‘The Originals’: Joseph Morgan On Series’ Intensity, Klaus’ Parenting Pressures

Joseph Morgan as Klaus in ‘The Originals’ (The CW)

He may be centuries old, but Joseph Morgan’s Klaus has been tested in new ways this season on “The Originals.”

Having a child has changed everything, as baby Hope has given Klaus something to put above himself and his fight for New Orleans. Protecting her, though, from enemies and powerful family members, has come at a steep price. It’s forced the hybrid to do things he will regret forever, and when you’re immortal, forever is an awfully long time.

Hope’s presence has also created new avenues of drama for the series, which hasn’t let up all season long on delivering epic twists. And when you’re known for being on a show that week to week leaves viewers shocked, surprised and blown away, there is pressure to constantly deliver. With a new episode of The CW drama back Monday night at 9 PM, Access Hollywood spoke with Joseph about keeping that bar high. But since we caught up with him on the night after “The Walking Dead” Season 5 finale aired – a series that also films in Atlanta – we had to touch upon that too.

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AccessHollywood.com: So you’ve kind of set a high bar today with your Tweet looking for imaginative questions, because I was up really late last night [after watching] ‘The Walking Dead.’ (Joseph Tweeted: ‘Doing a lot of interviews today, hoping for some imaginative questions, not just ones that start with “What can you tease about…”‘)
Joseph Morgan: Oh my God! … How amazing was it, first of all?

Access: I know. You must know some of those folks because they are in your town, obviously.
Joseph: Yeah, one or two. And Lauren [Cohan, who plays] Maggie was on ‘Vampire Diaries’ back in the day. A little bit before my time, but yeah, oh my goodness, I thoroughly enjoyed it… an hour-and-a-half as well. Great.

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Access: I know! And it’s so good to have shows like ‘The Originals’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘The Walking Dead’ that constantly provide people with thrills like that. Do you think that makes it harder on writers and you guys as actors – do you look at the material… with a keener eye because the bar is raised by those types of shows?
Joseph: Definitely. And I got a thrill even then from you putting us in that bracket with those other two shows, which are my favorite shows, so that’s great. Perfect. We’re in with ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Walking Dead.’ Yeah, absolutely. There’s a high bar there and I think the one thing that all of us do have in common is we try and humanize the characters in a very unreal setting, you know, a fantasy world. It’s all about the human interactions and relationships, and there’s also – the bar is also set high by what you’ve done previously. … We’re currently filming the last two episodes of the season, the finale, you know, and you go, ‘Okay, well, the finale last year was huge, but now we can’t do something less spectacular or epic. … The only way is up,’ so you’re just kind of like, ‘Well, what can we do?’ And luckily we have a great team of writers. None of the writers have been fired on our show, since the beginning we’ve kept the same team, so they’re all experts on the mythology now and on the characters. They all write the characters’ voices really well and they all understand in detail the relationships and the motives of each character. So yeah, I guess with all of that knowledge, maybe it’s easier for them to kind of speculate about kind of situations that the characters can be put into and figure out a way to kind of keep amping up the action and the tension and raising the bar. But yeah, it puts pressure on… and I think that’s why you see shows in their like sixth, seventh [season], like suddenly there’s an episode where everybody’s singing or like Klaus is compelled to bark like a dog (laughs). ‘Hey, what else can we do with this?’ So I’m hoping whenever we do come to an end in a couple of years from now or whatever, we’ve got a proper end to the show and it’s not something that goes on too long and that way we can keep amping up the tension and the action and all of those things and getting more and more insane until finally, the Mikaelsons self-combust in a tornado of fiery epic-ness.

Access: Hopefully with a cameo from Daryl Dixon and his crossbow.
Joseph: You know what? Any time. Any time (laughs). That was the best – his storyline [in the finale] in ‘The Walking Dead,’ for me, was the best part of it… all the zombies were trapped in the trucks/the lorries and they released them and they were trapped inside the car – him and Aaron. That was the greatest part of it.

Access: I loved that he was willing to sacrifice himself. [Your character, Klaus, has made a lot of sacrifices this season because of his child]. I feel like it’s definitely changed him in a lot of ways and you wrote that Tweet about people thinking your character was more sensitive of late (Joseph wrote: ‘Dear people who believe Klaus has become a tad sensitive of late, take a knife & fork, watch the end of this season, and eat your words.’)
Joseph: Oh yeah.

Access: I was wondering if we could maybe put him… on almost like a weather meter, in terms of sensitivity toward threats. Like he’s that much more aware of everything that’s going on because he’s got Hope. Do you think?
Joseph: Yeah. I mean, I think so, yeah, because he had nothing to lose really, before. The only people he cared about were also immortal… I mean, in terms of his siblings. When he came to Mystic Falls, certainly he had nothing to lose… absolutely nothing and he couldn’t die either… as far as he was concerned and then, after he broke the curse, he certainly couldn’t die, but now, having a tremendous weakness, but something that he has this huge, huge love for as well — this child — I mean, I think that was why he was reluctant in the beginning. He was terrified of what it might expose and yeah, it puts him on a hair trigger. He’s definitely, constantly assessing threats and decisions and they’re all based on how he can protect his child, how he can ensure the survival of Hope and I think the city has fallen by the wayside. … He was all about taking back the city in the beginning and it’s sort of petered out — that has, for him. More and more, we’ll see towards the end of this season, it’s less about the city and it’s just about his child. That’s the one thing now that he holds above everything else.

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Access: [Some first-time parents are] stressed out all the time and they don’t get a lot of sleep and Klaus has not just [normal parenting pressures]… but he’s got these huge baby problems. How much stress do you think your character can actually take, because this is a new kind of stress that he’s never had to deal with before and he may be ancient, but this is more than just new parent stress?
Joseph: Yeah, it’s huge… I think he’s always been prone to little kind of moments of where he sees red and he lashes out does something terrible and then possibly regrets it and I think that’s how it manifests itself, the pressure. I mean, a perfect example of that is him killing his true father, Ansel. I think, well, I’m positive in the way I’m playing it and everything I’ve tried to take on that that was a mistake. He’d regretted that after he’d done it and Elijah called him out on it a few times and he knows deeps down, he probably shouldn’t have done that. Like that could’ve been resolved in a better way. Yes, at the time, he was convinced he was gonna protect his daughter because Ansel knew about his daughter and that she was alive, but now everybody knows and Klaus is down a father, so I feel like there’s moments like that where he just loses it and that’s like the pot boiling up until it just blows the lid off the thing and then it starts to a slow boil again and we’re just waiting for it to explode again. And that’s what the people around him are trying to temper, especially Elijah – they’re trying to like, ‘Okay, well let’s just like do damage control here on everything that’s gone wrong and try and keep the lid on the pot.’ (laughs).

“The Originals” continues Monday at 8/7c on The CW.

— Jolie Lash