Season 3 of the Syfy drama series Being Human is its edgiest and most shocking yet. With over a year having past since the end of Season 2, Aidan (Sam Witwer), Josh (Sam Huntington), Sally (Meaghan Rath) and Nora (Kristen Hager) are all in very different places now, which not only affects their friendship as roommates, but also how they interact with others. And if the beginning of the season is any indication, things are bound to get crazier.
During this recently exclusive interview with the show’s stars, the foursome talked about where there characters are headed this season, as a result of all of the big storyline shifts, getting to revisit some storylines from Season 2, how the friendship dynamic is changing, that this season will have more lightness to it, what these new changes mean for their love lives, and that they really do take the fans’ input into consideration. Check out what they had to say after the jump.
Collider: What can you say about where your characters are headed this season, especially with all of these big storyline shifts?
SAM WITWER: That was Anna Fricke taking command of this show. Her and her husband (Jeremy Carver) were the showrunners for the first two years, and now he’s off running Supernatural. Anna is now the singular showrunner and the direction of the show is basically her staking her claim on the show. I’ve gotta say I was so happy to see where she was taking it because it’s a direction that I felt was the show, in the truest sense. I feel like we are doing Being Human, and we’re doing it right.
MEAGHAN RATH: One of Anna’s many fortes is writing characters. This season is so much about the characters and us coming together and how we relate to each other, and how it’s changed from the previous two seasons. She’s really done an amazing job.
WITWER: The result is a really consistent season, that’s our best season, easily. We are very, very happy. With huge shifts, there’s definitely a risk there. But, I think it pays off this year. Anna Fricke’s instinct is to switch things up. There are things that she’s still pushing for, for seasons down the road, that are pretty risky ideas. We’ll see what happens.
KRISTEN HAGER: There are also new supernatural elements that have come into play. And a lot more werewolves will be looking around this season. Liam (Xander Berkeley), the father of Brynn and Connor, the purebred twins, is looking for answers, so he’s a threat to us. He does evil with his piercing blue eyes.
SAM HUNTINGTON: And there’s this vampire plague that has basically spread throughout the vampires and killed a lot of them.
Kristen, has it been fun to get to revisit that storyline and get to find out more about what happened there?
HAGER: Yeah. All I knew in Season 2 was that I went off to run with the wolves. In Season 3, you find out what I went off and did and what happened, and that was great. I really like that Nora is confronted with everything that she called Josh on last season. She wanted him to run with the wolves, be free and embrace his wolf. Now, we’ve come to a place where we’re really trying to live as human a life as possible, and I scared myself by going off and trying to embrace my wolf side. So, it was fun and challenging to have to then go back and find where I actually stand between wolf and human being.
HUNTINGTON: Especially on supernatural shows like this, and shows that are fantasy based, they can do things and they don’t really have to pay for them. There’s no consequences. And I love the fact that we don’t just get away with things. This guy comes back because his children are missing, and that’s a very real thing. A father looking for his children is so relatable. One of these kids died, so now the dad is looking for answers.
Sam, is Josh experiencing the whole “be careful what you wish for” thing now?
HUNTINGTON: It comes with a huge cost. The funny thing is that it’s not really what he wanted. In Season 2, Josh wasn’t going to kill Ray when he thought that it was just going to cure him. It was when he found out that it was going to cure Nora that he decided to do it. All he ever wanted was to fix this for Nora. He wanted to protect her, help her and save her from this curse. That’s when he decided to attack Ray. So, him curing himself really doesn’t solve anything. It makes him happy that he’s not burdened with this curse, but at the end of the day, he feels a tremendous amount of guilt and responsibility for what Nora is. Even though she’s comfortable with herself and in her skin, he still feels like it’s a burden. I think it’s really cool. During the hiatus between Season 2 and 3, I thought of about 100 things that could happen with Josh and Nora, and how that whole Ray-Nora-Josh stand-off could play out. And they thought of the one thing that I didn’t think of, which I love.
HAGER: I didn’t think it was going to go there. I was so surprised! But, there are so many surprises this season. Just reading the scripts, I was like, “What?!” I just think it’s new, fresh, exciting and full of surprises.
Meaghan, was it nice to get some actual wardrobe changes, this season?
RATH: Oh, yeah. It was amazing! I think I was smiling more this season than I ever have in my life. It’s funny, you take on the baggage of your character, especially doing it for three years. All of a sudden, I felt liberated and I felt like I could move, and I could touch people and do whatever I wanted. I felt the freedom that she definitely feels, and it was really nice. I feel like we were all given that freedom and we all shine. It’s a great season for acting, I think. We were given some great material.
With everyone being in such different places in their lives now, how will the dynamic of this friendship change?
