Joe Henderson sobre la Season 3 – Entrevista Exclusiva – Partes 1 & 2
Por ABBIE BERNSTEIN - 02 Oct 2017
There are some big changes afoot in LUCIFER’s third season when the show returns to Fox on Monday nights, beginning October 2. At the end of Season 2, Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) – who is actually the Devil, though a very honest individual – almost got together with his true love, LAPD detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German). Then someone bonked him over the head and he woke up naked in the desert, with his angel wings reattached, even though he’d previously cut them off and burned them.
Meanwhile, Lucifer’s mother (Tricia Helfer) has moved on to her own dimension to create new worlds, as befits a goddess. However, the body she inhabited, defense lawyer Charlotte Richards, is still with us. Tom Welling joins the cast this season as police lieutenant Marcus Pierce. Behind the scenes, LUCIFER has moved from shooting primarily in Vancouver to shooting entirely in Los Angeles, where the series is set.
Tom Kapinos adapted LUCIFER from the comic book series by Mike Dringenberg and Sam Kieth, which itself is a spinoff of Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN graphic novels. Executive producer Joe Henderson, who with fellow e.p. Ildy Modrovich is LUCIFER’s show runner, previews what’s in store for the series’ angels, demons and ordinary mortals.
ASSIGNMENT X: When you did the Season 2 finale with that final sequence of Lucifer waking in the desert to find that he had wings again, did you know that you were getting picked up, or was that just going to be this amazing metaphor if it ended there?
JOE HENDERSON: At that point, we felt very comfortable that we were getting picked up. When Fox tells you, “Feel free to do a cliffhanger,” you feel very comfortable doing so. But also, what I personally believe in is, every season, you wrap up that season and then leave a tease of what’s to come. I always plan on success. A big part of it was, all right, we want to wrap up the Mom story, we want to give it an ending, and then we want a tease of what’s to come. And we knew we’d be getting to a whole exploration of identity, and we just wanted to make the big swing that would force everyone to come back.
AX: Now that Lucifer has his wings back, what is he going to do about them?
HENDERSON: All I’m going to say is, if you give Lucifer wings and tell him he’s an angel, he’s going to run in the other direction. You tell the Devil he’s good, he’s going to show you how bad he is, and that’s what this season is about. The Devil is back.
AX: Are the wings detachable?
HENDERSON: That is a big question we will ask early on. And/or does Lucifer want to cut them off yet again? He’s got them off before – what’s going to stop him now? Or will he just slice them off again in spite?
AX: Lucifer’s angel brother Amenadiel, played by D.B. Woodside, has lost his wings, but when he had them, they weren’t always in evidence. So how does this work?
HENDERSON: So our angel rules are, there in your back, but they’ll come out when you expose them. They’re hidden until you want them to come forth.
AX: You’ve had some scenes where you were clearly in recognizable Los Angeles locations, but until now, you were mainly shooting in Vancouver. What’s happening with Season 3?
HENDERSON: We are now entirely relocated in Los Angeles. The first two years, we shot in Vancouver, with splinter units in L.A. And now we are shooting entirely in Los Angeles. Our Vancouver crew was amazing, they did amazing work making Vancouver look like L.A. But it’s so much fun being able to shoot Los Angeles for itself and making it a character on the show, it’s been incredible. To shoot on the Warner Brothers lot – I’ve never shot on a lot before – it’s an incredible experience to actually be home.
AX: Tricia Helfer is still a season regular, even though Lucifer and Amenadiel’s Mom has gone off to create her own universe. Does Mom return?
HENDERSON: [The character of] Charlotte Richards is still on the show. And Charlotte Richards is very confused, because she died, and suddenly woke up again, and time had passed, and it appears someone has been walking around, pretending to be her. So what we get is a wonderful opportunity to explore a character who is suddenly wondering what happened to her life, and who was this person living it, and where was she while she was dead? And part of the mystery is, was she in Heaven, was she in Hell, was she somewhere else? And that’s a question she’ll be asking herself when we finally see her again.
AX: Was it tricky to figure out how to keep her character interwoven with everybody else?
