Tonight’s episode of Lucifer, airing at 9PM ET/PT on FOX, sees Lucifer paired in a storyline with “Detective Douche” himself — Dan, as played by Kevin Alejandro. This interaction will be the culmination of a lot of the evolution for Tom Ellis’ character as the show has moved into its successful second season.
Last week, we spoke with actor Tom Ellis on the Vancouver set of Lucifer for some insight into some of Lucifer’s changes.
“The first season of the show, we very much sort of picked up where Lucifer was, or where he felt he was, in his life, and that was covered with a whole veneer of being Lucifer and being this persona amongst humanity, but obviously, personal things have happened to him now that have changed that dynamic in Season 2,” Ellis explained. “The introduction of his mum has been a huge part of that, because I think intrinsically people are very different around their mums, and that relationship is very unique. She knows better than anyone else about who her son is. So that’s kind of aided that, and then obviously consequences of action have come into play as well, and as we saw in the episode ‘The Weaponizer’ where Lucifer ends up killing his brother, he’s never killed anyone before.”
“It’s kind of an interesting thing, because people assume that one might be used to it, as the Devil, but his point is, he’s never killed anyone,” Ellis continued. “He’s only ever had to take care of souls after they’ve been killed. So having that kind of happen to him with his brother has thrown his world into a whole new area that he’s never experienced before. He’s also in a much more vulnerable place than he ever was, just because of his time here, and his relationship with Detective Decker, his mum being around, and all of those things that have conspired into this perfect storm putting him probably at his lowest ebb this season. As an actor, that’s been fun and interesting to play, and I think our audience is really becoming latched on to the vulnerability. It is a different Lucifer to what we set up in the first season, but I think that’s good. It would be boring to play a two-dimensional character who is just this thing and that is it, and not affected by anything that happens to them.”
Tonight’s episode “My Little Monkey” sees Lucifer going to an unlikely source — Dan — for inspiration. “One of the lovely things about this season, or any sort of second season of anything, you get more opportunity to explore each setup, and in this particular instance, I didn’t have an awful lot to do with Kevin [Alejandro] in the first season, and it was a fun relationship that we had, but we hadn’t dug any deeper than that,” Ellis recalled. “Lucifer certainly hadn’t dug any deeper to find out who this man was, and then we find ourselves in Episode 7 thrown together when Lucifer’s at his low ebb of what he’s done and how he feels about things, and he realizes he’d like to be more like someone more helpful, and immediately latches on to Dan, and genuinely wants to learn ‘how to Douche.’ But it comes from a genuine place. He wants to not have the effect he has on people, and Dan doesn’t, so therefore, ergo, in Lucifer’s kind of weird mind, that’s what I’m gonna do. So it forces them together in a situation where theres a lot of fun to be had in that kind of ‘school of Douche.’ I will say, I’ve had a lot of fun working with Kevin this year.”
“My Little Monkey” airs at 9PM tonight (November 7) on FOX. Photos from the episode can be found here; a trailer can be seen below.
