STEVEN KRUEGER’S LIFE AND HIS UNEXPECTED ROLE IN YELLOWJACKETS

INTERVIEW BY AVERY CEFRE

PHOTOGRAPHER: IRVIN RIVERA, FASHION STYLING: ANDREW PHILIP NGUYEN, GROOMING: MATILDE CAMPOS, PHOTO ASST: JESSE ZAPATERO
Coat: JOSEPH AUREN, Set: BOURBON SUMMER CARTOON CRISIS, Boots: ASOS MAN

Steven Krueger has unexpected twists and turns (in a good way) in his career. Although his original intent in coming to LA was for a law internship and eventually becoming a lawyer, life has put him in an exciting and interesting direction. Krueger became an actor and is now part of the ensemble of Showtime’s most talked about show Yellowjackets. He plays coach Ben Scott who came out unexpectedly as gay on the show’s first season. Ben’s story arc was explored more in the second season, providing additional context on his life before his leg was amputated. When asked about this queer role on his second big TV gig, he emphasized that he did not want to play a character just for the sake of. He empathizes with each role that he takes to not just end up as a token character with hollow purpose.

In this chat with Krueger, he talked about the show and what might transpire on the second season, the renewal of Yellowjackets for its third season run and playing a queer role in a diverse cast and his plans of being behind the camera.

Full Set: REUBEN OLIVER, Shoes: THURSDAY BOOTS CO

Hi Steven! By the way, congratulations! I've seen some of the new episodes [Season 2] and it's getting more interesting. How do you feel about this new season also the show being picked up for the third season?

Wow! Yeah. I mean, those are two iterations of the exact same question because the answer to both is amazing. I think with season two and one of the most common questions you get is coming out of the first season. We found this viral success quickly. And I always talk about the fact that as we were coming back for season two, literally every person in the cast and every person in the writers’ room and the producers’ rooms felt just this massive weight of expectations that we had to live up to. And that's that can be a really challenging thing to do in the second season of a show, especially, one that deals with the subject matter that we do, where it would be really easy for them to just push the envelope and take the show off the tracks so to speak and just kind of make it crazy just for the sake of shock value because they know that that's what the audience is looking for. What the writers did well this second season is they did push the envelope and they did up the level of insanity that the show has. We doubled down on this idea of being the craziest show on TV, but they did it in a way that's really rooted in the characters and the situation and the circumstances that we're in. It all feels very authentic, you know, I mean, even as we get into the big reveal at the end of episode two of this season, it's something that everybody expected. But I don't know that people expected it to turn out the way that it did, to happen the way that it did, which is really cool. And then, look, anytime that you're in the middle of shooting a season and you get a pickup for the following season, that just doesn't happen that much on television. That was a fun surprise for us and a fun treat. It gave us confidence as we were still in the middle of shooting season two that, “Hey, you know, we're doing something right.” They’ve been seeing all the cuts of the episodes that we've done so far. We seem to be on the right track and it's nice to know that, you know, that they're going to let this story continue because I think there's a lot more to tell.

How did you get this role and when did you first hear about getting this role?

The way it came to me was traditional. The script kind of shows up in my email inbox from my agents. And they said, hey, you have this audition. And when I opened the script and I saw the writers of it, Ashley and Bart, two writers that I had worked with previously on my first show, and actually became very close with - really good friends. And I knew that they were working on a project, but I didn't know that this was it [Yellowjackets]. And so, I knew before I even opened the script that it was going to be good because they're very talented writers and they have a unique style. But it exceeded every expectation that I had. The first time that I read it, I mean, I think the common reaction from a lot of people in our past is that this really it was one of, if not the best pilot scripts that we had ever read. And that was certainly the case for me as well. And so once I read it, before I even knew about who was already attached to the project, some of these heavy hitter names like Melanie Lynskey and Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci - just sheerly reading the script alone, I said, oh, my God, this is amazing. And this is something that's unique and it could be special and it's something that I really want to be a part of. And so then, you go through the many, many, many, many rounds of auditions and you go through different iterations of - “Oh, I think I've got the part.” “No, I don't think I get the part.” And it's that weird mental game over the course of I mean, probably two months or so that I was in and out of auditions for this part. The added challenge of knowing the writers and wanting to live up to their expectations and not embarrass them when you're in the room, that was always kind of in the back of my mind as well. But luckily it turned out the way that it did, because this has been probably the best opportunity that I've ever had in my career.

