From creators Natalie Abrams, Chad Fiveash and James Patrick Stoteraux, The CW drama series Gotham Knights follows Turner Hayes (Oscar Morgan), the adopted son of Bruce Wayne, who has found himself in the dangerous position of being framed for killing the famous Gotham City vigilante known as Batman and who has since teamed up with the Joker’s daughter Duela (Olivia Rose Keegan) and the sibling duo of Harper Row (Fallon Smythe) and her brother Cullen (Tyler DiCiara), along with his best friend Stephanie Brown (Anna Lore) and Batman sidekick Carrie Kelley (Navia Robinson), each with their own handy set of skills. With the GCPD on their trail, the Knights must avoid getting caught while also trying to unravel the threads of who’s really behind the deadly Court of Owls that are really pulling all the strings, all with the help of District Attorney Harvey Dent (Misha Collins).
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Collins talked about the experience of playing a character trying to solve the mystery of what’s going on within his own psyche, on his journey to becoming Two-Face, Harvey Dent’s pursuit of justice versus following the rules, following his intuition when it comes to the innocence of the falsely accused Knights, how a dream he had about his Two-Face evolution became a part of the show, and when he got to see what the transformation would look like. He also talked about how being a part of this show from the beginning has compared to when he joined the already-established Supernatural.
Collider: What’s it like to take on all of these mysteries, over the course of a season, with who killed Bruce Wayne, how can he prove Turner Hayes’ innocence, and who are the Court of Owls, all while the biggest question for Harvey Dent is what’s going on with him? How has that been to stretch out, over the season?
MISHA COLLINS: It was fascinating, and it didn’t get tired, at all. The pacing of it was immaculate because. You’re absolutely right, he’s trying to figure out what’s going on with the Court of Owls. He’s trying to figure out who killed Batman. He’s trying to prove Turner Hayes’ innocence, and by extension, protect his best friend’s orphaned son from the gallows. At the same time, with all of that happening and him personally jockeying for power in Gotham itself, the most emotionally difficult thing that Harvey faces is trying to figure out whether he is who he thinks he is. In parallel, as you pointed out, he’s trying to solve the mystery of his own psyche and what’s going on. At a certain point, he does solve it. He does figure out who’s behind the Court of Owls. He does figure out what’s going on within his own psyche. Ultimately, those two detective narratives collide in a very, very epic finale.
It also seems like something that you can’t necessarily keep hidden for that long. He can get away with it for a little bit, but that’s not something you can hide for very long.
COLLINS: He doesn’t hide it about himself, all the way through. But he does manage to keep it under wraps for a good portion of the season. When it does finally come out, it’s catastrophic for him, I can say without revealing the details.
For someone like Harvey, who is this DA that’s fighting for justice, how does he even wrap his head around vigilantes and justifying helping Turner Hayes? He knows that this kid didn’t actually murder Bruce Wayne, but is it hard for him to bend the law to help and to do the right thing?
COLLINS: It is hard for him because he’s a very by the book guy. But he also is primarily motivated by – and Harvey says as much in his dialogue on the show – the pursuit of justice. That’s primary. Even though there is a preponderance of evidence that points to Turner and the other Knights being the perpetrators of Bruce Wayne’s murder, he aligns himself, not with that evidence, but with the pursuit of actual justice because they were framed, and he knows that. He’s figured that out.
He knows Turner Hayes, but the rest of this group are a different story. Some of them are definitely unpredictable and loose cannons. What does he think of these other kids that Turner has to rely on, at the moment?
COLLINS: Unlike some of the other cast of characters in the show, Harvey is a really good judge of character. He’s been a DA for a long time. It may not have been totally, explicitly said in the show, but I had the sense that he’s street smart enough to know that these kids weren’t the killers. This is actually me a little bit reading into it, but I think that’s where he was operating from. And early on, Harvey collects some evidence that points to it being the Court of Owls behind Bruce Wayne’s death, but also a lot of other nefarious stuff going on.
