[Scene with Julia at Brakebills in another timeline. She and Fogg get along well, both being Knowledge students.] CLARA: I really love how fatherly Fogg is with her in this scene. Welcome, everyone, to episode 210 of Physical Kids Weekly, "The Girl Who Told Time." Today, we're thrilled to have Hale Appleman, who plays Eliot, as our guest. He's here to dish about this episode, his character, and his work on "The Magicians." Welcome, Hale. HALE: Thanks so much for having me. Glad to be here. CLARA: We are really, really excited to have you. I don't know if we got the chance to tell you this, but you were the first request we had from any of our listeners, was to get you in the show. HALE: Wow! CLARA: This has been a long time coming. HALE: Hi listeners. Hey guys, thanks! CLARA: Why don't you start off Hale, by telling us about your relationship with the books and how you got involved with the show to begin with. HALE: Well, I suppose, I first auditioned at a time when I wasn't seeing much material that really thrilled me, and I grew up loving fancy and loving magic. You know, Narnia, Tolkien, CS Lewis, pretty much all of it. I was really a kid who loved Greek mythology, knights of the roundtable, you name it. Monty Python, The Princess Bride. That was really a part of my childhood upbringing, and I kinda fell for the pilot when I read it. But I had never read the books. My best friend, Anthony Carrigan, also an amazing actor, he is Victor Zsasz on Gotham. I don't know if you guys have seen that show but he's super talented and doing very well. He said, "Oh, this is my favorite book series. You have to read it." And he handed me the book. CLARA: Good taste! HALE: Yeah! And I completely fell in love with it. And I was auditioning for Penny and I went in for Carrie Audino, our casting director, who is wonderful. And from an actor's standpoint, to have a casting director like her, who's onboard, she is an incredible leader. She listens. She gives you everything you need in your audition. She's present. She's focused. At lot of times you'll walk into audition rooms, and you never know what you're gonna get. A lot of it is just paint by numbers, like, "Next!" It's that kind of rat race. And she really takes her time and really invests and understands the struggle, the daily hustle of the actors. Strong shoutout to Carrie Audino and Laura Schiff, our casting directors who are incredible at what they do. But I knew I wasn't right for Penny when I was reading for him. HALE: I started reading the books, and I found Eliot, and I sorta thought, "If I could get a chance, a crack, at exploring this character, I think I might be able to bring something special to him." A few weeks later, lo and behold, I got a call from my agent saying they wanted me back for Eliot. So it kind of worked out just the way that I sort of imagined as I found him on the page. And then I read all the books before we started shooting the pilot. It was between getting the part and shooting the pilot, there was a certain amount of time, and then between shooting the pilot and shooting the first season. These things take time and negotiations and stuff so there was a minute. So I got through all the books and I just have so much respect for Lev Grossman and I think he's a genius. He filled this gaping chasm in the fantasy landscape that was really needing to be explored. I completely related to the books and fell in love with them and stand by them as the ultimate blueprint. CLARA: I think that's so satisfying for us to hear as fans, and it's something we've heard from a lot of people who are involved with the show -- that they have gotten really into the books. Dani and I both started as book fans. I think we got in touch with Lev before we got in touch with anybody else and it's just so nice to see the cast be so invested. HALE: I think all of us in the cast are huge fans of the books, and the primary goal was just to live by them as well as we could by the characters he created. Especially for me, that was my number one concern stepping into Eliot. Are people going to receive me as this person that they've already created in their imaginations through what Lev wrote? I've been pretty fortunate so far -- I think the fans have been mostly really receptive to me and I'm so grateful to them because I think that's the biggest risk when you adapt something. Are these people believable as characters that already are so beloved? CLARA: I think -- I can't speak for Dani -- but certainly for me, absolutely. I can't imagine anyone else in this role. Dani, do you think the same? DANI: I, now, whenever I reread the books, I see you as Eliot. I definitely had an original, a very original vision of Eliot. HALE: Yeah. DANI: I think who I saw originally playing him would have been great, but you definitely bring something more to the role. HALE: Yeah! And I had a vision in my head too when I read it and it wasn't necessarily me, you know? And I think there was something in the grace period of the show picking them up as grad students that I feel like, well, Eliot's lived a little more life and Eliot's probably a little more outwardly confident and inwardly fucked up. More has happened so I kinda filled in a little bit of the blank of the time that past. CLARA: I think that's a good way to put it. Well, I want to turn over to Dani. She has a few questions for you. Some of these came from fans in the various groups that we have touchpoints in. So Dani, go ahead. Take it away. DANI: Alright so Eliot is a much-beloved character, and he is inspirational for a lot of people in the LGBTQ community. That's a lot of responsibility to live up to. How do you approach that responsibility, and what does Eliot mean to you? HALE: That's an amazing question. I take Eliot very seriously. That responsibility isn't lost on me. I try not to throw it all on my shoulders because at the end of the day I'm not the one who makes any of the executive decisions on the show. But it is not lost on me that Eliot is a really important queer character, especially in a fantasy genre that doesn't see many queer characters. Growing up, there aren't that many in the "accepted" great classics. You know, you don't see gay knights of the round table. Or maybe you do and we just don't know it. It's possible. But it is not lost on me that Eliot is an opportunity to expand a very accepted idea of what a fantasy character is and also what a queer fantasy character is. It's important to me that he is not just a one liner-spitting dandy. While that is one of the fulcrum aspects of his character that people connect to immediately, what fascinates me overall about him has more to do with his fractured heart and what's going on underneath all of the whimsy. I love the whimsy. I love the tongue-in-cheek way that he tosses out information and jokes. But I also love the way that he's sorta the unofficial leader and also kind of a nurturer. He takes care of his own and he's not comfortable talking about that, but it is a part of him. He's at the heart of the group in a way. And I don't think that's a mistake. And I also think that he's heroic in his own way. He's more powerful than he or anyone gives him credit for and soI think that he's kinda a classic underdog hero and he's completely non traditional in that role. He like -- granted the sword was charmed -- but he picked up that sword and fights him back. There's these sections in the beginning of THE MAGICIAN KING where it talks about how Quentin's shit at horseback riding and Eliot is born for this. CLARA: Yeah. There's a great section in THE MAGICIAN KING which -- spoiler alert -- [Beeping noise that indicates that parts of the conversation have been cut] HALE: I hope this show continues to embrace Eliot's heroic journey in a way and gives him opportunities to flourish as a more emotionally competent person. I think he's definitely shown some growth so far and there's much more to do, obviously and to explore with him. Yeah. Anyway, I love that the show takes risks and that we get to take big swinging ballsy moves. Like the LES MIS number out of nowhere. But I also love the opportunity to expose Eliot's more less seen layers and his hidden emotional machinery. That's what attracts me to the further exploration of the character. CLARA: Yeah. Peel back the Eliot onion. HALE: Yeah. I don't know if I answered that question but. I answered, like, 17 questions that weren't asked. DANI: It happens. CLARA: It's a conversation. DANI and HALE: Yeah. DANI: So in the books, it seems clear that Eliot is gay, but there's been some controversy over Eliot's sexuality in the show. Do you view Eliot as gay, bi, or something else? HALE: I think I view Eliot as queer. I think Eliot obviously loves men and would never turn down a man he was attracted to and wanted to explore a sexual dynamic with. I think that that's pretty clear in what Lev Grossman has written. But I think there's also different clues here and there, especially in the first book. Him and Margo's relationship -- I guess Janet's relationship -- he always references their sort of intimacy as being somewhat unusual. And I guess this is seen through Quentin's eyes, but Quentin's always like, "What is that?" Quentin sometimes ponders their connection. So I don't know. I think that Eliot and Janet or Margo have had sexual experiences together or with other people. I don't think that that makes Eliot bisexual in a kind of 50/50 split kind of way, but I think that Eliot is sexually insatiable when you find him at the beginning of the story. I think that he's trying to fill a void and part of that is through drugs, through booze, through conversation, through storytelling, through the exploration of his image and how he presents himself to the world outside. And I think sex is apart of that too. I think that in today's world, people are fluid, and I definitely think Eliot is a gay, queer. I like queer for some reason. That's the word that feels appropriate to me. It feels all encompassing. He's gay. He's a homosexual. He's modeled after every famous homosexual in literature. But I just wouldn't say that sex can't happen with whoever he feels like with having it with. Does that make sense? CLARA: Yeah. It absolutely does. HALE: Am I gonna get like pitchforks and burning bags of manure? CLARA and DANI [laughing]: No! CLARA: We wouldn't let that happen to you. Part of the reason we ask that is because it's a question we've asked various other people who've been on the show and almost all of them go on sort of explanation and say, "You have to ask Hale this question because he really--" HALE: I don't really know if it's up to me. I mean, they write what they write and I go with it. And I try to explore what I'm given in the most complex a way as I possibly can and in a way that feels true to the character Lev wrote. And you know, Eliot never would have married Fen. CLARA: Yeah. We'll get to that. HALE: Never. I mean--Yeah, we'll get into that later, I guess. But that was also a marriage of necessity not a marriage of love or even sexual attractions, so I think that people picked a bone with that for good reason, but also the context is important to consider as well. CLARA: Yeah. I liked what you said about trying to bring complexity to the character. I think that's what I hear a lot in your answer about how you view Eliot's sexuality is that there -- in anyone's sexuality -- there's more nuance than the labels give credit to. HALE: Right. There's room for exploration at least, especially in grad school life. CLARA: I don't know how much time you have for any exploration in grad school. HALE: Eliot magically creates enough time. I also love how -- this is something I think the show sometimes glosses over. Eliot's not a -- Eliot's a terrific student, but Eliot also doesn't have to study hard. Eliot has an innate understanding of magic and he somehow aces his courses seemingly without lifting a finger and I always loved that about him. That's certainly not my experience in my own life in terms of education, but I worked hard and did well. But Eliot kind of flows by and everything is about -- the director of our pilot had this word: sprezzatura, which is about the most graceful, least amount of energy possible. Kinda like water off a duck's back. Everything with Eliot is just kind of this graceful flow and it's a word he used to describe a lot of moments in the show that he wanted to affect a certain kind of detail or idea with. I think it rings especially true for Eliot's character. CLARA: Yeah. In the books I always wondered because, as you said we're seeing it through Quentin. I always wondered how much of that is Quentin seeing Eliot as being effortless. And part of why I wonder that is because so much of his personality is so affected. There's clearly a lot of effort that goes into the persona Eliot's created for himself. HALE: Right, right. CLARA: So that persona comes across as effortless and I imagine it would come across as effortless in terms of his studies too. HALE: Right, you can't wear that. You can't like stumble out of bed and wear that. CLARA: Yeah. It's like all the "I just woke up this way" selfies on Instagram or whatever. HALE: Yeah, like after David Bowie and Prince, like, magical ensemble. Yeah, I don't know. It takes some time. CLARA: Do you think, going back to the original question, Eliot is in love with Quentin? Or that he's in love with Margo? Or both? HALE: I think it would be very easy for Eliot, in Eliot's life and journey, if that were true and if that were possible. I think that he'll always end up with Margo in some way. Probably not as a monogamous, heterosexual couple. But I think that they are life partners in a non-traditional kind of way. I think his relationship with Quentin is one of…it's kind of like unspoken acknowledgement. When you meet someone who feels like family, is part of your tribe, is someone that you resonate with for whatever reason. I think Quentin falls into that category. And sometimes friendships can feel romantic. Sometimes we have our most intimate conversations and most intimate experiences with our friends. And I think Eliot and Quentin can sometimes feel that way. I don't know. I know that some of my closest friends, there's sometimes a romantic undercurrent and that's not weird, that's just a kind of intimacy you don't always have. So is he in love with Quentin? I think that probably as he grows up that will become clearer, but I don't think he's pining after Quentin. I think when it happens, when they do have sex, it's probably great for him in that moment. I think he's probably a little confused and embittered by that experience a little bit, after