HENDERSON: Honestly, we had written a one-season arc for Tricia Helfer. And then we got Tricia Helfer. And the problem is, when you have Tricia Helfer, you don’t want to let go of her, because she is so good. And so as we got towards the end of the season, we started talking, we just started breaking stories, and started coming up with so many ideas of what to do with her character, and what to do with such a talented actress. And honestly, it was one of those situations where we loved the character, we loved the actress so much, that we kept building stories, and a lot of it came from that. The story of Mom ended, but the story of Charlotte Richards suddenly came to life.
AX: There was an episode where Timothy Omundson played a man who might or might not have been channeling Dad, aka God. At least, Mom seemed to think he was. Are we ever going to find out if that really was Dad or not?
HENDERSON: For one thing, Timothy Omundson was quite possibly the greatest guest star we ever had. We adore him. He’s recovering right now – he had a stroke recently and he’s been detailing it on Twitter in a very brave, open way, and it’s awesome. We’ve never had a guest actor come in for one episode and make such an impact on us. He’s part of the family, even though he’s only in one episode. So we would love to explore that again. Part of the question is when he becomes available again. He’s currently recovering. We are there for him, we are wishing him the best. He will recover. I am hoping when he does, he wants to come back, because we love him and he had a great experience, but honestly, what we’ll do is, we’ll work around him, and that’s a testament to his skill. He took such ownership of the role in a way that few actors can.
AX: So if that was Dad, he’s only going to manifest as the character played by Timothy Omundson?
HENDERSON: What I would say is, that’s a guy who thought he was Dad. And whether or not he had a piece of him or not is something to explore. But Dad is bigger than a single mortal being, so the full version of that is yet to be seen.
AX: Chloe’s ex-husband Dan, played by Kevin Alejandro, was involved with “Charlotte” last season, who he never realized was a deity, and now thinks is Lucifer and Amenadiel’s stepmother, rather than their actual mother. Where is Dan going this season?
HENDERSON: So a big part of Dan’s arc is, despite all of the machinations, he actually kind of fell for Charlotte Richards. But then when he found her on the beach [in the Season 2 finale], she didn’t remember him at all. So where we start is, he fell for Charlotte Richards, because she is a weird, confusing woman, but she actually seemed to care for him. And now she seems to pretend that she doesn’t even know him. So a big part of it is, who is this new Charlotte Richards, is she the woman I fell in love with, and/or is she someone I can care about? So what we’re really going to do is explore what happens when the woman that you didn’t expect to fall in love with but did seems to be a whole new person.
AX: Does this mean that Dan is over Chloe in the romantic sense?
HENDERSON: Yes. One of the things I love is, you see the two when we broke them apart. I think towards the end, in particular, when Chloe was like, “Oh, if you [marry] Charlotte, you’ll be Lucifer’s stepdad.” It felt like they were just like, “You know what? I love you, but I love you as a friend. And not only is that okay, that’s good.” I like showing that healthy version of divorce. As someone who is a child of divorce, there are very many ways to make it healthy, and to me, the two of them have healthily decided, “I love you, not in that way anymore, but I care about you.” So what we’re going to see more and more is, “Dan, be careful with your heart. Chloe, be careful with where you go. I love you in the ‘Don’t get hurt’ sort of way,” not the, “I love you, I’m jealous” way. I love being able to depict that healthy separation.
AX: Is Chloe and Dan’s young daughter Trixie, played by Scarlett Estevez, going to get curious about what’s going on? When the show started, she was so little that she matter-of-factly accepted that her mother knows somebody named Lucifer. But as she’s getting a little older, is she going to start to notice some odd things about Lucifer?
HENDERSON: For one thing, Scarlett is such an amazing actress. You get kid actors, you don’t know what you’re going to get. With Scarlett, you know exactly what you’re going to get, which is a kid who knows timing and comedy and also can do heart. But when it comes to Trixie’s character, the fun of it is, she’s the disarming character who sees through the b.s. And that’s something we’re going to lean on. But like a kid, she sees the truth but also misinterprets it. What I love about Trixie’s character is, she’s actually very similar to Lucifer. She’s a child who’s oddly adult in many different ways. So as much as she’ll understand the heart of something, she won’t necessarily be able to interpret what it means, and then I think one of the reasons Lucifer is so uncomfortable around her is, children are his equal, because they are innocent, but also have more insight than you can expect.
