Warning: This article contains spoilers about the series premiere ofCruel Summer.
That’s a lot!
When you first signed on to the show, did you know the full season arc of the character?
Blake Lee in ‘Cruel Summer’.Bill Matlock/Freeform
At the very start, no, I didn’t know the the full season arc.
It’s why nobody would suspect him to be this villain.
And often bad people don’t consider themselves bad people, you know what I mean?
So is that the same way you approached playing him during filming?
But it was also really, really exciting to be able to go to those depths as an actor.
We felt safe always.
But it’s hard to go to super-dark places.
It’s hard to tell these stories, but these things do happen in life.
People in power positions take advantage of people.
There’s bad people out there!
It’s terrifying because that does happen.
Most of my career I’ve done comedy, so it was definitely new to me.
Tia [Napolitano, the showrunner] and I had like hours of conversations.
I would read a script and I would call her, and it was really collaborative.
But it was scary, and I just had to take it one script at a time.
And the cast was so incredible; we’re all so close and we would constantly talk about it.
Where does the mystery go from here?
This show goes where you don’t expect it to.
I mean, when I turned the last page of the last script, I literally gasped.
You’re constantly guessing and you don’t know who to trust.
That’s what it feels like already in the first two episodes.
None of these twists or reveals feel gratuitous.
Completely, and that was a big part of why I took the job.
Cruel Summerairs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Freeform.
