Luke Macfarlane talks about his various TV projects, including the Hallmark movie Christmas Land, Season Two of Killjoys, his brief turn on Supergirl (“I got to catch up with Calista Flockhart,”) and his upcoming PBS potential series Mercy Street (which also stars Cameron Monaghan and Jack Falahee)
“I’m super proud of this project. It’s produced by Scott-Free, [it has] wonderful writers. I play Chaplain Hopkins, who was a Union Chaplain who worked at this hospital,” he explains. “It’s essentially an Upstairs, Downstairs story of a hospital. Being a Civil War buff, I was very excited to live inside this world. It’s a fantastic cast. I think PBS is looking to find something that whets the appetite of the Downton Abbey audience, which they’ll be losing this year as the show goes off the air. I don’t know how official it is, but I understand they’d like to do one for every year of the war.”
Plus his hopes for a return to NBC’s The Night Shift.
“Also holding a place on Macfarlane’s dance card is the third season of The Night Shift. He hopes he can return to the show after Killjoys wraps in April. “Gabe [Sachs] has been really open with me. I love doing that show. I want to [give him a window] and come do something with Brendan. I’m pitching myself,” he says. “I love being part of the show. I know how frustrating it was for fans [that my availability impacted the story].”
Luke Macfarlane Talks Christmas Land, Killjoys, Mercy Street, and More [Exclusive] Posted by Heather M on December 19, 2015 at 3:53 pm
Photo Credit: Fred Hayes/Crown Media United States, LLC
Luke Macfarlane broke our hearts in the first season of Killjoys,
but we’re thrilled they are already working on season two. The bad news? We’ll have to wait six months for those episodes. The good news? Macfarlane is back on our TVs Sunday night opposite Awkward‘s Nikki DeLoach in Christmas Land, a very sweet, fun Christmas movie for Hallmark Channel. And next month,
he’s on PBS in the Civil War era miniseries/limited series Mercy Street. I jumped on the phone with Macfarlane this week to talk about his projects.
Christmas Land is Macfarlane’s second uting for Hallmark after 2014’s The Memory Book (when I interviewed him the first time), and it was a super-fast turnaround. They just wrapped filming in November and were able to take advantage of an early winter in Salt Lake City, which helped them set the tone.
Photo Credit: Fred Hayes/Crown Media United States, LLC
Macfarlane had a ball working on the movie. “My agent is really good at being in touch with the folks at Hallmark Channel. They thought of me [for this]. I did [The Memory Book] and didn’t do a terrible job, so they gave me another crack at it,” he laughs. “It’s great because the Christmas movies are a big part of the Hallmark tradition. It was an honor to be asked because it’s a whole other level of what Hallmark is known for. I jumped at the opportunity to do it.”
The movie was Macfarlane’s first time working with DeLoach and he adored her. “Nikki is really special. I did the Google thing [before we started work]. She’s so grounded and such an honest, hardworking girl,” he says. “She’s texting with her mother making sure Christmas things are arranged. She’s a great mother. I really, really, really respected her and the way she’s navigated the business as an actress. She’s great and prepared and on the point.”
He was happy they didn’t have to fake the cold weather, which made the shoot that much more special. “We were joking that you could see our cold breath so it made it especially cozy and authentic,” he says. “Most of the time, it’s fake snow and it’s the middle of the summer. We were the last one [filmed for this holiday season]. They made it work to get it done in time for Christmas.”
Photo Credit: Fred Hayes/Crown Media United States, LLC
“They did an amazing job with the location. We found this beautiful old pioneer town that became the primary setting. You never know when you read the script how they’re going to pull off this important set piece,” he explains. “It was these old facades, and with the smells, it was so cozy. It was especially exciting. The background players [in Salt Lake City] are the best I’ve ever worked with. They were so good. They had just lost Blood & Oil when we were there so there was a lot of disappointment about that.”
Macfarlane made a point to meet TV icon Maureen McCormick, who appears in flashbacks. “She was so lovely. I knocked on her trailer because we didn’t have scenes together and said hello and an hour later, we were chatting about life and family and the business,” he recalls. “She was so wonderful and kind and open-hearted. I really, really enjoyed her.”
Eagle-eyed viewers may have caught Macfarlane in a recent two-episode appearance on Supergirl, which he filmed earlier this fall before Christmas Land. He came to that through his connection to Greg Berlanti from Brothers & Sisters.
