All in the fractured family
Stars playing dysfunctional kinfolk in Netflix’s new Toronto-made show The Umbrella Academy are a cohesive bunch off-screen
If dysfunctional family dynamics are at the heart of the new Netflix series The
Umbrella Academy, the opposite seems to be true of the actors who play those family members. The superhero show, whose 10-episode first season arrived Friday, concerns seven children born in bizarre circumstances and adopted by an autocratic billionaire who wants to train them to save the world. Six of them reunite as adults (well, mostly — more on that later) when their father dies mysteriously — a reunion plagued by mutual mistrust and hostility.
Four of the actors who play the siblings, along with a fifth who plays a time-travelling hit man, did interviews last week in Toronto, where the series was shot, and there was nary a hint of rivalry — sibling, professional or otherwise. At one point, British actor Tom Hopper interrupted American Emmy RaverLampman to gush about how “incredible” she is in Umbrella Academy and how “blown away” he was considering this was the musical-theatre performer’s first real TV job.
Likewise, American Cameron Britton, who plays the contract killer Hazel, recalled the first time he and Mary J. Blige, who plays fellow assassin Cha Cha, had scenes with Irish co-star Robert Sheehan: “We’re looking at each other, like, ‘We need to step our f-king game up,’ ” Britton said. Sheehan, asked whether he had worked with any of his co-stars before, deadpanned, “Not in this life, no. I was a bottle washer back in 1762 and he was a hunchbacked bottle washer in the same brewery,” while pointing to Britton.
“You can tell we’re all in sync because we’re all in socks,” added MexicanAmerican actor David Castaneda, drawing attention to the fact that he, Sheehan and Britton were all shoeless while they lounged on chairs in the interview suite.
Credit for putting this harmonious group together for Umbrella Academy — based on a popular comic-book series of the same name, written by rocker Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance — belongs to Canadian showrunner Steve Blackman, known for his work on TV series Fargo and Legion. He said he chose the cast himself.
“I mean, I had casting people help me, but I knew who I wanted really clearly. I wanted Ellen Page, for example, for Vanya. She’s an incredibly smart actor. Robert Sheehan, I had seen him in Mis
fits (a British superhero series), which I loved him in. Tom Hopper and Game of
Thrones (in which Hopper played Samwell Tarly’s brother), he has this innocent face for such a big guy.”
Britton earned an Emmy nomination for playing the twisted killer Edmund Kemper in Mindhunter. Castaneda is known for roles in movies like Sicario: Day of the Soldado and TV series like Switched at Birth and Jane the Virgin.
Raver-Lampman, on the other hand, is not well known to film or TV fans, but she’s a veteran of a decade in professional theatre, and was still starring as Angelica Schuyler in a touring production of Hamilton when the call from Blackman’s team came. “I took my final bow and the next morning I was on a flight to Toronto,” she said.
Blige was a tough one to persuade to sign on, says Blackman. The singer had her pick of projects after her Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Mudbound, but the prospect of doing her own stunts helped sell her on The Umbrella Academy. “We had her on cables, flying Mary J. Blige through the air. It was great,” said a laughing Blackman.
The final piece of the puzzle was 15-year-old American actor Aidan Gallagher, who plays time-travelling sibling Number Five, a middle-aged man stuck in the body of a 13-year-old. “Oh my God, was that hard to cast!” said Blackman. “He was like the 310th kid I read and he was perfect for the role. Real profes- sional kid, so smart.”
(Gallagher, Blige and Canada’s own Page didn’t participate in the interviews, although Blige and Page were at the show’s red-carpet premiere later that night.)
Blackman has said in various interviews that dysfunction among the characters is the key to the series. “I saw in it sort of a Wes Anderson Royal Tenenbaums dysfunctional family show,” he told the Star.
“The fact that they were superheroes was not what attracted me (to the project) … I loved the family dynamics. All of them were messed up by their father (played by veteran Canadian-American actor Colm Feore); they’re all struggling.
“It’s like The Big Chill. They come back 18 years later. Who are you to me now? How’s my life gone on? And I love that, I really love that.”
“Function is boring,” agreed Sheehan. “Protagonist — that means an imperfect person, that’s your hero. A perfect person, you don’t have a movie, you don’t have a TV show because they don’t have any flaws.”
“I said no to a lot of superhero stuff,” added Britton. “I never expected to say yes to that kind of stuff. This one, it’s more of a human show with superpowers mixed in on the side.”
“I think we as humans, the moment we’re defined (as) something I think it’s kind of insulting,” added Castaneda. “I think it’s actually cool to have the possibility to surprise and I think this show specifically allows us to showcase that.”
The element of surprise was also an attraction for Hopper in playing Luther, the siblings’ de facto leader who “looks like this big kind of gorilla. I felt that Luther was someone who needed to, on the outside, look like a big strong dude but, on the inside, he’s far more than that. He’s vulnerable and sensitive and hurting, he’s damaged.”
Raver-Lampman relished the chance to play “a crime-fighting, action-hero superstar” but also a mother and a sister. “I think I was just so intrigued by Allison, being the only girl technically in the Umbrella Academy.”
“I found it all fun, all of it really,” added Sheehan. “I found it a very creatively relaxed environment, which isn’t always the case when you make television because people are trying to compel you to stick to a schedule and stick to a script, and be quite rigid about things, but this was the very, very opposite of that.”