In the run-up to today's premiere of The Umbrella Academy’s third season, Pride met with its cast to discuss the latest chapter in the Hargreeves family’s ongoing misadventures.
Having barely survived their most recent face-off with the end of the world, the family returns to the present day only to discover it's not the same world they left behind. They’re also forced to face off with a whole new squad of superpowered siblings known as The Sparrows — and, of course, a new apocalypse is waiting around every corner.
Each of the Hargreeves comes away from season two a changed person; some are struggling with unfathomable loss, others find their hearts have grown in new and expected ways, and in the case of Vanya, it's a deeper more fundamental realization — one that leads them to embrace their truest self and become Viktor Hargreeves.
That latter plotline has been much speculated about over the past few months, since Netflix confirmed that, like actor Elliot Page himself, his character of Vanya would be transitioning.
The show’s audience was curious and even concerned about how it would be handled. For show creator Steve Blackman, it was essential that they did it right.
“The thing we wanted to do was twofold: We wanted to tell an authentic, sensitive story that was positive about being trans and the second thing we did, was that we did it for story reasons, we didn't want it to become the story of the season,” Blackman told Pride.
“That was a hard balance to find and it took a little bit of nuance as I was writing the scenes. Ultimately I took everything I had and said to Elliot, “what do you think?’ I wanted him to be the final arbiter and it ‘felt very real,’ he said. The days we [shot the scenes] were very touching days on set. The way he held himself and the way he did the scene, we were all moved on set. It was really beautiful to do.”
The impact of that story reverberated off the screen and into the actors' lives as well. “I certainly learned something as a straight male of having friends who are in the trans community and queer community,” Tom Hopper, who plays Luther in the series told Pride.
“I had an opportunity here to be presented with people from those communities and really learn from them and how to deal with this scenario that we went through with Elliot and with Viktor as our characters and how it should be handled with care but how it should be quickly and easily accepted it's not about you and what you think about it, it's about them and their comfort and where they are in their journey,” he said.
Watch Pride’s full interview with Steve Blackman, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher, and Justin H. Min below.
