We’re only a week away from the Season 4 premiere of The Fosters on Freeform! The season premiere is called “Potential Energy” and it will find almost the entire family in the same dangerous situation.
Last week, we visited the set of The Fosters and interviewed the show’s cast, and we’re rolling those interviews out starting today. The first interview is with Hayden Byerly, whose “Jude” character has grown just as the actor has, exploring his sexuality and facing some tragedy last season with the death of his friend Jack. Jude is also, of course, half of the pair that the fans call “Jonnor,” and folks will be happy to know that Connor may be gone but he is certainly not forgotten.
You can find the interview below; if you’d like to share it, please just link to this post rather than copying and pasting to Tumblr or related sites. Thank you! Photos from the season premiere can be found here. If video is more your thing, you can find video of the interview here as well. Enjoy!
KSITETV’s CRAIG BYRNE: At the end of last season, after what happened with Connor moving away and what happened with Jack, Jude declared that maybe God doesn’t want him to be gay. Can you talk about that?
HAYDEN BYERLY: Jude looks into Jack dying as kind of — he’s very curious. He doesn’t really know what happens. He’s like “yeah, he dies, but what’s next? Where do you go after that? What happens?” and I think that he starts to search for that, and he finds some different outlets. I think that he really looks towards Christianity, and then he reads a little bit more into it and finds out some interesting stuff.
I think that he sees that he shouldn’t be gay, and then he starts to look at all of these interesting things, that Jack has died after he kissed him, that Connor moved away, and I think that he looks at it as some outside force or being trying to push him away from being gay, and trying to isolate him and show him that he’s not supposed to do that. And so, he looks towards Christianity as his saving grace. He looks at that as, like “Okay, well this is what I should be. I’ve gotta be straight. I’ve gotta figure this out. I don’t want to go to a bad place when I die. I want to be happy.” And so, he looks to Taylor as the girl who could turn this around for him, and then she doesn’t, but he looks to her as that, and so when she shakes things up and shows him a side of it all that he has never seen, that he didn’t think was possible, he is fascinated by it. He’s very curious to know whether or not he should or should not be gay.
What do the other characters think of his relationship with Taylor as the season begins?
It’s kind of interesting, because a lot of them… you see some moments between the two of them in which people ask, like “are you two just friends? What is this?”
I think that initially, Jude does really like Taylor. He knows that. He knows that he really likes her; he enjoys her company. She’s always been there for him, and he does really enjoy being around her, but I don’t think that he finds that love for her. I don’t think that he finds that. I think he knows why, and I don’t think he really accepts that and wants to, and I think he really does want to be straight and be what he “thinks” he’s supposed to… but I don’t know. I am totally against that happening. I really am angry at Jude for doing that, because I loved when he was happy with his sexuality, and now he’s going on this path of trying to figure stuff out and change his mind…
But is anybody on the show allowed to be happy?
No! Of course not! This is The Fosters! We’ve all got problems!
Is there anything in the season premiere that might be appealing to “Jonnor” fans?
Well, there are some moments in which we do see the spirit or the “ghost” of Connor, in a way, in which he does come up when we see Jude. In the lockdown, there are a couple of moments in which we see that Jude gets very scared. He’s in a place in which he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. He doesn’t know what’s going to go on. He doesn’t know if he’s going to die or not, and so he gets freaked out. He starts wondering all of these things, and ultimately he turns to Connor as someone who he looks [to] for comfort. He’s been really scared and freaked out, and he doesn’t know what to do, and that love for Connor — just because they broke up and he moved, doesn’t mean that it just dies out immediately. It takes some time to get over anyone, especially your first love. And so, he texts him in the lockdown, and kind of tries to look for something, I guess. I think that he’s looking for a sense of security or someone to talk him down, and to make him happy and calm, and he doesn’t end up finding that.
We do see the way that Connor affects Jude later in the season. We do see what happens with that, and how Connor, in a second hand way, kind of pushes Jude into doing some things that he maybe shouldn’t have done, or just some crazy stuff that you wouldn’t expect Jude to have done.
What does Taylor make of the “ghost” of Connor?
I think that she sees how it affects Jude, and she’s really upset that Jude is so distraught by this, and that he is so hurt, and that it’s caused a lot of confusion and problems, and she wants her friend to be happy. She doesn’t want this hurt to be there, and she tries to help him in whatever way she can.
I think that she is definitely on Jude’s side within this. I think that she is with Jude as opposed to Connor. I think that if there was an argument, she would stand by Jude’s side and try and support him, even if he was wrong. She does kinda help him and try and lead him down this path of being better, and getting back to where he should be.
Do any of Jude’s relationships with his family change as we’ve gone into Season 4?
I think that there are some interesting moments that he has with each of them. This season, Callie gets very angry at Jude, which is interesting, because a lot of the times, we’ve seen Jude get mad at Callie for doing stupid stuff, but it’s reversed. Jude does something stupid, Callie finds out and gets very angry at him. And so, it’s really cool to see how that kind of changes, because it’s always been Jude scolding Callie and kind of being angry at her, and then she’s run off and done something stupid and then come back. But now we actually see Jude make a mistake, and [he] tries to clean it up and fix what goes on.
The Fosters Season 4 premiere airs June 20 on Freeform! Here’s video of our video with Hayden Byerly, straight from Lena Adams Foster’s office:
