Neil Jackson – DC’s Stargirl

By: Jamie Steinberg

Q) What are the recent projects that you have been busy working on?

A) Yeah, I did The King’s Man, which is a prequel to the Kingsman movie that came out a few years ago. It’s now going to come out in September. It’s set in World War 1 and was amazing fun. I’ve also got the third season of “Absentia” for Amazon Prime. I think that will be coming out, I believe, the beginning of July. I did work on a feature film called New Year, which is directed by a guy named Nathan Sutton. That should be out in the beginning of next year.

Q) What was it about the new series “DC’s Stargirl” or the role of Jordan that made you want to be a part the show?

A) It was offered directly by Geoff Johns. He is the creator of the series and I’ve known him for fifteen years. We did a series in Vancouver fifteen years ago called “Blade: The Series.” He called me up in January of last year and said they were doing a live action version of Stargirl. I knew very little about the series, a part from it being a very personal comic book for him that he created after his sister died. So, I knew it was a very personal project for him and it was extremely flattering for him to ask me to be a part of it. Over the phone he kind of pitched the series to me and he told me who Jordan (a/k/a “Icicle”) is. I just fell in love with the character the moment he started talking about it. What I love is he is a very conflicted and conflicting character. In Jordan’s mind he is the hero of the story. Jordan fell in love with his wife Christine and got married and had a kid. Everything was looking perfect in his life and then his wife got sick. It turned out he was sick from some poisoned land she was working on. Several people she was working with got sick and it turned out that the building she was working in was built on top of toxic waste that was dumped by a big pharma company. The pharma company covered it up and she ended up dying from the sickness. Jordan made it his personal mission that nobody else should suffer that injustice again, which is why he formed the Injustice Society to stop injustices like this from happening to other people. He has considerable wealth and considerable power. He has made it his personal mission from happening to anybody else, but also to make sure that society and the community and the world is left better for his son. It just happens the way he goes about it is not to say the most morally correct or political. He uses his money and his extremely incredible power to force the change he wants. He sees that he is this vitriolic power to have the strength and the power to make the hard decisions to make sure that people don’t suffer like he suffered. He firmly believes he’s the hero of the story and that the fly in the ointment are Stargirl and her team that try to bring him down. They are wrong because what he is doing is absolutely right and just. And I completely related to that! We can all at least empathize with the fact that losing someone you love would be devastating, but losing someone you love because of someone’s willful negligence could send you off into a spiral and that is exactly what it did to Jordan. I just love the fact that he’s the “villain,” he is not by any means. He’s this very driven passionate man who is trying to change a community, America and the world for the better. So, it was an easy one for me to get behind.

Q) Were you familiar with any of your costars before working with them on the show?

A) I obviously knew Amy Smart and Luke Wilson’s work and Nelson Lee, who plays Dragon King, is a dear friend of me. He was actually on “Blade” so I knew him. Chris James Baker, who plays Brainwave, I had seen his work and was really impressed by him. It turned out Chris and I ended up living together when we were in Atlanta shooting. We were sat at the bar in the hotel we were first put in for the first five days looking for an apartment. We were struggling to find an apartment in our price range. We just thought we’d move in together so we became flatmates. We called our flat “the lair” since the two villains were shacked up together like The Odd Couple.

Q) How were you able to get into the mindset to portray Jordan/Icicle? Did it take simply slipping into the costume?