“I’d worked with Greg before and I knew some of the people peripherally from auditioning. It was interesting because of my experience on Killjoys,” he says. “In a way, they’re both sci-fi shows with a strong female lead, but I’ll tell you who had a bigger budget than we did.”
“It was really impressive and massive. Beautiful, beautiful sets, hardworking cast. It’s always fun to get a little bit of a glimpse into that moment when the cast is hopeful and optimistic about the show. I got to catch up with Calista Flockhart. I’m very curious to see how it will continue to do, and on that network.”
Photo Credit: PBS
Starting next month, we can see Macfarlane in Mercy Street, a Civil War-era drama with Josh Radnor and Elizabeth Winstead, which PBS is positioning as a pickup series for audiences anxious to fill a post-Downton Abbey void. Macfarlane plays a Chaplain, and he was happy to dive into such a historical piece.
“I’m super proud of this project. It’s produced by Scott-Free, [it has] wonderful writers. I play Chaplain Hopkins, who was a Union Chaplain who worked at this hospital,” he explains. “It’s essentially an Upstairs, Downstairs story of a hospital. Being a Civil War buff, I was very excited to live inside this world. It’s a fantastic cast. I think PBS is looking to find something that whets the appetite of the Downton Abbey audience, which they’ll be losing this year as the show goes off the air. I don’t know how official it is, but I understand they’d like to do one for every year of the war.”
Photo Credit: PBS
Mercy Street isn’t Macfarlane’s first foray into period territory. He shot a miniseries for CBC a few years back called Iron Road, about the building of the railroad. [You can now buy that on DVD in the U.S.; for a while there it was only available in Canada].
Photo Credit: Steve Wilkie/Temple Street Releasing Limited/Syfy
On a much darker note, I had to grill Macfarlane (good-naturedly, of course) about where D’avin ended up in the season finale of Killjoys, and where he’s going in season two He was tight-lipped except to say that we will learn more about Level 6. I did get him to admit that three weeks into production, he has shot footage with Aaron Ashmore and Hannah John-Kamen but he laughed that he couldn’t say whether the scenes were in the current timeline or a flashback. (Dammit!)
Macfarlane is beyond excited to be back at work. “[Season one] was such a positive experience. It continues to be. Almost our entire creative team came back, which I think is a testament to the show. It was such a great experience,” he shares. “We’re all energized by the fact that nobody’s given us fistfuls of money and [set] super-duper high expectations. It’s very fun to problem solve within the constraints [we have].”
“Michelle [Lovretta] is so wickedly talented and she ‘s doing that very clever thing of creating a universe that can speak about contemporary issues in a deep, deep way. And she continues to do that in the second season. It’s fantastic. It’s really, truly, and sincerely a positive experience.”
He didn’t know going in that Lovretta had planned to pull the trigger so early on Dutch and D’avin but he trusted her vision. “I think Michelle did this very smart thing where she wanted to get it over with. She’s not interested in love triangles. She’s bored by the idea of two guys fighting over one girl. I think she wanted to acknowledge and recognize that these are two red-blooded people so let’s get that story told.”
Photo Credit: Syfy
“I also felt like she was interested in exploring intimacy and violence and how close they can exist. It was hard to watch. When I finally saw it, [D’avin] actually hitting her was so upsetting, and the punches to the face with the sound effects were so brutal. But so much of the show is also about Dutch defining herself with these very controlling men. She’s trying to be a strong woman and still be feminine. Hannah John-Kamen is so wickedly talented. I look at her with such awe. She’s seven years younger than me. I’m blown away by her precision and focus.”
“I think Michelle’s universe and the story she is interested in telling are so smart. And everything I’ve read this year is even better. I want life to get better for D’avin. One of the joys and difficulties of having a small cast [is that] we have to continue to tell stories within our small group. I’m loving this show. I hope it goes for five years. I really, really, real do.”
Macfarlane missed out on the 2015 convention circuit because he was booked back to back between his TV work and a play, but he looks forward to doing them next year if scheduling permits. “I think it will be especially exciting to go to these things once the audience is familiar with the show,” he says. “I’m certainly open to it. Aaron says it’s a very positive experience.”
Also holding a place on Macfarlane’s dance card is the third season of The Night Shift. He hopes he can return to the show after Killjoys wraps in April. “Gabe [Sachs] has been really open with me. I love doing that show. I want to [give him a window] and come do something with Brendan. I’m pitching myself,” he says. “I love being part of the show. I know how frustrating it was for fans [that my availability impacted the story].”
