Shadowhunters: Full Interview With Dominic Sherwood (Jace)

ABC Family is becoming Freeform this month, and on Tuesday, January 12, the channel will launch their highly-anticipated series Shadowhunters based on The Mortal Instruments book series by Cassandra Clare.

On the new show, actor Dominic Sherwood (Vampire Academy) takes on the role of Jace Wayland opposite Katherine McNamara’s Clary Fray. We were able to speak with him last year on the Toronto sets of Shadowhunters, and today, we’re happy to share with you the entire interview. You can watch the video below, and if you’d rather see it all written out, you can find that below.

Be sure to follow @KSiteTV on Twitter for updates when we are posting more Shadowhunters interviews in the coming days!

KSITETV’s CRAIG BYRNE: When you were first cast in Shadowhunters, there was so much anticipation by the fans to find out “who is Jace?” How did that feel from your perspective?

It was pretty intense. I didn’t know until about 15, 20 minutes before they announced it on social media. I got a conference call from my two agents in Los Angeles, and my manager, and that’s either very good news or very bad news. You never really know which until they tell you. So you get a call, and then the assistant says “Hey, we’ve got Stephanie and Duncan and Rob on the phone for you,” and I’m like “this is the call. I’m going to find out right now.”

And then they announced it, and I was like “that’s amazing.” I was at my girlfriend’s house at the time, just in absolute exultation. And then it got announced, and obviously when I’m in L.A., I have a British phone and an American phone, and they started to kind of explode. I didn’t know what to do!

I texted my girlfriend [Sarah Hyland] just after I found out, and I was like “aw, yeah. They’ve cast someone as Jace,” kind of anticipating being able to text her in a couple minutes and being like “I’m just kidding! It was me! I got the part! Don’t worry about it!” But then both my phones stopped working because of the social media kind of explosion, and I couldn’t text her back, and I felt really bad. And then I was on the phone with my mom for a long time, as well.

How are Jace’s interactions with Clary in the TV series?

Jace’s first interaction with Clary is kind of very black and white. The Shadowhunters and myself are on a mission, and we’re very used to the kind of Mundanes – the human beings of the world – not being able to see us. They can’t hear us. They’re very unaware of what we do. And when I bump into Clary, she’s the first Mundane I’ve ever met who can see me. Immediately, there’s an electricity there that is unexplainable to be. I don’t understand why this is happening, but the magnetic attraction is very undeniable.

Are you aware of Jace’s trajectory in the books, or would prefer to learn it as you go along?

A couple of people have asked me that. I’d prefer to learn it more as it happens. There’s kind of two reasons for it: One, I don’t want to know where we go. I don’t want that to be in my mind when we’re doing the scenes, and doing this show, episode by episode. I don’t want to know what happens at the end, because it’s always going to kind of be there, and maybe it’ll slip into my performance. Maybe it won’t. I don’t know. But I don’t want it to.

The second reason is [that] we’re doing the TV show version of this world. I understand that there’s a huge fan following for these books, and we love them with every ounce. It’s such an amazing fandom to have. But it’s important for them and for us that we keep this story fresh, and that we keep it kind of new and evolving, so that the basis of the story is still there, but we’ve changed our journey at little bit.

So, it’s important for me, specifically, that I don’t know too much about what’s going on and what’s necessarily going to happen,  because I’m reading it in the scripts day by day.

For those who are coming into this completely new, what is a Shadowhunter?

A Shadowhunter is the Nephilim; half-angel, half-human, born and bred demon hunters. That’s what we do. We protect the Mundane world from the demon world.

Do you have a favorite set on the new show?

My favorite set is the Institute. We’ve built this amazing Institute… we have our weapons training room, and our operations center… it’s my favorite set to be on. I never feel more like Jace [than] when I’m on that set.

How is the process to get the runes applied?

It really depends on what my costume is. If I’m wearing short sleeves, or if I’m not wearing a shirt, there are obviously more, because my body’s kind of covered; whereas today, I’m wearing a long sleeved jacket, and my gloves… today, I just have the two on. Each rune takes maybe five minutes to apply. It can take quite a while. I can be in the chair for a few hours… but it’s a lot of fun, to kind of become Jace over that kind of period. That’s my time as an actor to sit and kind of become Jace; and let Jace appear.

Are we going to be seeing any of Jace’s backstory with Valentine or anything like that?

Everyone’s backstory is covered, without giving too much away about the show. Jace’s backstory — we’re actually in Episode 9, and we’re starting to look at it now, in Episode 8 and Episode 9… we’re starting to look at it a little bit more. But, it is looked at. Absolutely. I think it’s very important to know where all of these characters came from, and how they became who they are, so the audience and we know a full version of these characters. Why they are who they are. Why they behave the way they behave, and so on, and so forth. So, yes. We definitely get to see where Jace came from.

Is Jace’s association with the Lightwoods something that inspires or affects how he views Mundanes at times?

Yes and no. I think, especially in the show, I think our training as Shadowhunters has extrapolated our view of Mundanes. Our job is to protect them; that’s the entirety of what we do. So, a failure in doing so is very hard for us. It’s very difficult for us. I don’t think it’s necessarily my relationship with the Lightwoods so much as it is the training I’ve been through since I was very small. We understand the Mundanes’ place in the world and our place in the world in kind of retrospect to those.

There’s a storyline in the books and in the movie where Jace and Clary think that they may be related. Is that going to be covered in the show?

I’m not telling you. You’re going to have to watch the show. We definitely have some pretty serious twists and turns for all of the characters.

On the subject of family, can you talk about his interaction with the Lightwoods?

Absolutely. Izzy, Alec, and Jace were all raised together, and then we have the Lightwood parents, Robert and Maryse. Alec and Izzy and Jace have become this amazing Shadowhunter team, but especially Alec and Jace are parabatai. The closest kind of reference we have is brothers in arms, but it goes so much further than that. It’s this kind of bond between two Shadowhunters that cannot be explained by anything else. It’s a physical, kind of emotional bond that if it was broken, it would be quite a serious test for both their physical and emotional spirit.

Why do you think Shadowhunters will be popular as a TV series?

I think it encapsulates everything that audience members want. There’s romance, there’s action, there’s intrigue… I think there’s a character that someone from every different group in the world is going to fall in love with. It’s a show would watch. I would love this show. And I would fall in love with Jace. Of course I’d fall in love with Jace. He’s awesome.

Shadowhunters premieres Tuesday, January 12 on Freeform (formerly ABC Family). Take a look at more of KSiteTV’s Shadowhunters coverage here!