been part of something like that before.”

“That was a very good scene,” he says. “My favorite part about that one is him preparing to look out the window to see the clock move, because it was such an interesting moment to see what Henry does in his spare time. He turns on his music and looks out the window. That was a nice and fun scene to film. I also remember all the scenes driving in the car with Emma were really fun and cool to film, because it was the first time I’ve ever done something like that.”