A) For me, it’s all about understanding the emotion of the character. When Geoff pitched me Jordan and the show, I understood it completely. I understood who Jordan was. So, for me, I talked a lot with Geoff about who he is as a man, his motivations and things like that. I was basically trying to distill that down in a way that would was an easy metaphoric jacket to put on and take off. For me, it would be very easy to play Jordan as angry and he is angry. He’s very, very angry. He lost the woman that he loved the most in the world and he’s now raising a son without a mother. He has this rage in him, but that’s only one of the shades of who he is. In looking at him, we decided the shade that was more of an interesting one was a blue shade – the idea that the is deeply, deeply sad. Deeply sad. He hasn’t been able to deal with the death of his wife because the moment she died he set himself on this path. Her death set him on a path for this mission that he has now put in place. He’s now deeply sad and he doesn’t want to be in this position. He doesn’t want to have to rally the troops and cause this change. He’s deeply sad that this world needs somebody like him to do this. Everything that I got and everything that we worked on, we worked those shades in. He’s not this rallying, vitriolic, aggressive leader. All pun intended – he’s more cold. It’s like he’s numb from the pain that was caused to him. As a result, he’s turned very cold and calculated, which is obviously the power he has as well. He can freeze his skin and freeze everything around him. So, it was really using that blue tone as a metaphor. The costume was very blue in tone and the lighting design that he is in is very blue in tone. The mood and the emotion of the emotion that I play the character with is blue in tone. So, really playing with those shades was something I actually found a lot easier once I discovered it to step in and step out of.

Q) How did you shake off a long day of filming?

A) I’d come back to the lair with Chris and we’d pour a gin. [laughs] We’d sit out on the balcony and play guitar and chat. I didn’t find that I was mired by the emotion of the character and it didn’t’ take me long to shake him off. Although there are a lot of deep, deep emotion in the script and Geoff and the rest of the writers and the directors did an amazing job with all of the full bandwidth of the emotion that this character goes through. I didn’t feel like it was a hard jacket to take off at the end of the day. For me, my background is in theater and once I’ve worked on the character and figured out what I want to do then I go on to set and I play within those guidelines. Then, I can step out from that and I don’t need to take it with me. I don’t ever want to judge the characters, but I want to be able to understand and empathize with them because if I’m going to inhabit their body and portray that character, I need to understand their motivation. Sometimes that can be a lot of work because their motivations and their ideals are completely alien to me. So, searching to try and find out who they are and how to play them can be a bigger, deeper find. This one it was an easy tailored jacket and that took me to the work that Geoff did because I just understood him. We all understand loneliness. We all understand sadness. We all understand, to a degree, loss. So, he wasn’t a difficult one for me to understand. Once I was able to understand him, I don’t need to work as hard to make that character fit. As a result, I don’t need to work so hard to step in and out of it.

Q) And, as you said, no villain sees themselves as the bad guy. They think they are doing something for the greater good.

A) I don’t think any villain…You take any villain in history from Pol Pot to Hitler and all the way through, they didn’t think they were villains. They had a plan and they thought what they were doing was for the greater good, even if that greater good was solely selfish and for their greater good. They don’t see themselves as the villain. Nobody is standing there saying, “I’m going to fuck the world up today.” So, as misguided as some of these motivations can be, internally they have to believe that they are righteous. And it’s finding that grey relatability and to bring to the character to make that character real. Jordan absolutely doesn’t think that he’s the villain. He thinks he’s the villain. He thinks doing the most necessary thing. We talked about Thanos from the Avengers Thanos believed that by clicking his fingers and eradicating fifty percent of the population of the universe that the other fifty percent survivors would have a better chance of life. He believed that he alone had the power to make that hard decision of the greater good for everybody else. To the same degree, that’s what Jordan believes. Jordan believes that a seismic change needs to happen in order to fix America and the world. The irony is that change is kind of happening with COVID. We are being forced to be a little more internal with our gaze, a little smaller with our actions and think about our neighbors a lot more. So, there is a little irony in that. He believes that society’s change is going to be caused by him and that, ultimately, mankind and the world will be grateful for the very difficult choice that he has to make to ensure that everybody else thrives.

Q) What are some episodes or moments viewers should look out for?

