“And he’s like, ‘Well, not only is Zane that for sure, but I actually have willed this into existence. What’s his story? We’re looking for a sort of a gay, demigod type,’” Peterson recalled with a smile. “I reached out to Joel and I was like, ‘Hey, there’s a guy auditioning for our show who was on Fire Island. In this case, Phillips had posted about his personal life on Instagram and had already filmed Fire Island, which was written by Peterson’s good friend, Joel Kim Booster. If anything, the biggest debate was, ‘Who is our back-up in case Zane says no?’ It felt almost supernatural that he came along” at the perfect time.įrom the outset, Matthews, who now serves as the showrunner, and Peterson were also adamant about finding an openly gay actor who could bring their own lived experience to the role.
“We narrowed it down to a smaller group of people, but there was never anyone else at any point. “He was just a very buff and square-jawed sort of guy, and let’s just say there’s not a big pool of people that are good actors who look like that,” Peterson told Observer. Peterson, who had written new material specifically for that audition, said he watched a hundred casting tapes of young actors but was immediately drawn to Phillips’ physicality and ability to take “very, very silly” dialogue and give it “this seriousness and this emotional resonance” with his “almost paranormal level expressive eyes.” Phillips, a New York-based theater actor who will next be seen in Hulu’s gay rom-com Fire Island (out June 3) and Netflix’s legal drama Partner Track, auditioned for Legacies with a self-taped audition last October, but he originally thought he was vying to play Rasputin’s immortal son. In retaliation, Ben’s father, Ken (Luke Mitchell), cursed him to be attacked by monsters and to heal by sunrise for eternity. When those efforts proved unsuccessful, Ben bestowed the magic upon the people of his village, who only abused that power, leading to the creation of monsters. Prometheus (Zane Phillips), a 5000-year-old demigod who once stole magic from the gods to save his ailing lover, Ashur. But all of the feelings that he had repressed about his true identity came bubbling to the surface when he met Ben, a.k.a. In the process, Jed activated his curse as a werewolf and eventually found himself at a school where supernatural beings can learn to control their natural abilities and impulses. In the “Was This the Monster You Saw?” episode, which aired on March 31, Jed-who was first introduced as an insecure, hot-headed bully-revealed that he had killed his own abusive father instead of fighting his childhood friend (and first crush) Trey to the death. As they began to map out the fourth season, the writers-who have become famous for balancing the absurd (think leprechauns, banshees, killer clowns ) with classic adolescent angst-found an opening to flesh out Jed’s backstory. In addition to discussing the romantic potential of Josie and Finch (Courtney Bandeko), Bryant informed Peterson that Ben Levin, who plays Jed Tien, had expressed his willingness to play a queer character in an homage to several members of his family who are part of the LGBTQ+ community.
GAY FUCKING MACHINE TIED UP SERIES
In the show’s third season, Price Peterson-a former recapper of The Vampire Diaries and current television writer who had recently joined Legacies -was helping to oversee the production of his first episode when he struck up a conversation with Kaylee Bryant, who played Josie Saltzman (and who left the series last December ). But instead of simply checking another box for network television, they wanted to wait for the right story to present itself. When executive producers Julie Plec and Brett Matthews set out to expand the Vampire Diaries universe with Legacies, the second spinoff of the long-running CW supernatural drama, they knew they wanted to depict a same-sex romance between two male characters at the Salvatore Boarding School for the Young & Gifted.
Zane Phillips as Ben (l) and Ben Levin as Jed