On A&E's creepy drama "The Returned," Rhys Ward and Mat Vairo play walking dead, but not the kind TV viewers are accustomed to.
Based loosely on the global French hit series "Les Revenants," "The Returned" follows the inhabitants of an idyllic small mountain town suddenly forced to deal with the unexplained return of some "dearly departed" loved ones.
For those "returned," picking up the pieces of lives long passed proves difficult, not only them, but for those close who have dealt with their grief and moved on.
For those "living," it's dealing with reopened wounds of loss and wrongs cause by those considered long passed.
HNGN.com caught up with two of the shows returned: 25-year-old Canadian native Rhys Ward, who plays Adam Darrow, a complex "returned" serial killer forced to live with the guilt of his past crimes yet unable to stop himself from wanting to recommit them, and Mat Vairo, a 25-year-old California native who, as Simon Moran, is forced to accept the current lives of the family he left behind and how his untimely passing left a devastated fiancée with a daughter he never knew he had.
Thankfully, the two hotties were very much in the land of the living for this exclusive HNGN photo shoot and happy to dish on life, all things "Returned," and proving to us that death never looked so good.
The season one finale of "The Returned" airs 8 p.m. EDT, Monday May 11 on A&E.
HNGN: So "Dead Never Looked So Good"?
WARD: We picked that title (laughs).
VAIRO: I wanted "Dead Never Looked So Sexy" (laughs). I have many that I could write down for you.
Tell us a little bit about yourselves?
VAIRO: I grew up in Huntington Beach, California, doing theater and never thought I was going to be an actor. I was going to be a businessman and went to school for business, but here we are. It's quite odd; I guess someone had another plan. I actually worked at Disneyland for a while doing a show there, and that turned everything around for me. Before that point I never thought I would do this, but I found out what a manager and agent were, and that was it.
WARD: I grew up in Toronto, well, an hour outside of Toronto in Canada, I started acting around the same time as Mat and developed a career in Canada before coming here. I've been in Los Angeles about a year and a half, left to do "The Returned" and then came back. I've been here ever since. I actually studied business also; I didn't know Mat had studied it until a couple of weeks ago.
VAIRO: I can only imagine what it's like for someone to come from Toronto, or even New York to L.A., L.A. does feel like another world to me after growing up in Orange County, it's a very different dynamic.
WARD: It is a big change, it's a different country and while everyone thinks the two are very similar, they aren't. There is a big difference for sure. I didn't know anyone here so it was a big change. I had no friends when I came down here so I was pretty lonely the first few months. I just focused on auditions and then this job came up which was awesome. I did make a lot of friends in Vancouver while working on the show, to coming back and felt a lot more comfortable. I feel finally settled.
VAIRO: I'm going the other way, I'm headed to New York but not sure for how long, I'll see what happens. I'm trying not to get my mind into all the things going on right now. I literally just moved my stuff into storage so I'm in the process of doing everything.
The show is dark but the upside in joining this series is you are already dead. Most actors worry about their character being killed off, so how is it to walk into a show where you are already dead?
VAIRO: On a show like "The Returned" your anxieties about that are not as high and there is a little more job security [laughs].
WARD: Well how did you feel about that script where you get... (Spoiler alert: His character may, or may not, die)
VAIRO: I kind of knew.
WARD: Things do change a lot and you never know what might happen, people might die.
VAIRO: It's a very unpredictable show already, but getting killed off doesn't have the same weight to it, obviously, because you're already dead.
WARD: My TV mom died, and who knows if she's going to pop up.
What do your families think of you playing dead guys?
VAIRO: I don't know if we've acknowledged the dead factor.
WARD: From an actor standpoint we don't think of it as being dead. We don't now how we died so when we come back it is very confusing.
VAIRO: I had doubts in the character's framework as to whether I actually died or not or what happened before. Obviously I was killed again and came back, but you can't really fathom it. In the beginning I tried to fully comprehend what was going on, but you can't because it's never happened to anyone before. I studied coma patients that had been in them for a long time, and stroke patients who had lost certain motor skills and got them back, just certain things like that. It's happened where coma patients have been out for a long time and come back speaking another language, really weird stuff like that. So us coming back, we are all of a sudden ravenously hungry, everyone else is older but we looked the same. It seems like within those stories it's possible. That's how I try to get a grasp on it, although there is a lot of substitution from my own life. It's anyway to get a grasp on it, as it is such an outlandish idea.
What is your take on having a second chance at life?
WARD: Of course it would be cool, but to come back when everyone that you've known has gone him like 100 years from now... Probably not.
VAIRO: It really depends on what is going on in the afterlife.
WARD: If it's a rocking time then who knows [laughs].
MAT: There's a whole existential discussion about it, but it depends on what happens after you die?
The interesting thing about your show is there are no do-overs and you basically have to contend with what you did before you died, so to switch it, if someone who had done you wrong "returned," how would you react?
WARD: I'd like to say I was forgiving.
VAIRO: I think it would just be weird and creepy. I've had dreams where people have passed away in my life, come back and been normal for a minute then all of a sudden their face starts melting or they turn into something weird. I actually had these dreams while I was shooting the show. That's what I feel is happening slowly with our characters, where things are bubbling up to the surface, and personally I think it would just be creepy. I don't think I would dig it.
Is there anything you would try to change if you did get a do-over?
VAIRO: I wish I could've been an accountant (laughs).
WARD: I think maybe I could've handled some relationships differently, but things are supposed to happen for a reason.
