One of the big reasons why fans have embraced NBC’s new series Midnight, Texas is because of the show’s inclusiveness. And underneath the big supernatural elements of the show, a bigger story is being told.
“As the season goes on, something I’m really proud about to be a part of this show is how everything is centered in love,” Arielle Kebbel says.
Kebbel, who stars on the show as Midnight’s resident assassin Olivia Charity, hosted a live after show on her Facebook page, to chat with co-stars Jason Lewis & Bernardo Saracino, along with latest guest star Breeda Wool, about Monday’s installment, “Angel Heart.”
Lewis and Saracino’s characters, Joe and Chuy, came out of the closet in the episode, revealing to the Midnight gang their backstory, how the two met and fell in love, and the secrets they carried for years. “For me, it was vulnerable to watch,” Kebbel says of the moment.
Prepping for that scene, which was Chuy’s first scene ever with anyone other than Joe, Lewis says he and Saracino had “so much fun” working together.
“Bernardo actually came over to my place and we played with those scenes for a while with a couple of beers,” Lewis says. “We just worked them out because there was a lot of things to say. We didn’t want to get hung up on that. We really wanted to focus on the love of these two people, these two creatures.
“That’s one of the greatest things about our love story, is it stands above all conceptions and notions. It’s existed longer than any current idea of what’s right or wrong.”
Fun/ny Fact 1: There were times on set where Arielle couldn’t tell who was under the Demon Chuy makeup. Most of the time, it was Bernardo, but other times it would be a stunt person. Being in the demon wardrobe, Bernardo shares that at times he forgot how he looked when talking to fellow cast members. When chatting it up with Kellee Stewart (Madonna Reed), she’d tell him, “I can’t have this conversation right now. It’s you, but you’re a demon, we just gotta talk later.”
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Now that the secret of Chuy is out, Lewis says the angel and his partner can be more involved in the goings on at Midnight. “The whole thing of wanting to stay out of conflicts because we didn’t want to reveal ourselves is gone,” says Lewis.
“Maybe now that Chuy and Joe don’t have to hide, they can be more open with the other Midnighters,” adds Saracino. And now, perhaps the next step is working on expanding.
“[Coming out to the gang] was Chuy’s breaking point where he decided to accept and wanted Joe to be like, let’s finally have a family and where Joe and Chuy can have more than just each other,” Saracino explains.
The big secret, of course, was the revelation that the tattoo artist’s partner is in fact a demon, but not the same one trying to get all up in Fiji’s bidness. For the whole cast, none of them saw that twist coming, not even Bernardo himself.
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“I didn’t even know,” he says. “We didn’t know what he was. It wasn’t until we read the script. It was a gasp moment. I didn’t know what Chuy was for the longest time.”
This twist, along with the many others, on the show so far, and certainly for the ones yet to come, is another reason why Arielle enjoys working on the show. “I think that’s part of the fun of the show, too, is sometimes they do keep secrets from us and they want us to keep the secrets, so it keeps it very real.”
What was very unreal was the fact that Arielle Kebbel was able to reunite with friend and former co-star Breeda Wool (“Mr. Mercedes”), who guest stars in “Angel Heart” as Bowie, an avenging angel on the hunt for Joe. Kebbel and Wool previously worked on the Lifetime series Unreal, which Midnight, Texas co-executive producer David Solomon also worked on. It was Kebbel and Solomon’s begging for two weeks that got Wool the Midnight gig.
It was a gig that was unlike any other for other guest stars that have stopped by the show. Because Bowie’s role is very action oriented, the actress had to go through rigorous stunt training right away, “which can be brutal,” Kebbel says.
“What a lot of people don’t know about New Mexico is that there’s an altitude change,” Kebbel explains, ‘so you’re dealing with the desert climate, you’re 6,000 feet in the air [on the wire rigs], you’ve got to go into stunt training, and then you’ve got to act.”
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Fun/ny Fact 2: “When Chuy was running to Lem, the contacts shifted and I couldn’t see anything, so it was just complete black, but I had known where Lem was,” Saracino reveals. “So as I was approaching, I told Peter, ‘I do not know where you are; I can’t see you.’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry. I know you can’t.’ It was sympathy pain because he’s got the contacts as well. It was the scene where he had to catch me. But I was running towards him and Peter, the gentleman he is, and it was funny, he said, ‘I know you can’t.’ Because they shifted, the red was all that I could see.”
Despite the tough training for the action sequences, Wool says her stint on the show was a blast.
“My experience on Midnight, Texas was unlike anything I’ve ever done,” she says. “The camaraderie around doing stunts [was amazing]. Jason and I were doing all sorts of stunts together. They hung Jason and I up on the things and we had to fight in the air and it was fun! It was exciting!”
Because bad guys always lose and love always wins, we inevitably had to say goodbye to Bowie. And it wasn’t hard to see this baddie go, especially after all the havoc she caused. Wool, however, does jokingly come to Bowie’s defense.
“I got betrayed; I got left,” she says. “Sometimes when people leave you, you go a little crazy.”
“You were killing a lot of people for fun,” Kebbel interjects, “so I don’t really feel bad for Bowie.”
Bowie possessed a lot of power, including the ability to read minds by touching her subjects (read: victims). When Chuy killed the angel, did any of that power transfer over to him? “It just gave him a bad sneeze and cough after two days,” Wool jokes, “but he was fine after that.”
Chuy chewing Bowie out looked great on screen, but for Saracino, he says for behind-the-scenes, it was a bit disgusting. “When Chuy was killing Bowie, what he was actually eating was tofu with red food coloring that just tasted horrible,” he says. “It was awful and it had been sitting there and when I would chew on it, I would almost gag every time I would take a bite.” He then goes on to reveal that during those takes, he had been accidentally been drooling on Breeda.
While it’s clear that Bowie is now dead, Arielle is hopeful that we have not seen the last of the angel. “I hope [Bowie returns] in Season 2,” she says. That is if/when NBC finally decides to renew the show. But if Bowie is dead, how will she return? “Let’s think of ways I could come back,” Wool ponders. “I could be a ghost.”
Until the Peacock network makes its decision on whether or not to greenlight a new, and hopefully expanded Season 2, there are still much more to come for the rest of this season.
“We’ve got three episodes to go,” Kebbel says, “and things are heating up.”
Midnight, Texas, airs Mondays at 10pm on NBC.