As an alumnus of Brothers & Sisters, Macfarlane has done the traditional 22-episode season on a network, and he’s loving the flexibility afforded by the short seasons of his current roster of shows. I 100% prefer a ten-episode season. This year has been a testament to why I got in the business,” he points out. “I joke with my friends that I play soldiers in three different generations, one in the future, one in the past, and one in the present. That’s because of these schedules. I’m very grateful.”
Working on so many projects has also given him the opportunity to do something near and dear to him. “I’ve always known about myself that what really interests me about acting is the opportunity to meet different people. I love meeting people, and I love the different sets and seeing the way they’re unique,” he admits. “Killjoys is probably the funnest for me, because I believe so deeply in the material.”
Mercy Street begins January 17th on PBS. Killjoys and The Night Shift return in mid-2016.
Christmas Land premieres Sunday night at 8/7c on Hallmark Channel. DeLoach plays a career marketing exec who’s plan to sell her late grandmother’s Christmas-themed village gets derailed when she strikes up a friendship with the lawyer (Macfarlane) handling the estate, and she realizes what the village means to the community. Here’s a sneak peek of Christmas Land.
Luke Macfarlane stars as D'avin on 'Killjoys.' (SyFy)
Luke Macfarlane does everything right.
First, he grabbed our attention by playing Scotty, the man who stole the heart (and ours) of Kevin (Matthew Rhys) on the drama “Brothers & Sisters” and was part of groundbreaking moments as big as a gay wedding and smaller like just having scenes showing male intimacy, which had typically been something left to viewers’ imaginations.
Then, he popped up guest-starring on shows like “Satisfaction,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Smash” but we all knew we needed the out actor back on our TVs on a regular basis. His recurring role as the war vet/boyfriend to Brendan Fehr’s Drew on NBC’s “The Night Shift”
was a step in the right direction but as of tonight we have Macfarlane back in a new series that is something of a departure from what we’ve come to expect from him.
Yes, Luke Macfarlane is now in a science fiction series and he’s playing something of a bad boy. In “Killjoys,” he is D’avin Jaqobis, a futuristic bounty hunter who teams up with his estranged brother (Aaron Ashmore) and the first scene we see him in in tonight’s premiere episode on SyFy he’s in a cage kicking ass…with his shirt off.
Actually, Macfarlane has his shirt off quite a bit in the show, which is something I asked him about when we talked recently about the new show, his love of sci-fi (who knew?) and how sexuality is portrayed in this new world.
On the surface it seems like a really different role for you. Have you done sci-fi before?
Luke Macfarlane: Sci-Fi is definitely new territory for me. Action I have definitely done before but sci-fi made sense for me and I’m quickly learning how an established little group it is. I feel very much like, “Oh, I hope they’ll allow me to sit at their table.”
I think the sci-fi fans are pretty loyal like the LGBT audience. We’re like, “We’ll stand by you no matter what.”
LM: Yeah, but they also might turn on you if you make them upset in any kind of way. [laughs]
Was this the kind of role you were looking for because I’m sure you had a lot of options.
LM: I really, really wanted to do an action show and I really wanted to a sci-fi show, very much. When I read this pilot I was like, “Oh, this is really good.” It was really well written. It takes the genre seriously enough but there’s still a sense of fun to it, this idea. The show doesn’t take itself that seriously [and] it takes its audience members seriously so it was a really delicate touch that I thought was really smart so I was definitely wanting to be part of a show like this.
Can you tell me what exactly a ‘killjoy’ is?
LM: A killjoy is a kind of derogatory term. We’re basically bounty hunters so a killjoy is a kind of derogatory term for a RAC agent. A RAC agent, think of them like black water, it’s a sort of private corporation that exists kind of in the murky areas of the law.
I actually loved the brother relationship just because I feel like that allows you guys to have a lot of extra layers instead of just being bad ass bounty hunters and fighters. How was that for you to play?
LM: I think the brother relationship is really unique and I also think that all of the relationships are. Playing a brother is awesome, especially brothers that are estranged. But then I also love Hannah John-Kamen’s relationship with Aaron Ashmore because they’re best friends and it’s not sexual. We don’t see that where a guy and girl can be friends but they don’t want to have sex with each other. It’s just two people who are friends. I think that’s really realistic and it’s fun. We’re so used to seeing, “It’s a pretty girl and a pretty guy of course they’re going to want to have sex.” I think that’s a really unique relationship. It’s very real.