VAIRO: I'd like to live a little more freely in general, just be more of a free-flowing person, creatively especially.
What you like about the guys that you are playing?
VAIRO: I'm actually not a musician, but I did start learning the guitar because of this character. I thought there might have been a lot more of that incorporated, it wasn't, but it ended up opening a whole other musical channel in my life, which has been awesome. I related a lot to Simon's darkness and it was very cathartic for me to play him. It was also hard to go to certain places because of things I needed to heal within myself came out within that character. That was pretty big. And that happened from the very beginning; in my audition I knew things were getting pretty close to home.
WARD: I agree with that. I didn't know before going in my character was also a cannibal, and I saw he had so much shame for what he's done, he obviously doesn't want to do it, but things happened in his childhood and that was kind of cool for me because all these clues would show up in the script. He doesn't say he had a bad childhood and there is no father in the picture, but the mom is clearly not well, so that gave me some stuff to work with. Everyone has shame in his or her life so I tapped into that and it really helped. It is like a healing process to bring up those things and my own issues on set, and expressing then through acting was like therapy in a sense. My audition was super emotional and stuff just poured out and it really helped a lot.
How did you keep it light on the set?
WARD: It could get pretty grim going to set, but we had people like Sophie [Lowe, who plays Lena Winship] who were light and don't take it too seriously, not that she didn't take it seriously, she's a very light person, so those people balanced it out. We would go out at night afterwards, and that's when we could all relax.
VAIRO: The days weren't super long on the show and there are so many story lines happening. You were really able to put yourself out there for a couple of days and then you knew you had a week off afterwards. It was and is taxing for us having to go 120 percent every single take. Working 14 hours a day, every day, can really take it out of you after a while. The show I did before this was like that. I wasn't doing anything as emotionally deep is this, but it was definitely more draining.
What kind of stuff keeps you guys are alive?
WARD: Just keeping busy. I've had a few jobs in between this, but I had time to chill out. There was a lot of time off between the show finishing and its starting. I went to Canada and then there was Christmas...
VAIRO: I try to travel, as much as I can. Rhys went to Austin.
WARD: Sophie from the show was filming there and so it just happened South By Southwest was happening. It helps to keep busy.
VAIRO: I camp a lot and I am a bike rider, so I'll do that. I was also thinking about skydiving while we were shooting the show, but thought it might be an insurance liability (laughs).
WARD: I take a lot of acting classes too.
What can you say about the finale?
VAIRO: What can we say? It's hard to say much.
WARD: I think people are itching for some sort of answer regarding the kid Victor. The first season was not about why they are back; it was about what they are doing when they come back. People want to know why they're back, but when it comes to reality it's about adjusting to coming back. If it were to happen in real life, yes, it's a big question, but the first part is dealing with everything around you as opposed to how it happened - that's season one.
And for those people who watched the French version and think they're just seeing it all again this one does take a different turn?
VAIRO: I didn't see the French one. But this one is loosely based.
WARD: Yeah, after episode six this one does take a different path. It really does just follow the concept of coming back. The thing that separates the show is this one is more an existential drama and more character-driven. By episode six it definitely veers off, and if people did watch the French version it is completely different. I love the French version and thought it was great.
VAIRO: I really have no desire to see that one, maybe later. I'm too attached to this project right now. I love this show and I didn't want to cloud my expression with somebody else's ideas.
The French series was also given a second season, so there will be no story crossover if you get a season two?
VAIRO: We're all waiting to hear if that happens, but this has completely different writers.
WARD: They really just used that as a starting point to catapult it into something and establish the characters.
VAIRO: I think they wanted to take all the things the French version did right, utilize that and then veer off to where things could have been done more effectively, and hopefully we achieved that.
Do you watch the show as viewers?
WARD: We had very little scenes together and there was a point I wasn't really reading the entire scripts because we didn't interact and it really didn't help me. We exist in completely different worlds on the show, so it was a surprise for me with some of the stuff that happened.
VAIRO: I had the same experience. I don't really watch the show, only because I don't like to watch myself, but I will watch other people and I think what I've seen is awesome. Coming from the theater I tend to "create and destroy" in that I start overanalyzing myself, and I really don't need it to live on in my memory forever (laughs).
What has being dead done for your love lives?
WARD: Nothing for mine!
VAIRO: Speak for yourself (laughs) No, I've been single since I started the show.
WARD: I've been single-ish. Loosely single.
VAIRO: That's an interesting way to put it. The show has not helped my love life.
WARD: And it's not going to help mine being a cannibal.
What kind of reaction do you get from people you run into, like "Aren't you that dead guy?"
WARD: I don't think in L.A. that really tends to happen.
VAIRO: I don't look a lot like I do on the show, I usually have a beard and my hair is longer, so I don't necessarily look like Simon. He's more clean-shaven and like a renaissance poet.
WARD: I've encountered it on Instagram and stuff, but not in LA.
VAIRO: We'll see if New York changes that.
Do you have any new projects?
WARD: I just wrapped a movie and I did a couple of episodes of IZombie for the CW, for the finale. It's a really cool show and Rose is very sweet. I shot that in Vancouver also so I can't seem to get out of there (laughs).
VAIRO: But that's a great place to be stuck. I'm headed to New York because I want to incorporate a little more theater and music into my career so will see what happens there. I want to be able to bring everything together and have more options as I enjoy it all, I really do and I am starting to play music and write songs so we'll see where it leads. Kind of like my character on the show, but the goal is not to end up dead (laughs).
"The Returned" will air its season one finale on Monday at 8 p.m. on A&E.
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