AX: Maze, played by Lesley-Anne Brandt, is Lucifer’s demon associate from Hell who had an affair with Amenadiel and is currently roommates with Chloe and Trixie. Maze believes that she does not have a soul. Will she have any concerns about this?
HENDERSON: One of the big things that was important to me was teeing up how demons are different from everything else. And in Episode Thirteen [of Season 3], which I co-wrote, one of the big things I really wanted to hit was the fact that Maze doesn’t have a soul. Because to me, it’s a fascinating idea on a couple levels. One, what does a soul even mean? Two, what happens if you don’t think you have a soul? What I love about Maze, and what we’re going to explore in our Maze-focused episode coming up this season is, if you don’t have a soul, then when you die, you’re just dead. So why not live every moment like it’s your last? And what does that say about you, what does that say about the way you live? To me, Maze knows she might die tomorrow and that’s it, no loss. And you know what? Not only is that fine, isn’t that healthy? Isn’t that better than living with the sort of dread of what’s to come? That argument, that debate of morality, of soulfulness, but also the question of, yeah, you’re living that way, but does that mean you don’t have a soul, or does that mean you just don’t know it? That’s our show. So that’s a big thing we want to explore is, do you not have a soul, or is it just easier to say you don’t?
AX: Chloe doesn’t seem very introspective on the soul issue. Despite the fact that she has Christian trappings, she doesn’t seem overly concerned with how things will affect her immortal soul. Dan seems maybe a little more religious …
HENDERSON: We try to make every character a different aspect of [the spiritual question]. And Chloe very definitely represents our logic side. She’s a detective – “Give me proof and I’ll believe it.” She’s not an atheist, per se, but she wants proof of things, she wants to understand things. To me, that’s the beauty of her dynamic with Lucifer. Lucifer, ironically, he’s a character derived of faith. You have to believe in him. But the irony is in front of you saying, “I exist,” but you have to believe what he’s saying. So it’s just another version of the faith versus realism debate, and Chloe very much represents the Scully side of that, if you want to use THE X-FILES.
AX: Well, you sort of want somebody to say to Lucifer, “Look, dude, you’re telling me you’re the Devil, but let’s say you are who you say you are, you look human, and you know that humans lie. So why should I believe you?”
HENDERSON: It’s funny, because to me, one of the things Chloe understands is Lucifer’s soul. But what I love about Chloe’s character in particular is, I think she’s got Lucifer pegged. And one of the things she knows is that he does tell the truth. Now, he says he’s the Devil, and she can’t quite square that. But when it comes to moral truths, when it comes to truth of the heart, when he says something, she believes him. And so I guess to me what’s so interesting is, she has faith in him. Amongst all these questions, the one thing she believes in is Lucifer’s character
ASSIGNMENT X: What will Tom Welling be doing as LAPD lieutenant Marcus Pierce?
JOE HENDERSON: This man is so talented. Here’s what I love about Pierce. We haven’t had an authority figure on our show. Our characters run around, they solve cases, but no one’s come around and said, “How are you guys doing this? What are you doing?” So when Lieutenant Marcus Pierce shows up, he’s like, “Wait, what exactly is going on?” Ella [the police coroner played by Aimee Garcia] and Dan [the police detective played by Kevin Alejandro] and Chloe [police detective and Lucifer’s true love, played by Lauren German] and Lucifer [played by Tom Ellis], they’re getting along now. There will always be fights, but there’s a rhythm. This is the character who comes in and blows it all up. This is the character who comes in and goes, “What are you guys doing?” And to have a character who can be – “antagonist” is the wrong word, because he’s just trying to figure out how this stuff works. He’s just trying to lead the precinct. But to have someone who’s coming in, going, “How do we run this well when you guys are doing this crazy stuff,” that’s a fun toy to play with. And Tom Welling is such a joy and such a nice dude. And he just immediately melded with the cast in a way that was a relief and a joy.