the fact, when push comes to shove and it was all just a drunken mistake. Yeah. I think once Eliot truly grows up, the idea of being with Quentin won't be an issue for him. I don't think it is now. I don't think Eliot's pining after Quentin in Fillory. I think he misses his friend. I think he misses the people that he knows he can count on. I think he feels displaced and alone. CLARA: I think he misses his life. HALE: Yeah. I think it's more about emotional displacement than it is sexual longing. I think that he adores Quentin and that chemistry will always be there. You know? He's not an idiot. He knows that it's probably not meant to be. CLARA: Do you think that Eliot in the book is the same as Eliot in the show? [A bit of silence] DANI: You stumped him. HALE: Yeaah. That's a really complicated question. No, because the show isn't the book and there's no way for the show to be the book. What is written on the page of the script is not written on the page of the book. For one, the show travels at a breakneck pace compared to the books so the section that I love and miss the most is the New York section, the time when these kids have graduated and this very human universal moment which is about young artists in New York City having nowhere -- not really understanding where they fit yet because they've just come through all this rigorous training and don't yet really know who they are in the context of the world. And I think that anyone that graduates from undergrad or grad school or drops out (like meee), you enter the world and you have a huge come-to-Jesus where you're struggling to find your place, your way. And sometimes you turn to people and things that are not the most healthy; that's pretty universal. And I think that those sections of the books really rang true for me and everyone I know who fell in love with them. So that's a section I feel -- like we didn't have Eliot fall into addiction in that way and climb out of it -- or half climb out of it and then get drunk in Fillory. CLARA: Yeah, he's only like an alcoholic for an episode and a half. HALE: If the novels went on forever, you'd figure out how Eliot finds the bathroom at night in Castle Whitespire. [scattered laughter] Those private moments. My dream would be to explore weird, private moments that are more novelistic or cinematic than they are. Let's do a scene about these people invading the castle for this one episode, which I love, which is fun, and the whimsy and the fun, breakneck speed that we get to do. But the show's juggling six storylines at one. CLARA: Yeah, it's a lot. HALE: And Sera and John [have the] job of juggling all these threads at the same time and trying to interweave them and the thematic overarching idea of each episode versus the whole season and that's a whole headtrip I can't even begin to understand. So yeah. My job is to creative Lev's character in the context of what Sera and John give me, right? But are the book and the show the same? Are book Eliot and show Eliot exactly the same? No, of course not. They can't be. I wish they could be, but that's just the nature of the medium. They aren't the same. DANI: Yeah. It takes book readers a really long time to adjust at first. We love both characters separately then at the end of the day we're always like, but I wish they had this. HALE: Right, of course. That's very natural and very human especially as die hard fans of the novels. I will say as well, I'm a die hard fan of the novels and I know our whole entire cast is and I know John and Sera are too. CLARA: Yeah. I can't imagine they would have made this if they weren't. HALE: And luckily Lev has given us his blessing and given me his blessing as the character and that means -- that's kinda the great crowning moment for me. No pun, sorry. I just -- yeah I love Lev. I love him. [Laughter] DANI: We do, too. CLARA: Good company. Well I think that's a good segue into your next question, Dani. DANI: What are your favorite parts of the MAGICIANS books? What would you most like to film that you haven't had the chance to? Other than the New York part since I guess you had a chance to talk about that. HALE: So the New York part, that goes on the list. So the whole chapter with the induction of Eliot to Quentin in the books in which the whole moment by the tree with the cigarettes. "Merits are for pussys". I love all that stuff and I love -- oh God, there's so many things. I love the sequence in the boat. The moment where these two weakling teens try to drag this boat into the pond and they can't really. And they're just floating out there, staring at each other, and they don't know what to say. It's just very tender and a little homoerotic and I think that's a great moment and I wish we had been able to do it on the show. But I think that in terms of that episode, you have to set up so many characters and storylines and the Beast is coming at the end and it's all happening so fast, there wasn't time for that. I also miss the God's power tool speech that Eliot has at the dinner table in New York with Richard. Back when Richard was that other Brakebills kid. I miss that. I'm also from New York so that had a certain little… CLARA: That whole dinner party was amazing too. I forgot the details of it until you mentioned it, but Lida and the swan ice sculptures. HALE: Right right. Amazing. All of it, so, so good. Eliot speaking to his relationship to God and his spirituality.I think is interesting. I'd like to explore that on the show. I'm sure they'd be open to that. Yeah, the beauty of the show is that they write and they let me play with it and they give me free reign to interpret it as I will. That's so, so rare. CLARA: And they let you sing. HALE: And they let me sing. They make me sing. No, I love it. That was so surprising and I wasn't really expecting that. I had put a bid in because I knew Jason had done Taylor Swift and The Beast was singing Nick Howard, which I thought was awesome. Charles Measure did great and Jason, obviously, I think is a genius. But I was not expecting to do Les Mis on The Magicians. That was a complete surprise. Left field for sure. DANI: Is there a moment, maybe in the later books, that you're adamant that they keep in for Eliot? HALE: Well, I always wanted to fly. I can fly in the books! I really wanted to rescue him from the corporate tower, shatter that glass with Margo and Julia and rescue him. And then he says something like "that bitch has chops" or something about Julia, right? DANI: Yeah. HALE: Yeah, I mean, I love. That's a very iconic moment has these -- for no reason -- just has these huge massive angel wings. Because he can. That's a budget thing, I'm sure. But one day I hope he gets to fly because he's a physical kid. I say it in the pilot -- he can fly. CLARA: Well, other people have gotten to fly, or at least float so I feel like Eliot should have his chance. HALE: Yeah! Maybe. Maybe one day. I hope I get to sword fight more. That was really, really fun for me. That was a total childhood dream. And it happened, in part, because I said I'd love to do combat. If you put a sword or anything, any kind of weaponry, I want Eliot to get his hands dirty a little bit. They were so, they "oh yeah, sure -- and why don't you sing while you're at it," you know? CLARA: You can have a sword fight but only if you sing during it. HALE: Yeah! I think the episode had already been written as just a battle sequence and then John thought, this could really use something to pump Eliot up and get him inspired and get him going. So that's how that came to be. DANI: So every other guest we've had on this show has said that if they could play -- or be -- another character, it would be Eliot. Like every single guest. HALE: Really? CLARA and DANI: Yeah. HALE: How many guests have you had? CLARA: Well we had Arjun, Olivia, Jade and Brittany. So four. HALE: Wow! DANI: Yeah, we just had your wife on here and I think she told us to tell you "Hi". CLARA: Yeah she told us to say "Hi, from your wife". HALE: Hello. DANI: But yeah. HALE: Total sweetheart. DANI: She is. So if you could play any character other than Eliot, who would it be? [Silence] CLARA: Now you've stumped him. HALE: Well, this depends. In my male body, I would play Quentin. I could never do what Jason Ralph does. I think that he is a wonderful actor, and I don't say that lightly. I always believe him. I find him always lived in and real and I admire him a lot. I would be a very different Quentin so that would be interesting. Probably more of a total recluse or something. We joked a lot when we first got these parts about wanting to have an episode in which we switched bodies. CLARA: Body swap! HALE: Quentin in Eliot and Eliot in Quentin. DANI: I want a Freaky Friday episode. HALE: Yeah. CLARA: I mean, we sorta get that Niffin!Alice. Or we got that for a little while. HALE: Right, right. I think Jason and I would have had a field day with that. Kinda just doing little lived-in impressions of each other. We would both get a huge kick out of that. And we both come from theatre and we both have a certain relationship to physicality and creating characters through that. We learned how to do that on stage. When we had to do episode three with the box, the flying books in the boxes, there was a bunch of sequences in which we're just carrying boxes down the street and there's just a little brick weight in the box. And it was just us make believing that there was a book trying to escape and that's a really hyper theatrical thing you don't get to do on television that we got to do on our show. Those are the moments, I think, are really fun and weird and grounded in our theatrical roots. Jason's a brilliant clown too. He's physically hilarious so yeah. All of that stuff. More of that stuff. CLARA: So can you -- do you do an impression of Jason? HALE: Uhhh no. I don't think so. [Lots of laughter] Umm… maybe next time. CLARA: Alright, fair enough. DANI: This question comes from Elliott in the Magicians Fans Facebook group. We've heard you're a musician and you compose music. What are some of your musical inspirations, and what are your favorite songs? HALE: Wow, that's a big question. I grew up listening to -- my parents exposed me to a lot of classic rock and folk music. So Fleetwood Mac and James Taylor. I grew up playing jazz piano so there's a jazz element to what I write. That's sorta the beginning. That could go on forever. I grew up loving total weirdos like Kate Bush, who I think is the most genius musical artist, one of many. I could go one. David Byrne, Kate Bush, Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright. CLARA: Yes. Good choices. HALE: Yeah. For starters. [Dog barking] CLARA: Which of our dogs is that in the background? DANI: Not sure. HALE: I think that's my neighbor's dog actually. Charlie. He's sweet. CLARA: Mine is louder but he's behind four doors right now. DANI: Yeah. Mine are loud, too. I had to hide them. CLARA: So if you could sing any song from any genre on "The Magicians," what would your preference be? HALE: I guess this is a two-part answer. I can't just think of one thing. I would love to see Eliot have some kind of a drugged out Lou Reed or David Bowie kind of moment which in and of themselves is very different. Either a kind of punk-ish glam-rock feel -- there's this Lou Reed song called "I'm So Free" that I love, that I've always imagined Eliot singing in the castle. Otherwise I could see him walking down the stairs of Castle Whitespire in a coat-in-tail singing more of a classic jazz standard or something more along the lines of what The Beast did. I could see something like that. When I imagined singing on the show initially that was something [I imagined]. I was like, I'm sure John will give me a jazz tune or an old American standard, a Cole Porter song or something a little more… appropriately dandy, ya know? But yeah, we turned a different corner, I guess. DANI: I'm sure that he'll add in another song if he can. HALE: I'm sure he will. I'm sure he will. I'm not sure if I will be the recipient of that gift, but I'm sure. I know that there's some actors waiting in the wings to show what they can do. DANI: I would love to see an entire musical episode. Sorta like the Buffy musical episode. I would totally be down. HALE: I would be down. Yeah. For sure. DANI: Then everyone gets a piece. CLARA: Well Dani, do you wanna move into the favorite? DANI: Yeah. This is my favorite question to ask everyone and we ask it to every single person. HALE: Should I be scared? DANI: No, it's fun. So what do you think Eliot's Hogwarts house is and what is yours? HALE: Oh! Good question! I know everyone thinks Eliot is a pure Slytherin, but I don't. I really see him as having a heart underneath all his baggage. So I think he's like a closet Gryffindor maybe. Hale is a Ravenclaw. I took that test and everything. DANI: Yes! Ravenclaw. HALE: I'm like a true, true weirdo. So I belong there. I'm a total Luna Lovegood or something. Maybe. CLARA: Oh yeah? HALE: I think maybe more so then…Maybe. I don't know. I loved -- I mean everyone wants to be Harry. CLARA: Okay, but now you have to tell us what you relate too about Luna. HALE: Kind of her weird spiritual flow. She's kinda lost in her head sometimes and a little dreamy. She sees things other people don't see and I can see her sort of having weird visions. Sometimes I get stuck upstairs like that. So you can say I'm a little bit of that. Baby dreamer. DANI: Well, we have a room full of Ravenclaws right now. Wooo. HALE: You know, sometimes people just don't know what to make of you. I can definitely relate to that. That's pretty Ravenclaw, pretty Luna. DANI: Yeah. I've always related to it. I think when I was younger I didn't want to be a Ravenclaw because you either want to be a Gryffindor or a Slytherin cause they're the most popular houses. I was always like, nah, I'm more of a Slytherin cuz I was super emo and a scene kid, just not cool with everyone. So I was like, I'm a Slytherin. Then I took the test when Pottermore came out and I was a Ravenclaw and I had this existential crisis about it. But then I finally accepted, yeah I'm a Ravenclaw, but I still have my Slytherin tendencies. HALE: Totally. That's cool. I can see that. CLARA: I feel like I'm such an obvious Ravenclaw. Like you talk to me for ten minutes you hear the stupid vocabulary that I use and your like, "oh yeah, she's a Ravenclaw." HALE: Oh. Maybe I'm not a Ravenclaw. I don't think I have that stupid of a vocabulary. DANI: You have some vocab in there. HALE: Where would you guys put me? And where would you put Eliot? DANI: I would just put you in Ravenclaw from what I know about you. Just because you're