In early conversations that you had with the creative team for this, how much did you know about Harvey’s journey and what it would be, and what you would get to this season? How much were you told?
COLLINS: I was told a fair amount, at the outset. I knew that he would become Two-Face this season. That was in our very first conversation, before I signed on and before we shot the pilot. I knew certain other major spoilers that I will not share with you. There was one particular piece that I didn’t have clear resolution on, and I was like, “Just exactly how does Harvey become Two-Face?” I actually had a dream, fairly early in the season, and I woke up from it and was like, “Oh, that’s how Harvey becomes Two-Face.” So, I called the showrunners, Chad [Fiveash] and James [Patrick Stoteraux], and I was like, “Hey, guys, I know this is gonna sound weird, and please don’t think I’m one of these crazy actors who’s gonna inject his dreams into everything, but will you just hear me out? I had this dream last night about how Harvey becomes Two-Face.” And then, I shared it with them, and much to my shock, and probably to theirs as well, they were like, “That is great. Yes, let’s do that.” And so, that weird dream that I had ended up having a hand in charting the course for Harvey’s demise.
It’s awesome that they have that trust in you, to hear you out about something like that.
COLLINS: It is awesome. Look at what they have to handle. They’re managing a crew of 200 people. They’ve got scripts in development. They’ve got a show that they’re shooting right now. They have post-production on the episodes that they already put in the can. There’s so much to deal with, as a showrunner. The last thing they need is an actor calling you and telling you his dreams. That’s a nightmare. And so, for them to be able to process that and actually harvest something of use from my weird phone call is a testament to what awesome showrunners they are. I really loved working with them.
Did you know what that transformation would look like ahead of time, or did you not know until it was finished later on? Did it evolve, along the way?
COLLINS: I saw the visual effects makeup artist’s drawing of it, probably in November. There were several. It was in development for a long time. I knew roughly what it was gonna look like, a good ways in advance.
With a show like this, that’s pulling from comic book lore while also creating a TV show that’s doing things different and new, how do you approach that? How deep did you dig into the comics?
COLLINS: There’s obviously existing lore for Harvey Dent, but a lot of the other characters had minimal lore for them. They’re the adopted son of Batman, or the Joker’s daughter. Those other characters don’t have as much lore to draw from. For my character, we did the definitive version of Harvey Dent turning into Two-Face on screen. We delved into all the backstory that shows up in the comic books, and cherry-picked the most interesting and also most grounded and real elements, and then packaged them together into this version. So, the Harvey Dent story ends up really anchoring us pretty well, in the Batman universe, without there being a lot of baggage for most of the other characters. With those other characters, we get to explore those narratives without the encumbrance of a ton of canon that we have to deal with. We get to have a consistent universe with a lot of new characters. They’re all characters that have ties to Batman, to the Joker, and to the Gotham universe, but not in such a way that we have to spend a lot of time referencing past television shows and past movies. We can do our own thing, which was liberating and also just fertile ground. We had a good garden to grow new crops in, and I think it worked out really well.
When you joined Supernatural, you were the new guy coming into a show where Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki had already had this established relationship and bond between their characters. With this, you guys were all there from the beginning, and you’re the CW veteran. How different has this experience felt, and what’s it been like to work with this young ensemble, as you’re figuring out these relationships?
COLLINS: I loved coming in, at the beginning. The story I told you about the dream is indicative of the dynamic. When you’re joining a show that’s a few seasons in, and everybody knows each other and there’s a lot of momentum, and the tone and tenor of the show is already established, you have to plug into it. But we were all creating this from scratch. The very first scenes that we shot were, in a sense, establishing the tone, and establishing the look and the feel and the pace of the show. I like that. I liked being a part of that creative process. I love the comradery. I loved screwing around on set with Jared and Jensen. I loved being a part of such a long-running iconic show, like Supernatural was. But it’s also really cool to be able to be on the ground floor and be involved in the conversations about where we’re going from here, that we were all able to have on Gotham Knights.
Gotham Knights airs on Tuesday nights on The CW.