Anna Leong Brophy, Lewis Tan and Patrick Gibson are all newcomers to Shadow and Bone, but their presence looms large in Season 2 of the show. Gibson plays the pirate – sorry, privateer – Sturmhond, who is actually Nikolai Lantsov, prince of Ravka. Leong Brophy and Tan play twins Tolya and Tamar Kir-Bataar, part of Nikolai’s crew, and more importantly, his friends.
Fangirlish had a chance to participate in a roundtable interview with Leong Brophy, Tan and Gibson, where the trio discussed their roles in the second season of the show, stepping into already established dynamics and why Leong Brophy will blow us all away with her ax work.
Gibson’s Nikolai comes into a collision course with Alina pretty early on in the season, and Gibson teased that the two are “almost equally matched in their wit, tenacity and their vision for creating a better world.” But credit where credit is due, Gibson said, “because obviously, Alina surpasses him, we’re not going to argue about that.” But she’s also “somebody who, from the first time that they meet, he just immediately sees that she’s the perfect person for him to be an accessory to,” in both “taking down the Fold, and being a force for good.”
Well, maybe almost immediately, because their first meeting sees Gibson’s Nikolai being more than a little wary. Especially, because Nikolai is a character that “had to always keep his guard up his whole life.” And in the beginning, there’s a little bit of a game of cat and mouse going on that is “him trying to see whether Alina has been working with the Darkling.” Especially because, from his perspective, they had an allegiance in the past, and Alina could almost be “a villain to him.” So, Nikolai’s “not sure, although he’s kind of figured it out. But he wants to make sure that she’s somebody who has the same vision as him.”
Or the same vision as them, because Gibson’s Nikolai, Leong Brophy’s Tamar and Tan’s Tolya come into this as a package deal – found family of sorts, something Leong Brophy explained as the three of them “really accepting each other for who they are and what they are.” But it’s not just a convenient partnership, “there’s so much mutual love and affection, that is probably born out of like getting into some serious scrapes.”
We know how it is. “When you’ve got friends like that, you’re like I know I don’t ever have to check over my shoulder. That person is always there because they always stepped up in the past. And that’s not theoretical.”
For Tan, it’s also “the freedom for us (Tolya and Tamar) to leave at any time is one of those things where if you’re there, you’re there by choice.” And if you are, “you must really believe in someone or they’re in their cause.” There’s also, he added “a mutual respect and a mutual kind of freedom. The twins could just go, but they’ve chosen to stay with him (Nikolai) because they trust him and they believe in him.” And if that didn’t give you feelings, Tan also added that this feeling “was not too dissimilar from real life.”
The good vibes were clear and strong between these three, but they are also very much real when it comes to the entire cast. For Leong Brophy, Tan and Gibson, who are coming into already established dynamics, it “was actually way easier than I expected,” Tan shared. “Sometimes you get worried that you’re going to be introduced to a group of people who are really talented and come into a show that, the first season was really great, and maybe there’s no place for you. Or maybe they’re not going to be as welcoming.” But that was not the case. “They were extremely welcoming, supportive, fun. We all would go to each other’s houses after set. And we would eat food together, have dance parties together and do karaoke together. And it ended up being one of those things where you ended up having a very delightful experience to be on set. It made the process a lot easier because it was hard shoot, physically.”
Particularly for Leong Brophy and Tan, who got a lot of the hard, physical stunt work. For Leong Brophy, it was nerve-wracking to come into set and try to keep up with Tan. “It was very much my game to lose with Lewis, who is absolutely like already a dab hand with a sword and with martial arts in general. So, I was very nervous. Again, it’s that thing where you’re like, I’m going to meet this person and he’s going to be like, I don’t want to work with her.”
But it all worked out splendidly. “It was great, she continued. Lewis was so supportive,” she shared, adding that “our bond made me feel safe,” especially as she “had to do a lot of prep to try and reach into a space where I could be like, okay, my stunt double can do the heavy lifting, but I’m gonna be there. I’ll still be there.”
“Now she’s a beast,” Tan added. “Second nature. Can’t take the axes off of her.”
It’s the kind of banter we’d expect of twins, and Leong Brophy and Tan were, in their own words, “very lucky” in how their dynamic worked out. “It kind of came really naturally,” Leong Brophy shared. “We definitely made time at the beginning to meet up specifically because we needed to make this bond happen. But when we were talking about the characters and how they would have been growing up, and their shared history, we were really on the same page.”
“Also, they’re kind of on their own little journey,” Tan added. “Aside from when we meet them, obviously, they’re with Sturmhond, and then they end up with Alina. But before that, they were on their own journey together for quite some time.” Which sort of informs the people we see on screen. “I think that feeling of being an outsider and not having too many people that help you and support you is something that we can relate to just as Asian actors because in the industry, there’s not a lot of us. And the people that have made it have gone through a lot to make it. So, I think we kind of had that bond already as people. And then yeah, we just discussed their background story in great detail and we’ve we just had a laugh doing it. So yeah, it was fun.”
Ultimately, Leong Brophy, Tan and Gibson, hope book fans and new fans alike can find something to enjoy in Season 2 of Shadow and Bone. Tan, in particular, hopes fans can “connect to the nature of the characters. There are a lot of themes in the show and separately in the character dynamics. So hopefully they take away the loyalty, the passion, and the unity of what it takes to make any sort of real change in the world. Those are the big themes, and then obviously, I hope that they’re very entertained.”
Gibson, meanwhile, referred to his character’s journey, and how “Nikolai uses an alter ego in order to fulfill his goals, and that in a way, allows him to be the version of himself that he kind of wished he could be when he was a prince. And I think, in doing that, and escaping that, when he comes back, he sort of allows himself to be himself, and he realizes that people will accept that and there’s a power in owning that.”
Leong Brophy, of course, brought it all home, by saying that whether you love the show or the book, “there´s something to be discovered in both,” and there’s beauty in that. “The show has things for fans of the books that will take you in a completely different direction, still true to the characters that are on the page. And if you watch the show, and love the show, I think if you went to read the books, you’d also get something from that. So, they do complement each other.”
Are you excited for Season 2 of Shadow and Bone? Share with us in the comments below!
Shadow and Bone Season 2 premieres March 16th on Netflix.