very eccentric it seems like and also for Eliot I would say he's the same as I am which is a Ravenclaw/Slytherin mix. HALE: Oh! Okay. DANI: But I think that he -- his true inner essence would be Ravenclaw since he's so smart and he doesn't have to think about school and that's where I think they'd put him. HALE: Right. Interesting. DANI: That's where I think the sorting hat would put him. CLARA: I think I agree with that. HALE: Maybe I'll take the test as Eliot and see what happens. DANI: Yeah! CLARA: You should! DANI: We do have one small short [question] we've been asking people lately. What's your astrological sign and what is Eliot's astrological sign, if you've given him one? HALE: I'm a Capriquarian. I'm the week of the Capriquarius. I'm January 17th and Aquarius starts on the 20th. I am a Cancer rising, Aries Moon so I got all those elements happening all the time. DANI: Mine's very all over the place too, so I feel it. HALE: Yeah. I mean, that's my sign. And what's Eliot's? DANI: What do you think Eliot's is? HALE: Actually. When we first started I was really thinking about this, trying to make sense of it. I could see him being maybe a Libra or Aquarius maybe. DANI: I could see that. I see him as a Scorpio, just because he's so sexual. HALE: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Then he would be Libra rising. DANI: Probably has an Aquarius moon. HALE: Yeah maybe he's a Scorpio with an Aquarius moon. Yeah that sounds about right. CLARA: Dani will explain to me what all of that means afterwards. DANI: Hey! Hey! HALE: It means he's trying to keep it all together, like really balanced and easy and real -- not real but peaceful. Just keeping it balanced on the surface and then his true self is a little more emotional and unpredictable. DANI: Yeah, [Clara] just got her birth chart for the first time like last week so she's just like, "I have no idea." HALE: Yeah. And then emotionally, he's just on another planet, is what that means. CLARA: I'm learning. Okay so we should get into the episode because we've had a lovely conversation, but we have this whole episode to talk about still. HALE: Yeah. You're right. CLARA: This is another big ensemble episode so I thought I'd start by asking what other plot lines have fascinated you in this episode, in this season, in this series as a whole? HALE: The whole idea of the shade business is kind of interesting to me. CLARA: In this particular episode there was a lot of the shade stuff on Julia's storyline and the first glimpse we got of alternate timeline Julia and of what you just described. HALE: Right. Alternate timeline Julia. That is interesting. I think that's also an interesting thing the showrunners folded into the narrative on the show that in fact she might have been accepted all those other times except this time it didn't work out. I don't know. I find that sorta fascinating and playing with the idea of the time loops is something that the show can take liberties with and I think that's a really smart way of utilizing that so kudos. CLARA: Yeah, I agree with you and one thing that really strikes me in this particular episode about that is that you don't really get that alternate timeline stuff in books as concretely but there's a lot of ways in which alternate timeline Julia -- the one that we see as a happy Brakebills student -- really parallels the first Julia from the sorta ‘two Julias' we see in The Magician King, the one before her life falls apart. HALE: Right, right. CLARA: I'm kinda wondering, I mean, I'm hoping we get to see more of that and get to see a little bit more of -- Julia's character arc in the first season was so rushed. Like, we didn't get to see her fall apart after she got rejected by Brakebills the way we do in the books. And I'm hoping that maybe some of that alternate timeline stuff might bring some of that back. HALE: I mean they're certainly giving her a lot of opportunities to fall apart. CLARA: Yeah that's true. HALE: Kinda an extension of that whole storyline. DANI: Think she's suffered a lot. HALE: She's been through a lot of damage. There's actually a really lovely Eliot and Julia scene coming up in that finale that might be a nice little touch in which these two characters come together in kind of an unexpected way. Can't really say. CLARA: What you might be able to tell us is was it like to work with Stella cuz you haven't really gotten to do that. HALE: Oh I have a very easy relationship with Stella. We love each other; we have an understanding. We truly get each other as people. I was really, really happy to work with her and I hope to get to do a lot more. I think Eliot and Julia really have a lot to say to each other. CLARA: Yeah, they seem like kindred spirits. HALE: Mhm. Yeah. CLARA: Okay so moving on. Eliot's character arc in Season 2 has largely been about adjusting to responsibility and moving away from the hedonistic lifestyle he's always led into something less...self-centered, more focused on the world around him. His relationship with Fen really plays into that. I said that to Brittany when we spoke to her last week and I think this is really true that Fen is so sincere and it really seems to disarm Eliot every time he encounters her, she's just being nice. HALE: She does! It does. She's pure in ways he doesn't expect people to ever be and that throws him for a loop. I think that he's sort of taken off his mark by her in that way. Not necessarily the ‘falling in love with you' sort of way, but ‘oh, there's more to this person then I would have initially just written off in the old version of myself.' Like not looked at her twice or even had a conversation with her. And her innate goodness is something that continues to baffle him and I think help him to discover those aspects in himself a little bit. CLARA: I think you're speaking to a lot of the things that have really resonated with me. In particular, I might be one of the only people who really loves the books and didn't get immediately attached to Eliot in the books. And I think it's because I've known some people like that in real life. [HALE says something] CLARA: What was that? DANI: I was wagging my finger at you. HALE: At me? CLARA: No, at me, I think. [Lots of laughter] DANI: Yeah, at you! HALE: I was like, who's that for? CLARA: I actually couldn't see it because I have a little Hale only in my right hand corner. But yeah, I've met a lot of people like that in real life who I think are very affect and very sort of… ‘cooler than thou'. And in my real life experiences with them, it's hard for me to trust those people in a lot of ways. They have so much under the surface which they're not sharing and for me, realizing that there's so much that I'm not seeing, is always sort of a little off-putting. But I think what I notice in those interactions between Eliot and Fen are that part of him is getting disarmed. It's exactly like you said. He would normally write her off but he's in a situation where he kind of has to keep interacting with her. HALE: He does. And he also is starting to recognize that she's going to be there for the time being and that he might as well try to make things as easy as possible for both of them. It doesn't help the situation to outwardly dislike her simply based on his past experiences which aren't really -- except for saving in the kingdom with