Reasons to decompress
The star of 13 Reasons Why Ross Butler admits it took him two weeks to decompress after filming the first season of Netflix’s controversial hit series.
The 27-year-old Singaporeborn actor plays Zach Dempsey on the teen drama, which made headlines last year because of the way it chronicled the sexual assault and suicide of Hannah Baker.
In New Zealand, the censorship office took the unprecedented step of creating a new classification, RP18 (meaning it recommended those under-18 years watch it with an adult) because of the ‘‘fatalistic’’ way in which it depicted Hannah taking her own life.
Ahead of the debut of the second season on Netflix last Friday, Butler said that the cast knew that it would be a good show, people would talk about it and it would be controversial, but they ‘‘never expected the scale of worldwide craziness that happened’’.
‘‘But we’re all happy about it because we’re getting people to talk about the issues people need to start talking about and it wasn’t necessarily expected it would go that way.’’
He says that the cast bonded during their five months together shooting the first season (where even therapy dogs were on set for the more ‘‘emotional’’ days) and looked after each other’s ‘‘mental health’’, the hardest part was when filming ended.
‘‘Getting out of the mindset of Zach [who responds to Hannah’s dating rebuff by stealing what could have been confidence boosting notes before she can see them], having lived with him 24/7 for basically five or six months, was difficult.
‘‘I had to remind myself of my life outside acting and outside the character. Like most of the rest of the cast, I think it took me two weeks before I could let go.’’
Butler says that to support each other through that decompression process, the cast had lots of get-togethers, game nights and dinners, ‘‘to make things a little less depressing’’.
However, despite the emotional toll of the project and what he describes as a crazy year, Butler says he was more than excited to return for a second season.
‘‘Before we started shooting, I had lunch with Brian Yorkey, our executive producer, and he sat down with me for an hour or so and just kind of told me the general outline of the second season – what the deal was with the polaroids and the court case, as well as some of secrets Zach has this season.
‘‘So I knew where we were going straight off, but they also kept some of the secrets to themselves so that they could surprise us when the scripts come out.’’
Shooting season two wasn’t without its hitches either. Production was delayed for two weeks after wildfires came close to the California set. Of course, 13 Reasons Why isn’t the first high school drama Butler has appeared in.
He first made his name starring opposite Zendaya on Disney series K.C Undercover, but was left with an awful choice when the opportunity to star in 13 Reasons came up after he’d finished playing Reggie Mantle on the first season of Riverdale. He won’t go into the reasons he made the switch, but is happy to offer his thoughts as to the differences between the shows.
‘‘I would say 13 Reasons is a lot more subtle in the drama. There are a lot more things going on beneath the surface. Riverdale is going for a different tone – although I think Reggie and Zach have a lot of similarities.’’
Butler is also full of praise for his Kiwi former co-star KJ Apa. ‘‘I love KJ. One of my weird quirks is that when I work with people I kind of pick up their accent. I love the New Zealand accent, I’ve been watching Flight of the Conchords since I was a teenager, so I kind of worked on my accent with him as a kind of fun little thing. He’d also tell me all about New Zealand and that I have to go there.’’
Before he contemplates a trip Down Under though, Butler says he’ll be spending this weekend with some of the rest of the 13 Reasons cast at least watching a couple of episodes of the new series.
‘‘Thirteen hours’ worth is a little harder to plan to do together, so I think we’ll watch the first two episodes or one that we all feel we really like.’’
Butler says while viewers can expect more of the same emotionally charged drama, there’s a different focus for the second series. ‘‘This season, it is all about our characters looking back on what we did and how we choose to move on from it or live with it.’’
He says he hopes the number one thing that people take away from it is that, ‘‘everybody feels differently and deals with tragedy differently’’.
‘‘Everybody’s process is different and all we can do is be there for each other and to just be better to each other. I think that’s the tone of the whole show, but I think it really focuses on that this season.’’ ● Season 2 of 13 Reasons Why is streaming now on Netflix.