Once Upon A Hook: Interview With OUAT’s Colin O’Donoghue

Unfortunately, this is the last of our Once Upon A Time cast interviews from Vancouver… on the bright side, today’s interview is with Colin O’Donoghue, who plays Killian Jones, aka Captain Hook, on the ABC series.

Tonight’s episode, “Good Form,” actually has a special flashback involving Hook and maybe some heat for those folks who are rooting for Captain Hook and Emma Swan to be together. While we were up north, O’Donoghue offered some hints about what we might see tonight.

“At some stage, you will get to see some of what’s gone in the past, because remember, he was in Neverland for hundreds of years,” he said. “And obviously, you get to see that Pan is quite a nasty character, really. Traditionally, Hook is the bad guy, but their relationship is complicated. It’s not just as straightforward as ‘Hook wants to kill Pan.’ He is tied to him in ways that I can’t actually say at the minute, but it’s interesting, the way that they’ve done it,” he teased.

Moving forward to the present, we will see that Hook’s intentions are intentionally ambiguous, as O’Donoghue said to us that Hook is a man who is struggling. “He’s had 300 or so odd years of living with hatred and all that kind of stuff, and now he’s desperately trying to figure out if he wants to let go of that or not. Which is an incredibly difficult thing to do, when that’s been the only driving force that you’ve had for so long. So, you see a man who has a massive internal struggle. I definitely think there’s a side of him that wants to do the right thing, but within the confines of being Captain Hook, and a pirate, and being quite out for himself. That’s kind of where he’s at, at the moment,” he explained.

Hook has already shown Emma that he did have a respect for Baelfire, which may have helped the characters bond. But, according to Colin, there is something else that might bring them together. “Hook and Emma have always been able to see an element of themselves in each other,” he said. “It’s interesting; their relationship has been unusual, I would say.” Is there more flirting on the way? “It’s Captain Hook,” he exclaimed. “If you drew a picture on the wall, he’d flirt with it!”

You can see a new episode of Once Upon A Time tonight at 8PM (ET) on ABC. Take a look at some preview images and come join the countdown on our OUAT forum!