And your character has a definite edge to him. Can you talk about who this guy is?
LM: We find out that he was actually in the Galactic Army and he left for sort of reasons we don’t know yet and I’m in that prisoner transfer ship when they find me because if you don’t have money it’s very hard to travel across the galaxy so you kind of become a bit of an indentured slave in order to get free passage so it’s less of being a criminal and more of being a cheap ticket across the galaxy.
(l-r) Aaron Ashmore, Hannah John-Kamen and Macfarlane. (SyFy)
What is sexuality like in this world? From the first episode I didn’t get a big sense of that or even your character for that matter.
LM: It’s really great. Our showrunner, Michelle Lovretta (who also created the queer-centric “Lost Girl“) is really smart about sexuality and what sexual identity meant. She has very cool opinions on it. The thing I told you about Aaron Ashmore and Hannah’s relationship, that’s a unique sort of sexual relationship in that they’re people that are not having sex but they’re really close. My character could really have sex with whoever he wants and has a very sort of careless relationship to sex. I don’t think he’s gay in any way but I don’t think it would be above him or like anybody in the world to have sex with somebody of the same sex if it was going to get them something that they needed. It’s a very transactional world in that sense.
We go to a bar that we spend a lot of time at where the owner is a transgender person, perhaps. It’s not really spoken of but his clothes suggest that he’s a woman. And there’s also ‘sexers.’ There are these prostitutes that are in the world that are actually very empowered. They don’t work for anybody but themselves and people have sex with them all the time. They work at the bar.
I couldn’t help but notice that your shirt is off a couple of times in the first episode…
LM: Yeah, it became a running joke amongst the group. It’s all in the script and in fact I would actually rather have my shirt put on like, “This is just getting ridiculous,” but yeah.
But you’ve obviously been taking care of yourself and we see you doing some MMA (mixed martial arts) type of fighting. Is that what you were going for or is that something that you were trained in?
LM: Yeah. The fight choreographers do a kind of MMA-style kind of thing and I’ve been interested in boxing for some years now. I’ve always actually taken very good care of body. I don’t tend take my shirt off in my television shows so it was kind of fun to take it off. for the show It does come off a lot in the show. It’s also that hilarious thing of when you’re filming all the time and you just stop eating so it was quite a terrifying thing to always try to be in good shape.
And you can’t go to craft services for a snack too often, right?
LM: [laughs] No, you really can’t!
Are you personally a fan of sci-fi?
LM: Totally. Like growing up, one of the shows that the entire family ate dinner at the table was “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” That was one of the greatest television shows ever and then I’m a fan of “Firefly.” I’ve always loved the genre.
And there’s something nice about the fact that today there are so many gay characters popping up in shows that you wouldn’t call gay-centric but it’s kind of reflective of our world.
LM: Absolutely. It’s been interesting just watching everything with the Supreme Court happening right now and the thing that the media keeps saying over and over and over again is that the attitudes of this country have changed so quickly and so drastically…I heard some statistic today that 30 percent of Americans, in 1997, thought that people of the same sex should get married and now it’s 70 percent. That’s just great.
(l-r) John-Kamen, Ashmore and Macfarlane during the NBC Summer Press Day. (SyFy)
Carl Lundstedt and Luke Macfarlane | Photo by T. Charles Erickson
Openly gay actor Luke Macfarlane, best known as gay chef Scotty Wandell on the ABC series Brothers & Sisters, is currently starring in the world premiere of Reverberation, a drama by out playwright Matthew Lopez, at Hartford Stage in Connecticut.
Macfarlane plays Jonathan, a gay man who has withdrawn from society
and he has emotional (and physical) relationships with both men and
women. The play also stars Aya Cash and Carl Lundstedt.
As Hartford Stage artistic director Darko Tresnjak explains: "It is
also rather frank — about love and sexuality; gay, straight, and in
between — in our time. At the end of the day, inspiration and faith in
our audience won the day. And a competitive streak kicked in: I wanted
Hartford Stage to get the credit for premiering this beautiful work."
It’s no secret we love Luke Macfarlane around here. The out Canadian actor gave us one half of TV’s all-time greatest gay couple, and he brings his warmth and … heat … to every role he takes, even when the role is thankless. (but his upcoming series with Aaron Ashmore gives us hope).
Today is his 35th birthday, and since we gave him a gallery last year, this time let’s take another look at his 2013 short film Erection. Here’s the synopsis:
Can Dean get an erection in time to save his relationship with his girlfriend?