HAGER: And there’s the carry-over from Season 2, where Aidan and Nora had issues with one another, after the whole werewolf-vampire hunt. So, we’re still dealing with that and now I’m living in the house. There’s going to be some conflict.
HUNTINGTON: It’s crazy! Ultimately, for Josh, he just feels responsible for everyone. He’s really put himself in a parental role. He feels responsible for Nora because he really is, to be honest, responsible for what she is. He loves her dearly, so he wants to protect her. And then, they brought Sally back, so Josh and Nora feel responsible for her and what happens with her. And with Aidan back, we’ve not had him for all this time and this disease is out there, so we now need to protect him. He’s protected us for awhile, so it’s our turn to help him. So, it’s really layered. There’s a lot going on.
Season 2 was much darker than Season 1 was. Will there be some more lightness, in Season 3?
HAGER: Yes and no. The show is obviously going to have dark elements, but they’re dangerous, fun and scary, and not depressing. We’re always going to have dark conflicts, but there’s so much more levity this season than there was in all of Season 2. We’ve gone back and found those moments that worked so well in Season 1 and brought them back, with a whole onslaught of new, wonderful stuff. Because it’s so exiting and there’s so much newness, there’s this levity that comes with that. There’s more emphasis put on the dynamic between the characters, so there’s way more humor because it’s these roommates dealing with each other, every day, and talking to each other, and that’s funny.
HUNTINGTON: And it’s organic, too. The four of us, when we are together, it’s absurd.
Sam, how does Aidan approach having a love interest, especially with his history?
WITWER: Chicks that date Aidan have a low survival rate, don’t they? And that is definitely on his mind. Part of the fun of giving that character a love interest is the mortality. He’s always worrying about the other person. But, it’s not something he’s looking for. I like the dynamic that they set up. There’s a lot of fun there. It’s later in the season, so you won’t see it right away. Aidan’s story actually gets moving slower than the others, which made perfect sense to me. Kristen Hager is a regular now, so you really do need to front load her stuff with a lot of alone time so that the audience understands that she’s one of the leads of the show. But, as the story moves on and Aidan is in the middle of all this bad stuff, there may be someone that catches his eye. It’s a really fun element because, when you put Aidan, as a character, around human beings, he’s more interesting. He’s more dangerous because they can get hurt. He’s sadder because he’s dealing with what he wants to be. He’s more interesting because he’s living this double life. The character just comes to life when he’s in those situations. Last year, he was around vampires, 24/7. This year, he’s around his roommates and he’s around people. It’s really fun to play that character, especially with how dangerous he became last year.
Meaghan, how does Sally’s love life go, with having to make sure she doesn’t leave a trail of bodies?
RATH: There are a couple big problems that Sally encounters. Part of that initial dilemma makes her go, “Okay, so I’m given this gift to live again, but I have to say goodbye to everything that I knew as real when I was living.” That’s pretty sad. That is one thing among other big things that she has to come to terms with. The two main problems merge into one, at one point, and it becomes kind of foggy and awful, as things tend to become with Sally. She’s just kind of unlucky.
WITWER: It’s interesting that Sally does seem to have some of the same instincts as Aidan, in terms of keeping things to herself. There are things to be ashamed of there, and things that you’re not proud of. But, Aidan is still definitely the most dangerous of the roommates. The first and second seasons were very much about his addiction to blood. It was like a heroin addict going clean. And this year, we’re really introducing the fact that it’s not just that. It’s also that he’s been a trained killer for 200 years. He’s like a soldier with PTSD, trying to come back into society and trying to be normal, and yet how do you do that? How do you just turn off all of these killer instincts that have been cultivated for such a long time. We play with that a little bit, which is interesting.
How anxious are you to see where things end up this season?
WITWER: All these plot elements that happen are all there to serve the characters. These changes completely affect the way that the characters feel about each other. For example, Sally being corporeal definitely is a confusing aspect for her and Aidan. We’ll just leave it at that. I just love how we deal with the consequences of what happened in the first two years. In the case of my character, he did some reprehensible things, and some of those things catch up to him this year, when he’s trying to be good. There are things that audience members reacted strongly to, last year. I’m not going to say what those things were, but I got some letters. And those things are not ignored. They may come back when you least expect them.
RATH: I feel like we really do take the fans’ thoughts into consideration. I think the things that bother them the most obviously bother us. We want to give them something that they’re happy with.
WITWER: Definitely! Being in contact with the fans at these conventions, and stuff like that, it really does give you very direct access to what they’re thinking. I’d be lying, if I said that I hadn’t used some of that input. It’s very good input. They’re right in front of you and they’re very articulate. It’s very cool.
Being Human airs on Monday nights on Syfy.