The Magicians

Season 1 M-Net Edge (*102) 20:00 & 21:00 Sci-fi

Hale Appleman has pulled a rabbit from the hat as flamboyant Eliot Wough, the unofficial prince of magic college Brakebills in sci-fi show The Magicians (2015current). “I’m a stage actor. This is my first real TV role,” says the 31-year-old, who’s loving playing the arrogant and heavy-drinking Eliot. “He’s got so many layers. He’s very complex and he’s got a past that he’s hiding. He has a lot of opinions about everything else but he doesn’t want to talk about his feelings or anything that’s happened to him.”

He didn’t go into the auditions to 1

play Eliot though. “I went in for the role of Penny [Arjun Gupta] and Arjun auditioned for Eliot. The producers swapped us around and we ended up where we belong,” laughs the actor.

Hale got into acting when he was 2

10 and his parents Ara and Richard took him to theatre plays. He adds that “I was drawn to the visual arts and it really is my passion. I love theatre”.

He’s what he likes to call a “true 3

New Yorker” – Hale enjoys bagels, coffee and Central Park, but you won’t catch him playing sports. Instead, he prefers to stay in his apartment and write plays and short stories.

He also finds “emotional release” 4

through writing music, although he hasn’t put out any music to date.

While he admits that “Eliot is most 5

certainly gay”, there’s only speculation about Hale’s orientation. He shies away from personal questions and often arrives at red-carpet events on his own or with a group of people.

What he will say is that “I’d love to 6

meet someone who’s unabashedly themselves, has themselves figured out and is playful. Often that was my mom’s friends – they hit on me all the time!”