As Jackson, Nathan Parsons is fighting for his werewolf pack on “The Originals.”
Recently on The CW drama, Jackson’s childhood betrothed, Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin), said she would marry him to free their pack. But then, in that mid-season finale that aired at the end of last year, she shared a night of passion with Elijah Mikaelson (Daniel Gillies).
With the show returning Monday at 8/7c on The CW, we addressed some of the last episode’s big twists and what’s next for Jackson on the drama. And with such a unique cast, full of actors from across the globe, Nathan dished on the impressions going on behind the scenes, especially during table reads.
AccessHollywood.com: Before the mid-season finale, it seemed like Jackson had reached a new point in who he was. How do you think all the changes have affected him? Does he feel like a new man to you when you were filming the post-mid-season finale episodes?
Nathan Parsons: I think the whole story of him going off and kind of rediscovering his roots and stepping up — I think it has changed a lot of who he sees himself as and what the responsibility he thinks he needs to take on is. Hanging out with Ansel, and learning all of the history, it just – I think it forces a younger alpha to really kind of step up and see, OK, Ansel’s the real deal. He walks around with a bow and arrow and like a machete. That’s kind of the real deal, so hopefully Jackson will kind of learn from that.
Access: Hayley said she’d marry Jackson. What do you think the pros are for her, other than [helping her people]?
Nathan: She’s always kind of been torn between these two worlds – the vampire world and the werewolf world, especially now that she’s a hybrid. But going back to Season 1, she was trying more and more to reintegrate herself into that whole werewolf world and I think she’s learning to more identify with that part of herself, so being a part of this… whole thing, it just further brings her into the pack, so to speak, brings her into the family and hopefully she can kind of start to break ties with [those] crazy vampires.
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Access: But also, Jackson’s a catch wouldn’t you say?
Nathan: Yeah, it depends if you’re into good guys or bad guys. Some [women] like bad boys and Jackson doesn’t really fit that mold.
Access: Obviously, the big thing in the midseason finale was Hayley and Elijah got together. Just as an actor, what did you think when read that scene? Did you think, ‘Come on! No! Hayley’?
Nathan: I knew it had to happen. People have been begging for this for a season and a half now. So it had to happen. You read that and you’re like, ‘Well, that’s going to be fun to deal with in upcoming episodes’ (laughs).
Access: In fact, your character on ‘True Blood’ [James] kind of did the Hayley move himself.
Nathan: Yeah, he did. He went in a slightly different direction, but yeah.
Access: What are you looking to see explored when ‘The Originals’ is back?
Nathan: I think just the development of the Hayley and Jackson relationship, really. For a year now we’ve been saying we’re supposed to get married, but we’re not going to and now it’s finally like, we’re supposed to get married and we actually might. That’s exciting. And like we were saying earlier, we’re starting to see Jackson take on more of that alpha role and become a stronger character, because for so long on this show, he’s literally and figuratively been beaten down and kidnapped, chained up and beaten again… It’s a little bit emasculating, but now we’re getting to see him sort of take back his alpha status, his werewolf badass-ness. I’m looking forward to seeing going forward into the season, how far they’re willing to go with that, because we haven’t really played with that whole aspect of it, we haven’t played with how dangerous and how awesome werewolves can be yet, and I’m hoping the writers are willing to really just go for it and have some kind of crazy fights and battles and lots of effects and lots of blood and lots of awesome werewolf action.
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Access: In the mid-season finale, Esther was being turned into a vampire by her hybrid son. That was so cool.
Nathan: It’s so cool and it’s so poetically Klaus as well. I think it was just brilliantly done. It’s like, ‘All right, you want to change me? Well, how about I change you first into the thing you hate most and then, we’re even,’ in his eyes. I think that’s great.
Access: Does Esther being turned into a vampire affect the situation with the wolves and the moonlight rings?
Nathan: It will start to. Esther’s not the only really powerful really evil witch going on right now. We still have Vincent/Finn, we still don’t know where Kol/Kaleb actually stands with all of this stuff and we also don’t know if Davina has the potential to become super evil. We saw when she poisoned her own blood just to mess with Klaus. She’s not afraid to pull out all the stops.
Access: You have such an international cast – who is the best at doing impressions of other people and other people’s accents? I know this happens.
Nathan: It happens all the time. Certain people are very good, especially at the table reads if other actors are missing, there are certain people that are like your go-tos for impressions at a table read.
Access: Who is good at it?
Nathan: I’d say Joseph’s [Morgan] really good at doing Daniel [Gillies], so he’ll read some of Elijah’s scenes. Leah [Pipes] is really good at reading Claire’s [Holt] scenes. … I’m probably the worst out of all of them ’cause I came in late and I didn’t get a chance to really study these people as much as I would have liked, but there’s been a lot of that. It’s a lot of fun.”
“The Originals” continues Monday at 8/7c on The CW.
— Jolie Lash
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