What draws you to your queer character? I researched about your previous project and there are similarities between the character that you played before and this one?

Yeah, look, there's a lot of elements that are the same. And one of the things that I kind of pride myself on and I pride these characters on, is the fact that their sexuality isn't necessarily their defining feature. You know, I think that we've gotten so kind of bogged down, especially recently in the last ten years or so being inclusive but almost being inclusive in an empty way where you have these token characters - whether they are minority, based on their sexual orientation, their religion, their ethnicity, all of the above. And these characters are kind of thrown into shows as a way to just say, hey, you know, look, we've got diverse characters, we've got inclusive characters, but they're not really fully developed as three-dimensional human beings. And one of the things that I always look for-- is this character is supposed to be there as a token queer character, or is this character a real human being? Have they fleshed this character out? Is there going to be other elements of this character to kind of play with? And that's certainly been the case with both queer characters that I played to this point. I think the added element when I went into playing Coach Ben in Yellowjackets was that this was an entirely different time period. You know, this was not the present day. There were a lot of circumstances that I really had to go back and research and learn about and really try to viscerally understand and what it was like to be a closeted gay man in the mid-1990s in essentially New York City, just outside of New York City. If you remember, this is just a few years before the Matthew Shepard killing in Wyoming. There was very much still a stigma. We were coming just on the tail end of the AIDS epidemic. And there was a lot going on there. There were still laws in pretty much every single state that barred, LGBTQ people from having jobs in public settings, especially working with children. If Coach Ben had been outed as being gay, his entire life would have been over. His career would have been taken away from him. And there's a lot of elements that go into that. And it's why he did this. The secret that he's harboring is so closely held. And that was something that I didn't have to, you know, really think about with the first gay character that I played on The Originals. It just added a layer of intrigue and added a layer of drama to the character. And that's that meaty stuff that you really look for as an actor.

How is it to be the adult character amongst all the teenagers who survived the crash and changing the power dynamics of the show? Can you explain that further?

I mean, yes, we you know, we talked about the fact that he is a closeted gay man and it's a closely held secret. And now you add on top of that the fact that he is the only adult that survives a plane crash with a bunch of teenagers. He has this innate kind of sense of responsibility for them. But what we see throughout the course of season one is that his ability to kind of control and influence them and be their mentor and be their leader really gets kind of stripped away from him as we get further and further into the season until we get to the point where we're now seeing in the first couple of episodes of season two that he really has no control left. He really has no power left. And so what you're really going to see play out over the rest of season two is how he deals with that. You know, I mean, if this is his identity as a person- to be a coach and a teacher and an authority figure, and that's taken away from him, what else does he have left? And so that's again, just another added layer of intrigue, I think, for this character. And then, of course, you add on to that the fact that he's dealing with the catastrophic injury that he sustained as a result of the crash, where he's literally lost a limb. And it's almost impossible to imagine what this guy is going through out there. I think a lot of the work for me is just trying to figure out how to kind of be authentic from scene to scene instead of thinking about the bigger picture necessarily, because that's just such a mammoth undertaking that it's kind of intimidating, honestly.

Jacket: JNG, Turtleneck & Pants: LUCA FALONI, Shoes: THURSDAY BOOTS CO

What can the audience look forward to your character throughout the season?

