Steven Krueger – The Originals

By starrymag | April 25, 2018

By: Jamie Steinberg

 

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

A) Finishing up the last season of “The Originals” and then I did an episode of Ryan Hanson’s new show on YouTube Red. It’s really fun and it’s a half hour sitcom called “Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on TV.” It’s kind of silly and sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek. It was really, really fun. He’s actually one of the nicest people I’ve met in this business. I got to do a really fun episode with him, Joel McHale, Donald Faison and Samira Wiley. So, it was a really fun group to work with.

Q) What is new this season on “The Originals” and with your character Josh?

A) Well, for people that don’t know, we’ve done another time jump at the beginning of this season. Between the end of Season Four and the beginning of Season Five we’ve jumped ahead seven years. We basically kind of picked up the story. The entire Originals family is kind of scattered throughout the world because of the curse that was put on them at the end of Season Four. They are scattered and really haven’t spoken to each other or seen each other so as not to trigger the curse. So, that leaves only a few of us left in New Orleans. Josh, Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin), Vincent (Yusuf Gatewood) and Freya (Riley Voelkel) are now the leaders of the factions in New Orleans. Of course, Hope is now all grown up into a teenager and with all the trouble that comes along with it. Everything is a little bit different this season, but the nice thing is we’ve just been through seven years of peace in New Orleans. Without the Originals family there, everything has kind of settled down. All the factions are keeping to themselves and everyone has gotten along pretty well. It’s a nice setting for the beginning of the season. Of course, as you’ll find out, that surely does not last very long.

Q) What has continued to challenge you about portraying Josh?

A) It’s interesting. We’ve done five seasons of the show, but within that five years we’ve basically had about twenty-years pass with the time jumps we did a the beginning of Season Four and Season Five. So, playing a vampire…Even though they don’t technically age physically, they do psychologically and mentally. Playing a character that has aged twenty years since the start of the show has been a little bit of a challenge and I would say the thing that I focused on and the thing I really focused on this season was how has Josh grown from kind of a boy to a man. When he first showed up in New Orleans he was very naïve and became a vampire and didn’t really know what was going on. He has sort of evolved throughout each season and with every passing year he grows into this new world and becomes more comfortable and confident. Now we get to the point, at the beginning of Season Five, with Marcel (Charles Michael Davis) kind of being absent and not in New Orleans, Josh has really taken over being the leader of the vampires New Orleans. It’s been really fun and challenging to kind of take Josh’s evolution from this young, scared naïve little boy to really a grown man who kind of owns the world that he lives in and that’s been a lot of fun.

Q) The cast are pretty inseparable on screen. Is it like that way for all of you off screen as well?

A) I don’t know how it works on other shows. I’ve heard good stories and I’ve heard bad stories about other shows that have had a long run like we have, as far as how their cast gets along. I think I’ve just gotten very lucky because we are a pretty damn tight-knit cast. We get along really well, both on set and off. Me, personally, one of the things I’m going to take away from the show is some of the relationships that I’ve made. I’ve really truly made some life-long friends just from working on this show. I’m really close with Charles Michael Davis, Danielle Campbell and Colin Woodell and some of the writers like Carina MacKenzie and Julie Plec, of course. I think that’s one of the take away’s from this show – we’ve been such a tight-knit cast and such a tight-knit group of creative minds that have come together to make this that it’s been an unbelievably pleasant experience for the past five years.

Q) With Josh being an LGBT character, why is it so important to have a young, gay character at the forefront of such a popular TV series?

A) Well, I think it’s important because there are young gay people at the forefront of just about everything that is happening in the world at this point. So, I don’t see Josh or any other LGBT character on TV as an anomaly anymore and it shouldn’t be because we’re in a day and age where LGBT individuals are present in every aspect of what is going on around the country and around the world. So, I really just see our show as kind of representative of that. One of the things I’ve always said I’ve liked about the way that Josh has been written on the show is that his sexuality is just one aspect to the character. I think that typically in the past we’ve seen a lot of LGBT characters be written around their sexuality, as if to say, “Hey look! We have an LGBT character on our show.” With Josh, he is a very dynamic character, a very three-dimensional character who has a lot of stuff going on. And, oh yeah, he happens to be gay as well. We’ve explored his sexuality on the show – his romantic life. But that’s what I’ve really liked about Josh – he’s not just a token gay character on the show. He’s a fully formed three-dimensional character that has a lot going on and his sexuality just happens to be one of the storylines.

Q) Is that also what has been your favorite part about Josh’s evolution and growth throughout the series?

A) Yeah, I think so. That is a part of it. Him really owning not only his sexuality, but his confidence as a man. You’ll see as this season evolves here that Josh has really become kind of the moral center of the show. He’s always had a little bit of that, but he’s really started to own that, especially this season. Yeah, his evolution from Season One to Season Five has been pretty remarkable. I would argue probably more so than a bigger evolution than anybody on the show because everybody else has been alive for so long and they kind of are who they are at this point. After you have been alive for hundreds or thousands of years, you are kind of set in your ways so there is not going to be a lot of shapes there. So, Josh has had a really nice arc from beginning to end that has really seen him grow up and own everything about himself, including his sexuality.

Q) Who would you have been a dream guest star to have seen at some point on the “The Originals?”