Pierce has got an eye on Chloe, or at least will eventually. So what’s fun is, you’ve got the super-handsome dude showing up, and then you’ve got the Devil showing up, and then you’ve got the thing of like, “Oh, hey, you’re the big guy coming in, swinging his everything.” And Chloe might be frustrated at first, but in Season 2, we pushed the will-they/won’t-they of Lucifer and Chloe. In Season 3, we really want to explore a love triangle. Pierce is a tough guy, but a good guy. Lucifer is a lech, but a good guy. We want to play, Pierce is much more Chloe’s rhythm. He’s a cop who believes in the rules implicitly. He can be very difficult in very different ways, but he much more follows Chloe’s moral path than Lucifer does. So who do you choose? And really exploring that duality is a lot of the fun of the season. We will definitely get into more mythological stuff as we go on, but right now, the idea was, really explore a love triangle in this police world.
AX: How much is Season 3 going to be procedural, and how much is it going to be serialized?
HENDERSON: We are going to try to replicate the formula of the last year, which is, every episode will have a serialized element, we will always have a case of the week, and honestly, I like the cases, because Lucifer makes every case about himself, so every case is an opportunity for Lucifer to explore whatever he’s going through. The fun of it is, is the case appropriate, or is it not, but does Lucifer make it about himself anyway? So that’s the fun to me.
AX: Are we going to get any more mythology this season as far as how angels and demons work?
HENDERSON: To me, our show always has to be balanced. And I love the mythology – I’m a mythology guy, always balance the mythological with the case. So there will always be a case of the week, but there will always be mythology. For example, I may have slowly snuck in one of my favorite characters from LUCIFER, who will be slowly seeded into the season. Will we see this character? Maybe, maybe not, but we are laying the breadcrumbs. There are mythological elements that will always be on the show. We have a demon from Hell. We are not going to run away from that. We have a character who can go to Hell at times. These are our toys, but we try to use them carefully, we try to use them when the characters demand it. That’s both the fun and the challenge of our show, but we will never walk away from the mythology. That is what makes the show sing.
AX: Last season, Lucifer’s therapist Linda, played by Rachael Harris, ended up in trouble and it looked like she was going to lose her license. Is that storyline continuing into Season 3?
HENDERSON: I love Rachael Harris, and I love what she’s done with the character. And the first two seasons, Linda was very much the bouncing board, like, let’s use her to dig into other characters. But very slowly, we tried to also dig into Linda and show the cracks. And her near-death experience will be our beginning to really show the cracks and really dig into the character of Linda. One of our big goals in Season 3 is to learn more about who Linda is, but also break her apart a little bit and put her back together, because Rachael Harris is such a good actress. Also, that character is so rich. So many times, you get the therapist who lets everyone bounce off them, but their story could be the most interesting one. You just don’t know [that], because they’re always listening. And it’s time for her to stop listening, and time for us to start listening to Dr. Linda. And that’s one of the things we want to do.
AX: Any thoughts of bringing in Peter Bogdanovich as Linda’s shrink, the way he played the therapist for Lorraine Bracco’s psychiatric professional character on THE SOPRANOS?
HENDERSON: Oh, my God. You have no idea how many times we have wanted and discussed bringing Peter Bogdanovich in. Peter, if you’re listening or reading, please call us. How great would it be to do something like that? We’re a phone call away.
AX: And is Amenadiel, Lucifer’s angel brother played by D.B. Woodside, going to continue to pine for his ex-lover, the demon Maze, played by Lesley-Anne Brandt?
HENDERSON: These are great questions. So Amenadiel’s arc in the last two seasons was very much a challenge of faith, and very much, he failed, because he didn’t believe his Father [God, had confidence in him], and then his Father proved that actually, Amenadiel was his favorite son. So Season 3 is all about Amenadiel going, “You know what? I got test after test – I failed it. I’m not failing again. Now I’m going to stand up, now I’m going to prove that I am actually deserving of this.” Season 2, we deconstructed Amenadiel. Season 3, it’s all about him proving why he should be the favorite son, but we’re going to make it really, really hard on him.
AX: And is LUCIFER ever going to mention the son of God who was apparently here and left after thirty-three years?
HENDERSON: [laughs] We are taking a page from the comic book [LUCIFER is based on a series of comics by Mike Dringenberg and Sam Kieth, which itself is a spinoff of Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN graphic novels], which is, do not open that can of worms. Mike Carey actually wrote a forward to one of the comics, where he very smartly said that if you bring up Jesus, it just unravels everything on your mythology, but if you don’t bring him up, you’re fine. So we’ve just come to the philosophy of, we’re just not going to deal with that right now. If we ever find a way to do it, we’re interested, but right now, we’re telling our Old Testament story. That’s not to say he didn’t exist – obviously, he did, [as illustrated by] Father Frank and other things, but it’s not a story we’re telling right now. The comic book was very smart about it, and we will follow their lead.
