Happy New Year! I thought I would kick off 2022 with a new round of Sci-Fi Blast From The Past posts. To new readers, Blast From The Past interviews appeared in-print only and not on-line. Today, Tom Ellis talks about played TV's ultimate "bad boy" in FOX's Lucifer. Enjoy!
Most of us have had the occasional bad day at work, but what if you were stuck for eternity in a job that you came to one day despise. When God chose to cast his son, the angel Lucifer, out of Heaven, he put him in charge of Hell. After a while, though, all that fire, brimstone and tortured souls can wear a person down, especially an immortal. A few years back in the hit FOX TV series Lucifer, The Prince of Darkness a.k.a. Lucifer Morningstar traded in his proverbial pitchfork and horns to begin a new life. He along with his confidant Maze came to Los Angeles where Lucifer opened the trendy nightclub Lux.
In the show’s pilot, Lucifer helped LAPD Detective Chloe Decker with her inquires when a young actress he once befriended was murdered in front of Lux. “Playing” detective gave Lucifer quite the buzz, so much so that he took it upon himself to use his devilish charm, disarming good looks, intoxicating British accent and persuasive supernatural skills to assist Decker on her subsequent cases. That unlikely partnership continues in Lucifer’s second season and actor Tom Ellis, who plays our favorite demonic protagonist, experienced a somewhat heavenly start when slipping back into character.
“One of the greatest joys for me returning to work this year was walking back onto the set on day one of season two and seeing just how many of our crew had returned,” recalls Ellis. “It was kind of tangible last season while we were shooting the show that our crew was enjoying what we were making. So it was a wonderful testament to that when I stepped back on-set this season and saw that so many of them had decided to wait for Lucifer to come back and once again be part of the creative process. That spoke volumes to me that this is the type of work environment I really love and relish as far as getting up every morning and going to set.
“From a character point of view, and this is just me as Tom, I spent two weeks prior to the start of filming season two thinking, ‘Is where I’m planning to pick back up as Lucifer going to be OK?’ and doubting myself a little bit, but it didn’t take long to get back into the groove. I genuinely enjoy playing this part, and in a weird way it comes quite naturally to me now simply because I spend so much time in his shoes,” jokes the actor. “With a TV pilot you get 40 to 50 pages of a script that has the beginning of the story, so a great deal of the time you’re making judgement calls and [acting] choices based on no actual history on your character. You can create some background stuff for yourself, but there is no guarantee further down the line that the writers are going to stick with what you’ve come up with.
“Now, however, as the layers of Lucifer have been peeled back on the show, I’m having the same experiences as Lucifer Morningstar, where, acting-wise, I’m saying to myself, ‘Oh, I never thought about it like this before.’ So for me it continues to be a real joy finding out the depths of this character that we roughly sketched out in the pilot a year ago.”
Needless to say, dear old dad cannot condone what he sees as his son’s reckless abandonment of Hell, which has upset the balance between good and evil on Earth. Lucifer’s brother Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside) is sent from Heaven to Los Angeles in an effort to persuade his sibling to return to Hell. He fails, however, and Amenadiel’s presence only further strains the brothers’ already tumultuous relationship. The family dynamic is once again shaken up at the start of Lucifer’s second season following tragic events in the season one finale Take Me Back to Hell. When Lucifer is fatally shot and dies, God brings him back to life in return for agreeing to recapture an escaped soul from Hell. This “lost soul,” in fact, turns out to be Lucifer’s and Amenadiel’s mother Charlotte (Tricia Helfer), but she is not the only familial surprise facing the brothers.
“I never for one moment really thought about Lucifer’s mum in the grand scheme of things, because the first season was about dad issues,” says Ellis. “So it was kind of a jaw-dropping but also exciting moment when I first read about it in the script, and what it has done is created a new dynamic in the show, which as an actor is something you always hope for. It’s now tapping into a vein that we haven’t as yet tapped into, and it shows, shall we say, a more vulnerable side to my character.
