‘THE MAGICIANS’ ENTER A NEW WORLD
A series based on Lev Grossman’s three novels has plenty of potential for more twists and turns to enchant viewers By Ian Spelling
There was chaos and comfort to be found in equal measure in the common room of the Physical Kids’ Cottage, one of the main sets used by the cast and crew of the sci-fi series The Magicians — and that’s the whole idea. Other wellappointed rooms and hallways surrounded the common room, and everything was housed in a soundstage at the studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, where the series is recorded. Much of The Magicians, based on the book series by Lev Grossman, takes place in fantasy worlds, but the common room in the Physical Kids’ Cottage at the secret, Hogwarts-esque Brakebills University in upstate New York, serves as the hangout for the show’s main characters. The group includes protagonist Quentin (Jason Ralph), Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), Eliot (Hale Appleman), Penny (Arjun Gupta), Kady (Jade Tailor), Margo (Summer Bishil) and Julia (Stella Maeve).
“These sets are incredible,” Tailor said. “They really bring it to life for us. In the Physical Kids’ Cottage, they have these intricacies. Did you see the glasses and the chair hanging from the ceiling? You get this sense of it being magical, like a kid put it up there.
“Every day I walk in and I’m astonished by the sets and the art design. It really makes you feel like you’ve been immersed into this world that is The Magicians.”
Season 2 of The Magicians will kick off on Jan 25. As the crew repositioned cameras and tinkered with lighting, James Conway, one of the show’s regular directors, explained why he thinks the series has connected with viewers.
“The fantasy books these kids loved are real, which is an exciting story hook,” Conway said. “Then what you’ve got is these kids in their early 20s trying to come to grips with becoming adults, and that’s complicated by the fact that they’re magicians, or that some of them are magicians. Magic doesn’t solve problems, it creates problems, and it really complicates their lives.
“This episode is a good example of that. Many of the characters come to a crisis point, the crisis point in their relationships and their friendships. It’s just as much about the characters as it is about all the magic that swirls around them.”
The scene at hand wasn’t particularly magical. Julia bounded down the steps, excitedly sharing news with Kady — something about an info-matrixing spell — only to see that Quentin was there too. Clearly there was some tension between Quentin and Julia, Julia being Quentin’s longtime friend and unrequited love as well as a Brakebills reject.
Rest assured, however, that there’s magic aplenty, not to mention vengeance, action, romance and terror on the way in Season 2. That’s because much of the show’s sophomore year will take place in the magical realm of Fillory. Several members of the group will become royalty, with Eliot crowned the High King, and they will all encounter a figure known as the White Lady as well as contend with the Beast, who, contrary to appearances, did not die at the end of Season 1.
“Going to Fillory opens the door to so much fantasy, and then lets us poke at the fantasy, which is kind of what we do on The Magicians,” said Sera Gamble, who was seated next to fellow producer John McNamara. “It’s a chance to do magical creatures that are extensive and also dark fairy tales. We still have that counterbalance of New York and Brakebills, but it just kind of blew the roof off the story, to be in Fillory.”
McNamara said he had always wanted to write “something medieval”, especially as a fan of such movies as Excalibur (1981) and the various Robin Hood incarnations. However, he added, he also realised that he couldn’t write “that fake Shakespeare” dialogue.
“I don’t know how they do it in Game of Thrones and keep a straight face,” he said. “I just couldn’t write that ‘thee, thou’ stuff, but the idea of having our characters from the 21st century dropped into a fantasy world essentially more or less medieval, with some great twists, and reacting to dragons and fairies and pixies in the way that I’d react, which is, ‘Get the hell out of here,’ as opposed to, ‘My lord’ … That I get.
“When I read the first Magicians book and they go to Fillory for the first time, one of them was wearing a Ramones T-shirt. That I got, and that’s what we’re aiming for now on the show. The hard part for me now is letting the characters be self-referential without undercutting the idea that the stakes really are life and death.”
More specifically, the stakes are this in Season 2: Magic is dying, and it’s up to the Physical Kids to save it. According to Jason Ralph, whose credits include Broadway’s Peter and the Starcatcher (20122013) and Aquarius, that means that missing people will need to be found, fractured friendships will require mending and his “man/ boy” character will need to grow up fast.
“It’s been fun to play,” Ralph said, “because we have a lot of old relationships now in new circumstances, and they’re forced to renegotiate how they work together and what they value about each other. There’s also so much growth this season with all the characters.
“I think it’s about stripping away and then we put those same characters, who are evolving, back in old circumstances, and acting it has felt so strange.
“It feels like being stretched. Your feet are stuck in one place, your mind is in another, and being forced to live in old skin is really interesting. The characters start to fall back into old patterns, but now with the new circumstances of the puppet strings pulling them along.
“A lot of stuff is turned on its head, and then turned up to 11. I think book readers are going to be really excited for a lot of the Quentin/Alice stuff that’s to come. It’s been really exciting to play, but I can’t talk too much about it.”
Playing Eliot is Hale Appleman, a New York actor best known for the horror film Teeth (2007). He plays his powerful bad-boy character not only as openly gay but as flamboyantly, unapologetically gay.
“The big deal isn’t that Eliot is gay or queer or sexually fluid,” Appleman said. “The big deal is that Eliot is Eliot and that he has whatever experiences he has. His internal structure in terms of relationships and sex is very complex, and so it’s exciting to play a character that maybe wouldn’t have existed on television 10 years ago.
“I’m looking forward to exploring more colours in that palette and the essence of why he behaves the way he behaves,” Appleman said. “Eliot certainly turns to sex for certain reasons, reasons that are perhaps deeper than you would think at first glance.”
Grossman’s Magicians series runs to three novels, namely The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011) and The Magician’s Land (2014). Given the show’s penchant for mixing things up and adding new characters and circumstances, the storytelling opportunities seem endless.