The Strain’s Corey Stoll Talks Eph’s Dark Drive, Avoiding Melodrama, the Feelers, and More!
Debi Moore
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We’re just hours away from tonight’s Episode 2.06 of “The Strain,” entitled “Identity,” and if you’ve wondered about the identify of the man who plays Dr. Ephraim “Eph” Goodweather on the show, it’s Corey Stoll from “House of Cards” and Ant-Man, who finally looks like himself now that he’s ditched the distracting wig previously worn by the character.
But he had a lot more to talk about than that old news when he took part in a roundtable interview a few days ago. We have the highlights for you here, including Eph’s motivations and dark side, how he’s taking the fight to the next level, if he’ll continue hitting the bottle, and lots more so read on to prep for the mayhem to come.
Q: In the opener of this season, Eph told Fet [Kevin Durand] that he is not a very good vampire killer so he’s going to go back to what he knows. And now that he’s on to something, what’s driving him at this point? Is it really vengeance against the Master and all of the vampires, or is it just to try to redeem himself in the eyes of the CDC and Zach and the people that sort of put him out to pasture because they thought he wasn’t valid in what he was trying to tell them?
Corey Stoll: I think it’s really both. I think obviously it’s personal now that Kelly has turned and is actively trying to turn Zach, but I think just his personality is such, too, that he’s won at everything pretty much in his life, up till now. Now he’s in a situation where he’s lost more in the last week than he has in his entire life… he’s always been a very Alpha guy and very Type A. He’s been knocked down numerous pegs and is admitting such, but he still can’t let go on either front so it’s personal, but it’s also professional.
Q: Most of your roles in the past have been very much more reality-based than this scenario on “The Strain.” How has it been as an actor for you to operate in this world, especially one created by Guillermo del Toro where anything can happen? It must be very interesting.
Corey Stoll: Yeah, it’s an interesting challenge… [exec producer] Carlton [Cuse] and I at the beginning of Season 2 felt the need to sort of adjust a little bit because so much of what the show is about is about the tone and the look and the style and the feel of it, which is unique. There are other vampire shows and other vampire movies out there, but Guillermo brings something unique, and so [we’re] trying to find that right balance… I think it’s a pretty good challenge with this show where the stakes are incredibly high but it’s not the same world that we live in, and there’s also a real, sort of a wicked sense of humor that runs throughout the whole thing. I think in this season there’s a lot of conversations between Carlton and myself about how to have me participate in that sense of humor because I think the danger is often to sort of fall into melodrama. It’s sort of about being in that same world where these stakes are incredibly high, but you have to sort of keep one part of your tongue in your cheek a little bit.
https://youtu.be/fhVdSPrXhks
Q: In last week’s episode, when you threw your former boss off a train…
Corey Stoll: By accident…
Q: So you’re saying Eph didn’t choose to kill him?
Corey Stoll: No, he didn’t; he didn’t. It was really a move to not get hit, and before what he knew what was happening, he had killed him. Now it was in his best interest probably to kill him, but this is—it’s still obviously a very big deal; it’s his first human kill. No, he did not intend to kill him.
Q: But now that he crossed that line, will this open up a door to a darker Eph, a guy that’s willing to do more and cross the line a little bit more easily?
Corey Stoll: Yeah, I think you can say that. The first time he killed anybody intentionally, he was being attacked, and that was sort of purely defensive. As the first season went on, he became more inured to killing to the point where he doesn’t really sort of flinch killing people who are completely turned. Then he crossed the line, again, at the beginning of this season experimenting on freshly turned people, and then this is another one, and then sort of the ratchet that sort of keeps pushing him past these lines that he never thought he would cross. But yeah, definitely from that point on to the rest of the season, he is in a different place morally.
Q: In the last episode we saw the vampire children going into full action now. Can you tell us how much of a factor they’ll be in the remaining episodes?
Corey Stoll: Well, the Feelers are the formidable part of the Strigoi Army. They’re fast, they can crawl on walls, and they play an important part of the Master’s arsenal going forward the rest of the season.
Q: And what about Eph’s alcoholism? We’ve seen it gradually increase. Can we expect to see that affecting how he handles the situation?
Corey Stoll: Yeah, definitely. He does not sober up the rest of the season. He was never the best fighter in the world; but, no, he’s a little easier and a little bit more handicapped.
Q: There’s a lot of really great and gross makeup and special effects in the show. Can you talk about working with them? Has anything ever really grossed you out?
Corey Stoll: This season there were a few things; in the beginning, in the first season, there was like a bashed-in head… a couple bashed-in heads and the autopsy. In this season there seems to be a little bit of, at least from my feelings, this is my exposure to it, a little bit of a break from that. But in terms of my exposure to the makeup… it’s an amazing thing to see on a daily basis. You come in at 6:00 a.m. in the morning on a Monday, and the makeup people have been there for hours already churning out this army of vampires who all have their own unique… level of transformation and different degrees of turning into vampires. It’s really an incredible level of artistry and industry. It’s really a bit of a conveyor belt, but every vampire is sort of a bespoke job.
Q: In the first season Eph was involved with the actual hand-to-hand fighting against the Strigoi; now he seems to be much more removed. Do you expect him to fight as the season progresses, and also do you miss doing the fight scenes at all?
Corey Stoll: In terms of in total between the two seasons, it’s about the same. In the first bunch of episodes [this season] Eph is taking a much more… he’s using biochemistry to fight the Strigoi… I had [a fight scene] with Barnes… I think a lot of it was actually cut, but it was one of the more involved fights that I’ve had in either season. Definitely moving forward there’s more fighting.
Q: When you’re working on something like this, something with that Guillermo del Toro creepiness, is there a horror film or story or a horror icon that really stuck with you in your youth that resurfaces when you’re on set with these things?
Corey Stoll: I don’t know if there’s something that resurfaces; it’s hard to explain, but… there’s a moment when you first get on set where you see the lighting and the makeup and everything, and there is a moment of, ‘Wow, that’s really cool!’ And then by the fourth setup and the twentieth take, you know, it just becomes work. You’re playing make-believe so you’re getting yourself into a state of terror, [but] the stuff isn’t really scary on its own pretty much after your first time doing it.
“The Strain” Episode 2.06 – “Identity” (airs 8/16/15)
Eph (Corey Stoll) concocts a plan to make and distribute a bioweapon. Gus (Miguel Gomez) realizes Angel (Joaquín Cosio) can be an unlikely ally, and Kelly (Natalie Brown) comes after Nora (Mia Maestro) and Zach (Max Charles).
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