AX: SUPERNATURAL has gone twelve seasons with God and Lucifer as sometimes onscreen characters and gotten around that issue, so …
HENDERSON: Right? And by the way, we should all be so lucky and do it so well. We shouted out to SUPERNATURAL, who shouted out to us. I don’t know if you saw, but they have Mark Pellegrino, who plays Lucifer, a couple years ago, they did a shout-out to us …
AX: SUPERNAURAL’s Lucifer had a line about, “What am I gonna do, go to L.A. and run a club?”
HENDERSON: That was very nice of them, I really appreciated it.
AX: Even though you are shooting Season 3 in Los Angeles, you actually shot several episodes earlier this year in Vancouver that haven’t aired yet. John Billingsley was in one of them …
HENDERSON: Yes. First of all, John Billingsley was amazing. So what happened was, we thought we were doing eighteen episodes, and then we found out we were doing twenty-two. They [Fox] said, “Listen, we only want to make the eighteen-episode arc, but we want to order more episodes, and if we find room in our schedule, we’ll air them in the spring, but more likely, they’ll air in Season 3.” So those four episodes are airing in Season 3. so we have these four episodes, and we’ve laced them through the top of Season 3. Towards the end, we knew they were going to be in Season 3. So what we did is, we wrote the episodes early, and we made them standalone stories. For example, the third episode to air [in Season 3] is one of our standalones, but I doubt you’ll be able to tell, because it’s a Maze-centric episode that really starts off her story for Season 3, because we knew this would be one of the things we’d be doing. John Billingsley is in Episode 2:21, which is airing early in Season 3. It might be one of the best episodes we have made. That is our weird, slightly bizarre TWILIGHT ZONE episode. And he’s fantastic.
They have some L.A. shoot in them, because while we shot in Vancouver, we also shot L.A. splinter. So we have an episode which is a flashback episode, when Lucifer first came to L.A. And a very big amount of it is in L.A. That was part of our challenge for the first two seasons is, we always shot some in L.A., so you’d be like, “Wait, I thought this was Vancouver, but that’s definitely L.A.” That was the challenge and fun of the show was, we would try to get a scene or two per episode to make you feel like you were there. But now, this season, every shot, you are there.
AX: Which studio are you shooting at?
HENDERSON: We are on the Warner Brothers lot. We are in the largest soundstage on the Warner Brothers lot, and it is awesome. It is so exciting, there is a single soundstage which has the Warner Brothers logo – that’s ours. We are proud to bring production back to L.A. I’ve never shot on the L.A. lot before – I could not be more thrilled.
AX: What else should we know about LUCIFER Season 3?
HENDERSON: Here’s what I would tease. Lucifer got his angel wings back. He doesn’t like that. If Lucifer is told to go left, he goes right. If he has angel wings, he re-embraces his Devil side. So the fun of it is, Chloe’s been a good influence on Lucifer. And he’s getting nicer and nicer, and part of him wonders, is that part of the reason that Dad [God] gave me these wings back, assuming it’s Dad? Maybe it’s time I go in the other direction. So we’re going to see the Devil re-embrace a bit of who he used to be, and we’re going to play with the toys that we already have.
AX: If it’s not Dad, is there somebody else it might be?
HENDERSON: In Lucifer’s perspective, it’s always Dad. But someone knocked him over the back of the head. Someone on Earth did this. So in the premiere, the question is who. And that becomes the big string that we pull at the top of the season. So that’s the big examination – “I know it’s Dad, but was it Amenadiel? Was it someone else? Or, if it wasn’t Dad, was it something darker?”
We [Henderson and fellow executive producer/show runner Ildy Modrovich] are on Season 3 of a show that we love. We have almost the exact same writing staff that we had – even though we’re redoing our crew, we have the exact same cast that we had. We have hit our groove in a way that makes me so happy. So right now, all we’re focused on is getting this show done, and honestly, I love it so much.
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