Colin O’Donoghue and Michael Raymond-James ‘Once Upon a Time’ Interview

Colin O'Donoghue Once Upon a Time Interview
Colin O'Donoghue - Photo © Richard Chavez

Is Emma (Jennifer Morrison) destined to live happily ever after with Neal/Baelfire or will she fall under the spell of a sexy pirate? And what’s going to happen to our favorite heroes and villains now that they’ve headed off to rescue Henry (Jared Gilmore) in Neverland on ABC’s fairy tale fantasy series Once Upon a Time? Neither of these questions were answered in my interview with Colin O’Donoghue (‘Hook’) and Michael Raymond-James, but they did discuss guyliner and playing rivals for Emma’s affection.

Michael Raymond-James and Colin O’Donoghue Interview:

How many times have you had to talk about guyliner today?

Colin O’Donoghue: “What? Not once!”

Michael Raymond-James: [Laughing] “Yeah, not once.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “Not once.”

Michael Raymond-James: “Certainly not enough because I could talk about it all day.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “We were saying on set the other day, I think it was Ginny who said we should bring out a Once Upon a Time guyliner thing and then we can do an ad where I sort of walk down the street.”

Michael Raymond-James: “I’d buy that guyliner.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “Yeah?”

Michael Raymond-James: “Absolutely.”

They should just start incorporating it into all the characters.

Michael Raymond-James: [Laughing] “Yeah.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “We can listen to The Cure and Depeche Mode and all that stuff.”

Next season’s going to be really interesting because you’re going to be in a different land. Can you give us any type of tease?

Colin O’Donoghue: “Yeah. I mean we pretty much pick up straight where we left off and Neal goes to the Enchanted Forest and the rest of us go to Neverland, and it’s nearly exactly from the point that we stopped. You get to see Neverland but you get to see a different type of Neverland than you would have expected or read about before. Eddie [Kitsis] and Adam [Horowitz] do it with a twist and put a slant of things. You’ll see all the characters, I think, that you would expect to see in Neverland, but slightly askew.”

Michael Raymond-James: “Sideways versions of them.”

Michael, your character has the most complex backstory of any character on the show. How aware were you of Baelfire’s backstory when you got the part?

Michael Raymond-James: “When I got the offer and agreed to do it, I was very aware. I went into their offices, and they pitched me what they had in mind and the complexity of all of it. First of all, no character on the show has a simple, straightforward background. You know what I mean? It’s intense, it’s crazy. I was totally aware and that’s one of the things that drew me to it. There was a lot of different avenues you can go down, in terms of trying to figure out why you make a particular move or not.”

Are you aware then of where the character is headed?

Michael Raymond-James: “See, that’s the thing I don’t know. I was aware of the arc that I [had] for season two but where we’re at now, I really don’t [know]. Neither one of us is in the second episode so… What’s interesting about this show is as a viewer it’s important to keep in mind the future will further define the meaning of the present. In other words, if something’s going to come up and you’re like, ‘Wow, what?!’ And maybe three episodes later, 10 episodes later there’s clarity on that moment that you were confused about before. It’s the same thing for us at this point. There’s things that come up and like, ‘That’s what was going on.'”

Colin O’Donoghue: “By the way, that was philosophically brilliant, what you said. [Laughing] I’m a bit stunned by that. Yes, whatever he said, yes.”

In your opinion, I know you don’t know this for sure, but in your opinion, whose character is going to end up with Emma?

Michael Raymond-James: “Oh man, that’s not for us to decide.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “No.”

Who do you think she should end up with?

Michael Raymond-James: “What?”

Colin O’Donoghue: “I’m not going to say Neal and he’s not going to say Hook so I guess…”

Michael Raymond-James: “We’ll call a draw.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “Yeah, we’ll call it a draw. It’s interesting because I think that both characters sort of feel like they deserve love.”

Michael Raymond-James Once Upon a Time Interview
Michael Raymond-James - Photo © Richard Chavez

Michael Raymond-James: “Right.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “We don’t know if Hook and Emma, if that’s a thing. They have a connection but we don’t know if that is a thing. We know that Neal and Emma is a thing.”

Michael Raymond-James: “Was a thing.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “Was a thing.”

Michael Raymond-James: “Maybe could be a thing again. Maybe, I don’t know.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “I don’t know. Yeah, it will be interesting to see.”

Michael Raymond-James: “Exactly.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “It will be interesting because of the relationship between Baelfire and Hook.”

Michael Raymond-James: “Right, which is most likely not as acrimonious as…we don’t know.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “Yeah, we just don’t know.”

Michael Raymond-James: “God, it’s going to be f**king amazing! [Laughing] We should watch it.”

Colin, when you’re playing a character so entrenched in literature with so many different variations, do you revisit those things to gain a better handle of Hook or do you try to dismiss those?

Colin O’Donoghue: “I think the most important thing is to go back to the source material which is the books and the play, I guess. So I wanted to bring an element of that which is slightly different than the Hook that we would know anyway. He’s described as being a very dark character in J. M. Barrie’s book. I was conscious that there was no way I was going to be able to do Captain Hook the way Dustin Hoffman did it or Jason Isaacs. There’s no way that I could ever pull that off.”

Michael Raymond-James: “It’s weird because I heard that Dustin Hoffman he saw what you were doing and he wants to go back and re-do that movie.”

Colin O’Donoghue: [Laughing] “I heard that too, but you snooze you lose.”

Michael Raymond-James: [Laughing] “That’s it. You had your crack.”

Colin O’Donoghue: “Yeah, you had your crack, Dustin. Because it’s important to try and put your own slant on things. I think for Eddie and Adam that’s what they wanted as well. They wanted to make him a very different Hook than people would know before because I could have the big hat and the big frilly clothes and stuff like that, but I’m glad I don’t.”