2018 San Diego Comic Con
Day 3 (July 21, 2018)
At this year’s San Diego Comic Con, we got a chance to speak with the cast of The Magicians. In this interview, we sat down with Hale Appleman (Eliot Waugh) who spoke on a wide range of issues including the Eliot Monster and who he’d like to work with in Season 4.
After the jump, check out transcribed excerpts from the interview with Hale, as well as video of the full interview!
“John McNamara asked me, ‘yeah, can you play him as a 9 year old without any empathy or impulse control?’ and I said ‘sure’ and then they were like, ‘wait, uh, what’s happening here?!?'” – Hale Appleman
On the Eliot Monster and a feel for how Hale is playing him:
“Then you’re in for a treat because that’s def, there’s more where that came from. There’s a little bit of a child like nature to the Monster, at least in the first few episodes which is what we’ve shot. John McNamara [co-showrunner and an EP on the show] said to me, ‘yeah, can you play him as a 9 year old without any empathy or impulse control?’ and I said ‘sure’ and then they were like, ‘wait, uh, what’s happening here?!?’ [laughs]. Yeah, so the Monster kind of has its own agenda and hopefully will mature over the course of the Season.”
On what he’d like to see Eliot do in Season 4 (assuming he gets his body back from the Monster):
“I haven’t seen him [Eliot] in any scripts and we’ve shot up to Episode 4, or through Episode 4 rather, so I don’t know when or if he’ll come back. But, if he does, which I hope knock on wood does happen, I’d like to see us explore some of his backstory and some of the internal emotional machinery of Eliot. I think that we, I try to give you guys a glimpse of that through what I play in the scenes but I think it would be great to more fully explore some of the dynamics that are alluded to … why he is the way he is, where he came from, and what he wants and where he’s going. I have my own sense of what those things are, but, it would be great to really explore that in detail on camera.”
On what musical number he’d want to do if given the choice:
“I mean, I would like to see the Monster and Eliot do a duet. Like maybe like a Frank Sinatra tune or a Johnny Mathis standard. That would make my heart swell.”