Beauty And The Beast: Brian Peterson Talks Alex, Future Romance & More

If you’ve noticed an uptick in social media chatter about The CW’s Beauty And The Beast lately, some of that may be due to a current story arc where a third party enters the “epic Vin/Cat romance” – aka, the relationship between the show’s two lead characters, Vincent (Jay Ryan) and Catherine (Kristin Kreuk). The series’ growing fan base – whose support netted the series a People’s Choice Award – is not hesitant to say that that third person, Alex, needs to go away, even if she is played by a fantastic actress in Bridget Regan.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the reaction to Alex is exactly what the show’s producers wanted. “For me, that meant that they were really invested in Cat and Vincent, and they were really rooting for them, which was what I want,” Executive Producer Brian Peterson admitted at a Q&A held this past Friday. “The fact that they would hate somebody stepping in and moving in on her territory, for me, means that everything is working just right, and people are investing the way we want them to, and in our two leads, because that’s the most important part of the show, are the two leads.”

Additionally, Alex’s behavior might be normal considering the circumstances of her long absence from seeing Vincent. “We’ve had so many conversations about epic love, and every single person on the show has a different opinion on epic love. I tend to be somebody who doesn’t get over somebody very easily, so to me, it may seem slightly creepy, but understandable,” he explained, before moving on to explain Alex’s motivations. “I think it’s the way that it all ended. Had they actually broken up or something, then yeah, it would be a little psycho-crazy, but I think for her, he’s a fallen hero that she was going to marry, and so he was still an important part of her life. It’s not something you just wipe under the rug. It was ‘this was the man I was going to marry, and he’s dead, but he was an important part of my life.’ That’s kind of what we were going with, was that she was still – not holding on to hope, because she thought he had passed, but it was still a very important part of her life. It was the last person that she was actually in love with.”

Once the Alex arc is finished, how might things change for Vincent and Cat? “It’s difficult, because not only externally, but internally, they have a lot of issues now, if he just ran back to somebody that quickly, Cat’s going to be a little reticent to let him just run right back to her, as I think you’ll see, especially in the next episode. So it’s going to cause some internal conflict, but obviously Heather, and in the next run of probably four or five [episodes], every other part of the show starts to implode on them in the external world, as far as the other people in their lives at the precinct, and Muirfield… it all comes back in right when they’re trying to figure their own relationship out,” he said.

One thing he did promise is that fans will get some good, uninterrupted Vincent/Cat romance in the very near future. “We’re very conscious of not just writing to tease and make it feel written, so that will happen very, very soon,” he assured. “We’re not going to pull some ‘oh, we’re pulling them apart before they kiss again’.”

Beauty And The Beast airs Thursday nights at 9PM (ET) on The CW. Check out some of our other BATB content, including images and screen captures from this week’s episode!