fertilizer appropriately. Fillory is really a whole other beast. So…yeah. CLARA: I'm glad you brought that up because we all really loved that scene with Eliot and the fertilizer. "I have a secret to tell you." HALE: Oh man. That was fun. I liked how they did a full circle moment with him and his past and I think there's a lot to explore there. I also, speaking of Fen, I really liked the scene that I got to play with Brittany in which she's having an internal crisis because she's seeing fairies everywhere and she's trying to figure out what's going on. CLARA: So I want to play that clip! HALE: Oh okay! CLARA: That's one of the ones I got. So let's play the clip then talk about it. [Eliot and Fen clip plays. They talk about Eliot getting married to Idri. Fen is seeing fairies. ] CLARA: Okay, so it sounded like you had a lot of thoughts about this scene. So talk to us about it. [HALE laughs] HALE: Well what I really appreciate is that Brittany was really having a meltdown as Fen during the scene so it gave me a lot to play with and made me feel like, "oh man, I really have to be gentle with her and walk her through this incredibly difficult moment for her. You know, I'm marrying myself off." And him really needing to have a heart in that moment and it being a kind of uncomfortable line for him to take with anyone. And she's just literally losing her shit and completely unable to keep it together. I just thought that was interesting. There were vague echoes of Ophelia to me. That's sort of what came to mind when I saw her in that hallway. I was like, "Oh my god, what's going on with this girl. Oh man, she's losing it. " But that just was really fun for me and then Eliot really wanting to gently explain to her what's going to happen and that just felt like a fun way to play through that with her. CLARA: I think to what you were saying, she does a really amazing job of having like twelve emotions in 24 frames. That section where she is acknowledging that he is marrying another person, it's like she goes from saying she's fine when she very clearly isn't, doing this full about face where she's like, "This isn't normal where you come from?" As though she's never considered anything else. HALE: Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. It was fun. And weird. I think about how weird -- honestly my favorite aspect is that she got to take it that far and that I got to react specifically in direct opposition to that emotional… CLARA: There's something interesting to me about the follow up reaction because Eliot has a conversation with Margo about this afterwards and it's so interesting to me because he frames it as "Can I ask you a woman question?" And Margo's like, "I don't think this applies to me." And it so clearly doesn't, right? But this is all he has to work with. All he has to work with is "I just need someone to help her and clearly that's not working from me so maybe you, lady person, can go?" HALE: It shows him trying to solve a situation that has more to do with someone else than he might normally consider. CLARA: So another thing I want to ask about Eliot's relationship with Fen. First of all, what does it mean to Eliot and what does he feel about her, which I think are big questions. HALE: What does what mean to Eliot? CLARA: What does Fen mean to Eliot? HALE: What does Fen mean to Eliot? I think she represents a kind of purity that is helping to awaken him to new ways of interacting with people and considering other people's thoughts and feelings. And also opening his eyes to a kind of person he wouldn't normally interact with. He's not judging a book by its cover, for lack of a better expression, anymore the same way I think he might have. He's becoming a little more human on the surface. He's opening up to his potential as an emotionally supportive person. CLARA: So the other part of that is that Eliot is going to be a father. HALE: Oh right, that part. He's not excited about that. That's a hard one for him to swallow. I think that he feels the innate idea of the responsibility of fatherhood, but I don't think -- I struggle with this. I don't know if Eliot's the kind of person that would be -- a baby is not a real thing to him, I don't think, until it's sitting right in front of him. So it's an interesting proposition. I don't know if Eliot would be a good father. Probably not, you know? But watching him try might be funny? Or entertaining or interesting. He's certainly not prepared for this at all and he's acting as if he can take responsibility for that idea, but I think he has no clue what that really entails nor do I think he's prepared for it or really wants it. CLARA: So the other one I wanted to talk about was Eliot's relationship with Bayler, which is really interesting. I'd sort of forgotten about Bayler for a long time and then he comes back here and you realize Eliot really seems to care about his opinion. HALE: Right. CLARA: Which is a little unusual in general but it's especially interesting here. So what is your insight on Eliot's relationship with Bayler? Is he just barometer for how the people of Fillory view Eliot or…? HALE: I think Bayler is kinda a piece of evidence for Eliot to examine and explore on his own and hold to get a greater sense of what the people's value system is in Fillory, outside of the castle. He doesn't have the inside scoop and I don't think he'd be able to get it by leaving himself and asking questions in the fields and the small little towns outside the castle. I don't think he feels like he'd get an honest answer so he's trying to vet Bayler for information. I think that's mostly what it's about. I don't think he really -- he's come to continue to see him and to explore that dynamic. He's trying to get a sense for who the people are around him, what the people of Fillory think, breathe, feel, what they want from him as the king, how he can best achieve that. I think that Eliot's really trying to become better for the people so that he can be accepted and less hated. So there aren't hits out for his life. CLARA: Yeah, that would be helpful as a ruler, I can imagine. So the last thing on the episode is not an Eliot thing, but I think our listeners would murder us if we left it out. So I just wanna play the scene between Eliot and alternate timeline Alice in the teslaflexion. DANI: You mean Quentin. CLARA: Oh! Sorry, thank you. Quentin and alternate timeline Alice. [Scene between Quentin and Alice23 plays. Alice apologies to Quentin for fighting with her Quentin before he died. Quentin tells her that he loves his Alice no matter what.] CLARA: So that's a pretty powerful scene and I think for us as fans of the books that was… it was especially powerful and kept a lot of the sense of the books while being something from a totally new plot line. HALE: Right. CLARA: So I guess my question to you would be, what do you think of the way Quentin and Alice's plotline is unfolding in the show? HALE: I think another really brilliant stroke that they took is Niffin Alice taking the cacodemon's place in Quentin's back and the big metaphor for not being able to let go of someone that you've fallen in love with. It's ended in some way, whether through death or breakup and I think that still feeling that person live within you and the memories you've shared with them, I think that's very universal and a really