Interview: Robert Carlyle Talks Once Upon A Time Season 3

We are less than a month and a half away from the third season premiere of Once Upon A Time airing Sunday, September 29 on ABC… and what do you know, we still have some interviews remaining from the press room at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego.

Today, we share what Mr. Gold himself, Robert Carlyle, had to say about the future of Rumpelstiltskin and his Gold alter ego. For starters, he teases that Gold might not be as much of a team player as we all assumed after last season’s finale.

“Gold, at the end of Episode 22, Season 2, seems to be saying ‘let’s go off together and find this.’ That isn’t going to last. That lasts about two and a half minutes of Season 3, when he tells you ‘well I didn’t actually say that.’ I had to go back and look at 22 and see that he didn’t actually say that,” Carlyle teases. “So he’s on his own at the beginning of Season 3. He’s on his own mission now. Baelfire, to him, is dead, so his life is pretty much over. The only thing that he can do to in any way honor his son’s memory is to find his son, even though he’s been told that a prophecy many hundreds of years ago that that boy’s going to be his undoing. So at the beginning of Season Three, you’ve got a guy who is in a sense trying to do the right thing now, for the first time in many hundreds of years, even if that means his own death.”

Carlyle thinks that part of what makes Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin a compelling character is that he has traits that are inherent in everyone — he’s just a bit more open about it. “People are conflicted. I am, I’m sure we all are. We all have conflicted opinions; he just voices them, you know? He’s a very, very normal, kind of ordinary kind of man in many, many ways. Even though he’s fantastic; he’s got magic and all of these things. The core of him is conflicted,” he says.

One thing is for certain, though — he doesn’t want to see Mr. Gold settling down. “I wouldn’t be happy to see him having babies with Belle. I think that would be death. I just don’t think that could happen. But I think he should end up on his own in some way. But it could be for the side of good. It could be, in the end,” he says. “Rumpbelle” fans shouldn’t fret, however… the two characters will be interacting in Season 3. “One thing I can tell you without giving away too much is that Rumpelstiltskin and Belle will meet in Season 3, and in Neverland, in fact. But, it may not be in the fashion that you think,” he reveals.

“I wouldn’t watch if Gold suddenly became nice,” Carlyle admits. “There’s no show. I think that’s what makes the character, certainly interesting for me to play, and I think it’s certainly interesting for the audience to watch, that he’s conflicted. Does he actually want to be a good man? Does he really want it? Someone said in the panel ‘Babies with Belle, is that what he wants to do?’ I don’t think so. I think if we did that, we went down that road, I think the character would vanish and maybe the show as well. I think they want to want to see Rumpelstiltskin doing bad things,” he speculates.

Season 3 of Once Upon A Time is almost here – come talk about the series on our forum and check out some of our other Once interviews and content here at KSiteTV!