“We also start to learn a lot more about Lucifer before he became The Devil, and that in itself has been quite exhilarating. However, purely on the sort of maternal side of things, having his mum around is the same as it would be for most people. I think most of us act a little differently when our mum is around, so it has brought up some fun storytelling opportunities, not only when to comes to depth, drama, emotion and the notion of family, but some brilliant comedic-type moments as well. Lucifer’s mum hasn’t always looked like Tricia Helfer. As a celestial being, she has had to take on a human form, and the body she found for herself is quite disturbing for Lucifer as well as Amenadiel, so mum’s arrival has been great on lots of levels and has made me very, very happy.
“As for today’s announcement at the TCAs (Television Critics Association) gathering about Michael Imperioli [The Sopranos] joining the show as another of my character’s brothers, Uriel, I can’t tell you an awful lot about that because we haven’t started filming with him yet. I haven’t even met Michael in person, but I’m a big fan of his work and I’m really looking forward to adding another richer dynamic to the show.”
Although Lucifer and Amenadiel were very much at loggerheads during the first season, in season two, their relationship becomes slightly less combative. "The brothers are forced to work together on the same team,” notes Ellis, “but as many sportspeople will tell you, you don’t necessarily have to like your teammate, you just have to play well on the same team. That’s pretty much the notion with Lucifer and Amenadiel. There’s still deep-seeded resentment between them about their upbringing, but we explore that more this season as well. With the introduction of their mum, we find out bit more about the brothers’ backgrounds and what their childhood was like. Parents won’t always say it, but sometimes they have favorites, so how does that affect the family and, specifically, the children.”
As busy as Lucifer is with his family issues, he is not about to abandon his extracurricular sleuthing activities with Detective Decker (Lauren German). Their professional and personal relationships continue to blossom and become all the more complex in Lucifer’s second season. “Obviously there are some more unanswered questions at the beginning of the season about the fact that Chloe saw my character basically get shot pointblank, bleed out, die, and then come back to life,” says Ellis. “We don’t avoid that at all, but rather deal with the issue head-on in the season opener.
“Chloe and Lucifer are sort of the lynchpins of the show, really, because they are and will continue to be disarming of one another. They find themselves with no choice but to lower their guard and be themselves when they’re around each other, more so than when they’re with anyone else. That for me is very much the heartbeat of Lucifer, because Lucifer’s experience of humanity is exemplified by Chloe.”
Much to Lucifer’s surprise, Chloe is immune to his ability to charm others into revealing their deepest, darkest secrets. His time spent with the detective has also impacted his immortality, to the extent that he sometimes experiences pain and can be physically harmed. On top of that, he has actually begun to “care” about those around him. Such vulnerability has not escaped the notice of Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt), who has used her own methods to try to convince Lucifer they should return to hell. In doing so, however, she has driven a wedge between the two of them. It is no wonder that he consulted a therapist, Dr. Linda Martin (Rachael Harris), to help him sort out these confusing new feelings. Even that relationship, though, is not a straightforward one, much to Ellis’ delight.
“I would say that this season is more about the emancipation of Maze,” he muses. “It got to the point last year where she no longer worked for Lucifer, but they share a connection that cannot be undone. So in season two you will see an interesting shift in their relationship. With Dr. Linda, my character continues his therapy sessions with her, and more often than not, at least when we start out, Lucifer once again gets the wrong end of the stick. He confides in her about his mum and what that means to him, but then sort of a quarter of the way through the season, something rather major happens between Lucifer and Dr. Linda, and I am really excited about that,” says the actor with a chuckle.
Aside from being the occasional comedic relief, The Devil has never really been portrayed in a positive light on TV and in feature films, which is fair, perhaps, given his morally reprehensible track record over the centuries. Lucifer, however, has reimagined humanity’s ultimate evil and, while not turning him into an actual hero, has given viewers someone who they can cheer on every week.
”I’ve always said the saving grace of this show is the humor and the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is quite disarming for viewers,” says Ellis. “They’re finding themselves being engrossed and entertained for the most part, and then suddenly something happens and the rug is pulled from under their feet. As a result, they realize that they’re far more connected to as well as invested in this character than maybe they thought, and I think a lot of that has to do with the humor. It’s a wonderful thing to make someone laugh because it creates a connection between you. On top of that, there is a worldwide fascination with The Devil. In every religion and culture there has always been a version of that representation of evil, but the way we’ve approached the whole thing is, I feel, why people have stuck with us and are rooting for Lucifer.”
Steve Eramo
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