Cowboy Bebop's Elena Satine Shot Her 'Biggest Episodes' While Pregnant: 'Incredibly Challenging' (2024)

Popular anime Cowboy Bepop recently received new life as live-action Netflix series, and for star Elena Satine, it was dream come true on many levels.

"I was a huge fan of the original. ... I think when it was on Adult Swim is when I saw it. It must have been like 12, 15 years ago and I absolutely loved it," Satine, 34, tells PEOPLE exclusively.

"I remember the person who showed it to me said, 'Even if you don't like anime, you're going to like this,'" she continues. "And that's how I've sold it to so many people ever since then because it is such a blending of genres, including the music, and such a beautiful and heartfelt story at the center of it about loneliness and not being able to look over your past."

Netflix's iteration of Cowboy Bebop follows a group of bounty hunters chasing down criminals across outer space. The Georgian-American actress plays Julia, who is the former love interest of John Cho's Spike Spiegel and wife of Alex Hassell's Vicious.

"When the opportunity to audition for this came up, it's one of those things where as an actor, when you really want something, you rarely get it. I mean, it's a lottery every time. So I really had to manage my expectations," she says. "So to find myself now on this side of it, the show being out in the world and I'm a part of it, it's completely wild."

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Filming the sci-fi series was "incredibly challenging" for Satine, who notes "a few things" happened that sparked difficulties.

"We started filming in 2019 and we had gone through a six-week boot camp. We all got in tiptop shape. And when we started filming, I had a lot of work upfront and we were shooting our sets. So everything that was filmed in mine and Vicious' apartment, all the scenes of episodes one through 10, those were all shot in 2019," she says. "We essentially shot out that entire arc in 2019 and then literally the day after we wrapped the apartment set, John Cho got injured. We shut down for close to a year."

By the time filming resumed in 2020, things had changed drastically for Satine. She was expecting a child with her husband, All-American Rejects frontman Tyson Ritter. (The couple's son is now 5 months old.)

"We went back in 2020, did the whole boot camp thing again [and] went back into filming. At that point, I was actually pregnant," she says. "By the time I got around to shooting my biggest episodes, which were the VR episode, episode six, and the flashback episode, I was seven months pregnant."

Naturally, Satine was experiencing "all the things that go along with" being pregnant as she continued to film.

"I was sick, I was tired, I was incredibly swollen. All of my corsets had to be de-boned. My costumes had to be re-worked. I mean, it was pretty full-on towards the end there but somehow we got through it," she says. "I felt so incredibly supported by everybody. Our cast and crew was amazing. I had an incredible stunt double named Jackie who really did the brunt of the heavy lifting towards the end there. So when I say it took an army to finish this, it really did."

Ritter, in fact, had a role as Iron Mink during the show's seventh episode, though Satine was unable to work alongside him.

"I didn't get to work with him because his storyline was with Daniella Pineda," the actress says. "I know they had a blast together and I was a little bit jealous. I was hoping that maybe I'd get a scene with him, but no. I didn't get to."

"I do hope that sometime in the future we can find something that we can do together. That makes sense but it's got to be the right thing," she adds.

In the meantime, Satine is holding out for a second season of Cowboy Bebop.

Satine's character, Julia, had quite the retooling from the original anime. Julia has a more expanded role outside of her male love interests and by the season's end, she's seemingly preparing to head down a darker path.

According to Satine, "a lot" of her own personality "ended up influencing who Julia became in the story."

"For instance, I played the piano and I sang and that was something that was worked into the season," she says. "And then, I remember reading episode nine, which is a flashback episode, and Vicious is speaking Russian to Julia. I said to our showrunner ... 'What's up with that?' And it's because I'm Georgian, but Russian is my native tongue. I grew up speaking Russian. So it was really nice to have those little nods."

Satine admits she'd "really like" for Julia to serve as the villain in season 2. "I hope now that she is in control, she can be a little bit more like her anime counterpart in that she's a badass, she's running around with guns, she's doing car chases. She's a woman in control of her own destiny," she adds.

Satine has been acting since she was a child, previously appearing on a Russian children's variety show Morning Star. She eventually left her life in Georgia behind to pursue an acting career in New York, leading to her later landing roles on Revenge and The Gifted.

Satine is "really interested in other aspects of the business" as well, though she's unsure of where she'd like to take her career.

"I don't know what the next step is," she says. "I don't know what the next thing is that's going to make me feel something, but I'm definitely looking forward to finding out."

Season 1 of Cowboy Bebop is now streaming on Netflix.