nice touch. I felt that that was a really beautiful way to handle Niffin Alice and it gave Olivia an opportunity to remain with us in a way that felt like we could do only on the show. CLARA and DANI: Yeah. CLARA: We talked to her right after the episode where Alice went Niffin and she lied to us. [laughter] She didn't lie to us. She just… very strongly hinted that she wouldn't be around for awhile. But I think you're right. I think the show has done a really good job with literally making her a demon on Quentin's back. Like he cannot stop thinking about her and it does make him crazy in all the ways that failed love makes a person crazy. DANI: Yeah. HALE: Definitely. CLARA: Let's move onto fashion. I'll have some general questions for you about Eliot's wardrobe, but I have to ask this, please don't hate me. HALE: Okay CLARA: It's probably the most asked question that we got: Is the ‘Waughlem' butt, your butt? HALE: Is the...What? CLARA: The ‘Waughlem'. The ‘doppelbanger'. Is that butt, your butt? HALE: Ohhh the ‘Waughlem', that's what we call it. Okay. Is that my butt? [Giggles] HALE: Umm… no comment. CLARA: Okay! Theo, you can't get mad at me. I asked. DANI: Insatiable. They're insatiable. HALE: No comment. CLARA: Okay so I really can't tell you how excited I've been to talk to you about fashion because Eliot THE BEST wardrobe. Where does that come from? HALE: Whoaaaa. It comes from the heart and mind of Magali Guidasci. She's our brilliant leader, brilliant costume designer. She designs everyone's look from the extras on the street to the servant with one line to Eliot and Margo in the castle. You know, all of us. She painstakingly goes through every single detail. Especially with Eliot through the first season but also expanding into Fillory, Magali and I have a really close working relationship and she wants to make sure that Eliot's wardrobe corresponds to his emotional state or what he's going through emotionally. So there's a very deliberate reason why Eliot's wardrobe sort of became darker and monochromatic after he killed Mike and there's a reason why when Eliot goes to England in the haunted house that the look is ‘Eliot goes to England'. It's very deliberate. It's very burberry. That's the point. The first time we find Eliot sitting on the wall smoking, that also was Quentin leaving frigid New York and entering Brakebills and so it felt appropriate that he would be wearing a summer suit and something that a hero of Brideshead Revisited or some literary dandy might be wearing. Those were all very deliberate choices that Magali has made and she is really generously open to my feedback and what I feel good in and ideas that I might have about what I'd like to see Eliot in. I love bringing her little clippings of David Bowie and Prince here and there. Especially for Fillory, there's no limit to what she can come up with and her entire team, they have an incredible number of designers and seamstresses who painstakingly make every Fillorian garment from scratch. So it's a huge, huge job and she does it with so much joy and passion and specificity. I just feel lucky that I get to work with her. And when I met her, she looked at me and said, I think we have an opportunity here with this character. And I said, I think you're right and I'm so glad you see that cuz I always thought that Eliot's clothing would be a huge part of his character and how he presents himself as someone who's trying to erase his past and create this newfound persona. So she's all in. She gets it from the ground up and she a tremendous amount of work. It's unbelievable. CLARA: So talk to me about this season and about what you mentioned about translating Eliot's style from Earth to Fillory. HALE: Yeah, there's a certain kind of influence from ancient -- not ancient, but a Japanese influence [from] a lot high-waisted samurai-esk pants that Eliot wears a lot. There's that white kind of see-through shirt is orientalist. Magali found that fabric and then she found a painting she was in love with. So yeah, it's an orientalist design that was literally ripped from a painting but she didn't know she was going to design it until she found the fabric and then she walked into the room and there that painting was. Anyways, so it's very Synchronistic and magical. And of course there's a subtle, not-so-subtle, glam-rock influence in terms of I'm wearing these washed-silver Cuban heels most of the time that have like four inches so I'm even taller. I'm 6'4 as a person in life and so I tower in the castle and then the pants… they have a sort of flared, they flare over boots in this very kind of retro-glam way. All of his suits have this hook into the heel. What is that called? I don't remember. CLARA: I'm blanking too, but like that 60s-70s look. HALE: Yeah. Yeah. There's just a painstaking amount of work that goes into crafting the shape of his garments that I get to wear. Some of the vests and jackets are just unbelievable. I mean, Elvis was an influence on one of them. We can go anywhere, so we do. Thematically I think they kept certain structure similarities in how they're constructing the suits for me so there is some kind of continuity and it doesn't feel like Eliot's style is completely all over the place. But I really enjoyed getting to explore that and I hope that next season we get to take some new risks with that, perhaps in a completely different direction. CLARA: Yeah, I think that would be a lot of fun. [CLARA and HALE speak over each other] CLARA and HALE: Sorry. HALE: Go for it. CLARA: I was just gonna ask what your favorite outfit has been in this season. HALE: From season two? CLARA: Yeah HALE: God, that's hard. I suppose I really love the grey brocade suit that I wore in episode 3. That was pretty great. But there's also the kind of off-beige three piece suit that's very structured in back. But I don't know if you guys even get to see the detail sometimes in the way that it's shot. Sometimes things are so much in closeup that you don't really get to see the full look up head to toe. That one is really exquisitely done. It feels like it has tails in the back, kinda like a conductor's tail. CLARA: Yeah, I know what one you're talking about. HALE: Magali has also given each of us in the cast a psycho spirit animal that she believes each person embodies. CLARA: You as a person or you as your character? HALE: Me as Eliot I guess? Or me as a person, but also sometimes as Eliot. I'm a kangaroo she says, so the pant suit is like the kangaroo suit so she loves that and she always asks, she has this amazing French accent, and she asks me, "Are you kangaroo? Are you sitting on your tail or are you taking out your pocket watch?" She has a good time with that. Everyone has one. It's a good little fun fact. CLARA: Very cool! HALE: That was so random, but you know, we're totally goofy and we get to be. CLARA: Does she have one? HALE: She's a lemur. CLARA: I like that! DANI: I can't think of lemurs and not think of the king lemur from Madagascar now. HALE: Oh, I've never seen it. DANI: You've never seen Madagascar? HALE: No, not familiar. DANI: It's a dumb cartoon. Don't watch it. [Laughter] HALE: Okay. CLARA: HALE, what do you watch? Other than The Magicians. HALE: Let's see…oh I love, okay this is really nerdy, but I love Chef's Table. I think it's the best thing. CLARA: Ahhhh, maybe