A) Episode three is called “Icicle” and it’s the really big introduction to the character and his backstory. It’s beautiful. There is a lot in there that is just beautiful. It’s just stripped back and it’s about his wife and his child and the repercussions of what happened to her. It’s not the first time in the series we’re being introduced to Jordan and Icicle. We do that in episode one, but it’s the first time that we get to see a glimpse behind the man. I loved shooting that stuff because there was nothing about him that was villainous. He was just a human being going through the worst grief imaginable and it just so happens that he has this incredible superpower. He was just a man going through active grief. One of the things I love about that I’m really hoping that when audiences see episode three and they get to understand Jordan a little better, they are going to be super conflicted because until that point he’s painted as this big baddie that ultimately Stargirl (Brec Bassinger) is going to clash against and that Starman (Joel McHale) did clash against. They are going to naturally side with “good” and want Jordan to lose. I’m really hoping that by the time the credits roll on episode three audiences are going to be conflicted because they are going to understand and empathize with him. And if we get that little empathy towards Jordan, what a beautiful thing for a drama – that conflict for audience is kind of not wanting him to lose, understanding his perspective and in some ways rooting for him to succeed. If we can get that from the audience, that would be incredible! I believe all of that is in there to achieve that.

Q) Since you are a part of social media, are you looking forward to fan feedback you’ll receive to episodes?

A) Yeah! When I did “Sleepy Hollow” I did a lot of interaction with the fans and the few shows I’ve done has been some good interactions with the fans. But this one, more than anything…I think that social media has now grown to a level where I’m already getting…A number of people have reached out to me after seeing the trailer and are really excited and chatting. I’m really excited to have that close contact with fans who have questions and are interested and inspired. Whatever it happens to be, I’m really interested to see what that direction is going to be. I know that I can have an immediate correspondence with people who the show is connected to.

Q) Will you be sharing some behind the scenes photos and videos for the premiere?

A) I’ll probably live tweet with the episode. Then, I’ve taken so many photos from on set that I look forward to sharing once the episodes start airing. It’s been a real gift for me for multiple reasons. Firstly, it was a huge gift that I get to be back on set with Geoff Johns. Fifteen years was the last time we got to work together. The first scene that Dragon King appeared on set was with Jordan. So, it was me, Nelson and Geoff. We all walked on set in our costumes and we all welled up and gave each other a big hug because it had been fifteen years since we’d been on set together. It’s been a huge gift for me to be on this show and to be working on something so personal to Geoff. But also, it’s a character that I just get. I relate to him so I think that he’s so well written and so complex and interesting. I can’t wait for fans to see that and share that from set.

Q) What do you think it is about “DC’s Stargirl” that will set it apart from other superhero series?

A) Well, the biggest thing for me is the tone. Tone is everything with this and, again, that’s all Geoff and the team behind it. He said the touchstone and tone has been Back to the Future. He said that’s what he wanted to create – a fun, action, blockbuster series that all the family can enjoy. That means all of the shades are in there. You’ve got Stargirl and her friends who are all in high school. So, you’ve got a girl who has traveled to a town. She’s a fish out of water. She’s trying to discover who she is in this town and will she make friends. At the same point she’s discovering that her father may have been this superhero Starman and that at some degree she is inheriting the powers. So, all of that is obviously a metaphor for change and puberty and everything. But against that, there is this really dark element of this Injustice Society of which Jordan is the leader of and is doing something nefarious in town, which she is trying to uncover. And the tone is brilliant because it’s scary in places and it’s fun in places and it’s laugh outloud hilarious in places. It kind of ticks all of the boxes for me. I remember reading the script’s and saying to Geoff, “Having just read the scripts, I don’t see how you are going to marry these elements. There is a real darkness to what I’ve said Jordan is going through – his wife dying, orphaning his child, a murder and all of the things in his world basically sort of mixed with ‘Riverdale’ high school drama.” Then, he showed me one of the episodes and I had a big grin on my face because it blends perfectly. It’s dark when it needs to be. It’s light when it needs to be. It’s very funny. It has moments that are scary. I just think the tone doesn’t take itself seriously so it’s very, very fun. But it’s serious when it needs to be and I thnk there is genuinely something in there for everybody to get for all ages and genders.