A) Oh my gosh! The list is probably infinite. I always thought it would be funny to have a comedic actor on the show. Obviously, we’re a very heavily dramatic show. Josh, more than anybody, provides a little bit of that lightness and comedy here and there. I always thought it would be funny to have some sort of comedic relief on the show, either for an episode that was comedic or for a little arc on the show. Maybe like a Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell or Jason Bateman come on the show and mix it up. It would be hilarious and would really catch people off guard, I think. I think it would be hilarious, but we never went out on the limb and took the chance to invite them to com eon the show. Who knows if they would have done it?

Q) What have been some of your most memorable moments from filming throughout the years?

A) Funny enough, I would say that my biggest memories from the show are probably ultimately going to be the ones that happened offscreen and off set. Obviously, being there and filming was incredible and every single season and almost every episode there is something memorable that happened. A lot of the first season my stuff was with Davina and Marcel and kind of finding my way. The second season was with Colin Woodell and the whole romantic storyline and on and on. I think that more than anything the relationships I’ve formed with the people on the show (cast, writers, producers, crew, etc.) the time I spent with them off camera and away from set whether it is in Europe at a convention with some of the cast or traveling around the world with them or going and learning how to shoot bows and arrows lessons with Charles Michael Davis or going to music festivals with Colin. Those are the memories I’m going to take away most from the show because those will be lasting ones. We’ll all go on to do other work and work on other jobs and tv and so on, but a lot of these real-life experiences I have had with the people that I have met are ultimately what is going to stick in my mind the most.

Q) Was there any particular items you took from set as momentos from your time working on the series?

A) Oh yes! Absolutely. I’m assuming everybody took their chair backs. I’ve got a pretty cool shadowbox thing that is getting made up with my chair back, name and the name tag that says “Josh” that was on my dressing room. I will say the one big memento that I took were my vampire fangs. The hair and makeup people had no use for them anymore. They asked, “Do you want to take your vampire fangs home?” And I said, “Do I ever!” They are now in my nightstand drawer and I’m not really sure what to do with them. I thought it would be fun to walk down the street and smile at people and see what kind of reaction that I get.

Q) If you’re in LA, I’m sure they wouldn’t notice.

A) Exactly! I’d fit right in. People wouldn’t blink. [laughs]

Q) What have you taken away, personally, from your time working on “The Originals?”

A) As an actor, I could myself as very, very fortunate and very lucky because most actors don’t get the opportunity to be on the show from the beginning all the way through the end – especially one that runs for five seasons or more. That’s a rarity in our world. So, I count myself very fortunate. I think what I’ve learned as an actor is what that is like, that experience is like, to really sit with a character for five straight years. I was fortunate to be able to bounce around and do some other stuff in between seasons when I had off time from the show, but to really play a character for five straight seasons is an interesting experience and I had a lot of revelations just about the craft of acting about how you can keep a performance fresh and a character fresh over the course of so much time. That is an invaluable lesson that I’ve learned. Like I said, it’s a lesson a lot of actors in our business don’t get the opportunity to learn. So, I’m very, very fortunate to have done that. The other thing is like I said earlier, being able to forge personal relationships outside of the work place is an awesome opportunity. It’s something we don’t think about a lot because our business is different than any other business. A lot of people go to work every day from nine to five and see a lot of the same people day in and day out. So, they have relationships there. Ours is a little more sporadic. Sometimes it is working with someone for three straight days and then we may not have a scene with that person for the next year. So, I think that being able to really connect with people on a personal level and forge relationships outside of the workplace is so important in our business. I’ve been able to do that on our show and it’s something I’ll be able to take with me here on it – really making an effort to kind of have those relationships so I can come out of them with something more than I came in with.

Q) You have such great comedic timing. Are you looking forward to doing more sitcom projects in the future?

A) That would be nice! I’ve always been interested in comedic work. It’s something that I not only feel I’m good at, but really enjoy. I think that working on a sitcom would be a lot of fun. The ones I’ve done where I’ve been guest star have been incredible experiences. It’s certainly something I am open to and if the right opportunity came along I would pounce on it, for sure. That said, going forward I’m always interested in playing characters (whether it be on a sitcom or drama) that provide a challenge for me. I’ve learned that the other thing about working on a show for five years is that at some point regardless of your work ethic you are going to deal with complacency. I think that has happened to me and I think it happens with everybody. You feel like you know the character so well that do I really need to put in the time preparing for this scene or episode or can I just kind of wing it since I really know what I’m doing so well? I think that going forward I want to find characters as much as possible that provide a challenge day in and day out. Maybe characters that aren’t very much like me, personally, that really is an effort to get into that head space and be able to work on it every single that. So, that’s kind of going to be my focus going forward as I evaluate projects from here on it.

Q) What would you like to say to everyone who is a fan and supporter of you and the work you’ve done on throughout the run of “The Originals?”

A) Well, two things – the first, of course, is thank you from the bottom of our heart. Our show in general wouldn’t have made it did if it weren’t for the fans. Not just the number of fans, but how truly passionate the fans of the show are. There aren’t a lot of shows out there where the fans are as driven and passionate and crazy about a show as they are for “the Originals.” That’s been really nice and really fun to see. Every time I got to a convention, hop on Twitter and I see the reaction to the show and the work that we’re doing it just melts my heart. It’s really nice to see. So, of course, thank you. Then, the other thing is that I would encourage our fans and fans of any television shows like ours to keep doing what they are doing. Television is entering a new era where there is just so much content across so many mediums and platforms that it is virtually impossible to watch everything that you want to watch. But I would say, keep indulging and keep fantasizing and watching our shows and letting them be an escape and something that inspires you because there is so much content out there. We really want to keep doing it and of course that is reliant on people wanting to see what we’re doing. That would be great! Continue watching!