Coach Ben is now going to go through I mean, we've, we've gotten through episode two at this point and so everybody kind of knows that I'm the one person who didn't partake in this first descent into cannibalism that that everybody else does. What we're going to see kind of going forward is Coach being even more ostracized from the group because of that and just kind of how he deals with that. It goes back to what I was saying a couple minutes ago about the fact that if his one sense of identity was being an authority figure and being a coach and a teacher, and that's taken away from him, he's now in a position where he's kind of being forced to live without a mask for the first time in his life. That’s what he's done his entire adult life. And now once he's involuntarily stripped of that, he just has himself. You're going to kind of see him retreat and the effects of that are not always a positive thing. When you don't have other people to rely on and you just have yourself, we're going to see him go inward and let's just say that the repercussions can be catastrophic, I guess.

If you are going to be stranded with two characters, who would they be?

Oh my gosh. Tough question. Let's see. I'm going to get a lot of phone calls about this. Let’s see. I would choose Shauna [played by Sophie Nélisse as a teenager]. Shauna's tough, you know, she's the first one to kind of grab the knife and say, I want to help with, you know, skinning the animals and preparing the meat and all that kind of stuff. She's got a lot of grit. And then I would also probably say Taissa (played by Jasmin Savoy Brown as a teenager) because Taissa is kind of a badass.

Coat: JOSEPH AUREN, Set: BOURBON SUMMER CARTOON CRISIS, Boots: ASOS MAN

I would agree to that too. And we’re down to the last two questions. Anything that you're excited about this year, I mean, in terms of your career?

Absolutely. Look, you always kind of want to take the opportunity to capitalize on the success of a project that you're working on. So there's going to be a lot of other acting opportunities that I delve into. But one of the big things that I'm excited about is I'm also kind of checking into the idea of directing. I'm working on directing a short film this year to just kind of branch out a little bit. It's always been something that I've been intrigued by. It's something that's kind of appealed to me for a number of years now, since I started acting. I'm finally going to take that plunge and direct a short film and kind of see where that takes me.

Full Set: MAISON AUDMI, Shirt: FALCONERI, Boots: DR. MARTENS

And any character or role that you still want to play?

I mean, the list is infinite, quite honestly. That's always a hard question for me as an actor, because a lot of times, you can kind of look at previous roles that have been done in movies or shows that you really love and you say, Oh, I would love to play a character like that. But the truth is, for me, until I pick up a script and I start reading it and there's something that jumps off the page to me about a particular character or a particular story, I often don't know. I think the broad overarching idea, especially for me, is I want to play characters that are very different from myself. I've learned over the years as an actor that I tend to be the most engaged and I tend to give some of my best performances when the character and the circumstances are completely different than anything I've ever experienced before. Because it forces you into a place of creativity. You know, you don't have the luxury of being able to kind of fall back on yourself and your own defaults and your own mannerisms and that kind of stuff. You really have to create an entirely new human being as a character. And so that's the stuff that I like doing as an actor- that really challenging kind of meaty stuff, that forces me to do something totally different that I'm probably not comfortable with. So that's, that's what I'm looking for as I go forward with new acting projects.

If you were a book, what would you be and why?

I think the answer to that question is probably my favorite book of all time, which is Catcher in the Rye. And I think the reason is that I remember reading that book in high school, and I tend to read it every couple of years just as an adult as well. And there's something so unique and different about the way that that book is structured on top of the storyline, which is fun, about a kid kind of wandering around New York City [Manhattan] and getting into trouble and finding himself a little bit. I always kind of identify with that story, but the way that the book is written is so interesting and so unique that it just kind of draws you in. And I guess, I don't know, I kind of like to think of myself as a bit of a different actor. I didn't kind of come from the same background as a lot of actors did. And so that's always something that I've prided myself on, and I tend to comfort myself a little bit differently, I think, than a lot of other people in the industry. So, yeah, let's go with Catcher in the Rye. And it also makes me sound really smart.