you can convince my husband to watch it with me. HALE: So so good and so human and so beautiful. I just get a total, just totally inspired by it. What else do I watch right now? I haven't really been watching that much TV which is kinda weird. I saw, I did see Jessica Jones, which I liked okay. I saw, I was a huge Breaking Bad fan like years back. That's not helpful right now. What am I watching? Oh Game of Thrones, I really like. I really liked Bloodline. Have you seen that? It's really good. CLARA: I haven't yet. HALE: I don't know. There's a lot that I want to see that I haven't seen yet -- oh, Master of None, I really liked. DANI: Yes. CLARA: That's good. HALE: Yeah, that was really good. I wanna watch Atlanta and -- Rectify I hear is amazing. Yeah, there's a lot out there I just haven't seen yet. I watched through a couple seasons of The Walking Dead. I'd never seen it so I did that for awhile. Then I was like, okay I think I need a change. CLARA: Fewer zombies. HALE: Yes! Zombies are like, you know. DANI: I'm really over zombies. HALE: I mean I haven't even gotten into some of the newer characters on the show that I'm sure are brilliant. Some of the actors that I know are probably doing amazing work. DANI: I basically got to a certain point and rage quit the show and I'm never going back. CLARA: I got to a certain point and fear-quit it. I managed to hold down -- I don't watch anything horror related -- but after awhile, like season four or five, I just couldn't do it anymore. I'm sick of things jumping around corners at me. HALE: Right. I saw Logan. CLARA: I've heard that's fantastic. HALE: You guys should see it. It's really, really good and really violent and really a great kind of… it feels like an intimate character drama as much as it does a superhero flick. DANI: I just watched the new Power Rangers and it was actually really amazing. HALE: Was it? DANI: Yeah! They did a really great job. It's very diverse. Like four out of five of the rangers are people of color. They made one of them queer. One of them's on the spectrum. Like they tried really hard to be inclusive. HALE: Wow! That's great. Steps forward. CLARA: Okay so I've just looked at the time so I think we should move on and try to through our MVP and episode rating. During our MVP, this is where we normally talk about who had the standout performance of this episode. The ensemble ones are always really hard for me. There was a lot of great performances from you, Hale, in the episode, but also from everybody else. I liked the scene with you and Rhys Ward, who is Bayler. I thought Brittany was incredible in that scene we talked about earlier. Jade and Arjun do an amazing job in the library plotline. Jason and Olivia destroyed all of us in the Teslaflexion scene. But I think, in the end, this episode is about Julia and Stella does a really fantastic job. So I'm giving it to Stella for this episode. Can you forgive me for not picking you, Hale? HALE: Yeah, You're forgiven. Completely. 100%. CLARA: So who was your favorite? DANI: Mine or his? CLARA: Whichever order you choose. HALE: Oh? Do I get to choose? CLARA: You do get to choose! HALE: Oh no. I don't know if I have an answer. CLARA: That's okay. That's also allowed. HALE: Alright. DANI: I have one. I actually wanna go with Marlee Matlin. CLARA: Oh she was amazing. DANI: I love Marlee Matlin in like everything. I don't know if you've ever seen her in The Roast of Donald Trump, but she's pretty amazing in that. HALE: Oh wow. DANI: She hates him a lot. HALE: I'm gonna go look that up right now. DANI: You should. I just would love to see her again. Like this hedgewitch speaking ASL. Like I'm sure there's ASL spells that I don't know about that I want to know about. CLARA: I really liked that conversation that she and Jade -- that she and Kady have and she's talking about how the Library isn't very accessible and that's why she's created this Buzzfeed-like site that sort of enchants and disseminates wisdom from the Library to people who wouldn't have access to it otherwise. DANI: I was laughing really hard when I saw it was like a Buzzfeed knockoff. Oh my god, that's great. CLARA: I feel like we've seen that unicorn in the writer's room before too, in like behind the scenes. HALE: Definitely. It's been around, I think. CLARA: Hale, you gonna give it a shot? DANI: Who's your MVP? HALE: Ummm… Abigail the Sloth just really -- DANI: Is she even in this episode?! [HALE and DANI laughing] HALE: No, I don't think so. CLARA: She is really great. We were joking the other day that we should do an interview with Abigail the Sloth. DANI: I would love too. HALE: Yeah. In fact, her real name is Sassy and she does not get out of her cage for more than ten thousand carrots a day. It took her a few episodes to relax and feel safe in the castle and finally she did, but what ended up happening was that the first few episodes she is moving quite fast over her branch and we were all kind of surprised because we were expecting a very slow moving sleepy panda. And she was just kind of pacing on her branch. CLARA: Have you booped her on the nose? HALE: Nooooo. She will bite your finger off if you boop her on the nose. Sloths have incredibly sharp teeth so when you feed them, you have to be pretty careful about where the food is and where your finger is in relation to it. So yeah. DANI: I'm obsessed with sloths so I was really excited to see her. I should show you, my phone case has sloths on it. HALE: I'm sure you've seen all the sloth memes going around the Internet. DANI: Oh I have so many sloth memes saved to my phone. I send them to people. CLARA: Okay, episode ratings. Dani, you wanna go first? DANI: I wanna… I'm gonna go with a ten. It's been a while since I've given one out, but I really liked this episode. CLARA: It was a really great episode. I think I'm gonna go with probably an eight and a half out of ten. The ensemble ones are a little bit harder for me just cuz there's so much going from bit to bit to bit. Hale? HALE: Umm.. CLARA: On the spot! HALE: I really loved working with our director this episode, Josh Butler. Shoutout to Josh. He's one of the treasures of our show -- we have many. As a director, he is one of the true standouts and he really really understands bridging the -- actually Josh! That's my MVP of the episode. Josh Butler! turning episode ten into a great episode is all of our tasks but I think that he makes it easier because he really understands the bridge between comedy and drama on our show and really wants to talk to the actors about the work that we want to do and how to get there and what his take is. We might have different ideas and he is very collaborative and very hands-on and I love that and respect that and I hope that he does a lot. I hope that he's on our show quite a bit. I really love working with him so Josh is my MVP. CLARA: That's a great answer. Well Hale, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us, Hale. DANI: Yeah. HALE: Thanks for having me. CLARA: This has been really delightful. We'd love to have you back. During the hiatus, we'll probably do some full interviews episodes and we'd love to have you back then. HALE: Cool. Okay. CLARA: To our listeners, thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes. See you next week! Bye! HALE: Thanks guys! DANI: Bye! HALE: Bye. CLARA: Bye.