Legacies Season 2 Interviews: Aria Shahghasemi and Peyton Alex Smith Talk Landon and Rafael

According to Legacies stars Aria Shahghasemi and Peyton Alex Smith, we can expect to see more time spent exploring the classes offered at the Salvatore Boarding School for the Young and Gifted when the series returns for its second season. Teamed up to discuss the new season at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, on-screen BFFs Shahghasemi and Smith showed the friendship in the series carries over off-screen as well.

The CW’s set an October 10, 2019 premiere date for season two. New episodes will air in the 9pm ET/PT timeslot following Supernatural.

What can we expect from season two?

Aria Shahghasemi: “A lot of new, a lot of old. It’s mostly just extrapolating on what we’ve established. We’re going to dive deeper into the school stuff, all the classes. The fun parts of Harry Potter, you know? There’s obviously the story and seeing them in Charms was a lot of fun. We get to do that more.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “We have a lot of new characters coming. Some old from The Vampire Diaries kind of world. Some characters are brand new. That’s going to be exciting.”

Will we see Landon get a little darker after everything that happened at the end of season one? Will he be a little different than he was before?

Aria Shahghasemi: “Certainly. You’re definitely going to see him dealing with the repercussions of what happened. But obviously, he doesn’t know what happened. You’re going to be seeing a lot of Landon just trying to stay above the water.”

Can we expect them to show us more backstories for the characters in season two?

Peyton Alex Smith: “Yeah, definitely. That was something that we asked them. And so, with the 20 episodes we have now, we have more time. Because in the first season, we had a short amount of time to tell his story, my story, Jenny’s story. So now that we have a little more time, I think we’ll be taking our time this season and going through and letting people have an arc.”

Aria Shahghasemi: “They keep teasing us about it. They just keep telling us that they’re going to go into it more and they’re going to explore more. We’ve only gotten four scripts; we’re still getting back for the new season and figuring out what’s going on for the rest of the season. We don’t know necessarily what direction they’re going to go.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “I know that for some characters, they’re going to be different love interests. They’re going to mix things up a bit. We’ll see what happens with that.”

So, even more love triangles?

Aria Shahghasemi: “More knots are tied.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “There’s going to be just new love interests, too. Some of the people who are going to be coming into the school, some of the characters might fall for them and do something with them.”

Aria Shahghasemi: “As people start coming into their own person – Rafael, Landon, Lizzie, and Josie – as everybody grows up, they’re slowly starting to realize what they need and should expect from a relationship because they’re almost adults now.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “As kids, they have no idea what they want.”

Aria Shahghasemi: “They’re filled with all this emotion, but they have these ideas of what it’s supposed to be. It’s complicated.”

After playing Rafael and Landon for one season, what is it you love the most about these guys?

Peyton Alex Smith: “My character is so complex. Like right off the bat, we just had to have such a strong relationship. So, like on the first day on set I’m meeting him and I was like, ‘Julie…’”

Aria Shahghasemi: “His first day on set was like our third day of filming.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “Yeah, I had just flown in from New York. I hadn’t really read the script yet. (Laughing) There was Spanish in it and I was like, ‘No!’ And then I was like, ‘Dude, just take me to the guy who’s supposed to be my brother and my best friend.’ We met and then after that, just going through the journey as we’re growing with the characters, our bond’s growing as well. So that’s kind of been a fun thing to do. It’s kind of helped the acting out a lot.”

Aria Shahghasemi: “I think my favorite part of Landon is how the only strength he has is his emotional connections to everybody. I like that about him that he works so hard to maintain those relationships. He never gives up on Raf; he never gives up on Hope or all the people that he knows in his life.”

Is there anyone in season two you’re hoping you get to play around with a little bit more?

Aria Shahghasemi: “I would love more scenes with Chris (Lee) – Kaleb.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “Same!”

Aria Shahghasemi: “He’s one of our closest friends on set.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “And every time we have a scene together, it’s just a different dynamic just because he’s such a good actor. He’s got this alpha presence and then I’m an alpha male in there so it’s just like… I think we had one scene in, I think, episode five where I stand up and I’m mad. He just stood up there and we had a face-off. That wasn’t even in the script. Different things like that to play around with. That was a lot of fun.”

Legacies Season 2
Aria Shahghasemi as Landon and Kaylee Bryant as Josie in ‘Legacies’ season 2 (Photo: Quantrell Colbert © 2019 The CW Network)

Are we going to see Rafael get more into being with the werewolves in season two?

Peyton Alex Smith: “It’s interesting because after the last episode, I’m still in werewolf form. I’m running around and I don’t know how long I’ll be in that. I don’t know what my mindset, my psyche, is going to be like when I come back from that.

We’ll have to see if I still want to be an alpha or if I become a bad alpha…or whatever they chose to do with that. I’m excited to see what they have in store for me.”

What went through your mind when you read the first script for season two?

Peyton Alex Smith: “We’re back! I like that they started playing around more with the school aspect, kind of building those relationships.”

Aria Shahghasemi: “I think we can tease this…I think. The first episode is set during the summer after the first year that we saw on the TV show. So, it’s over the course of that summer. And then the second episode is at the beginning of the school year. We basically kind of get to see all of the things that are going on at the Salvatore School when it’s not the Salvatore School necessarily. When I was reading it it feels like you’re watching these secrets that you’re not necessarily supposed to see about these characters, you know? It’s kind of cool.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “You kind of get to see the human side of the supernatural.”

Aria Shahghasemi: “Because they’re not fighting the Malivore monsters yet.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “We just had the big bang and now it’s the first sort of aftermath.”

Aria Shahghasemi: “Like, the whole season starts with the hero/villain question and now that the hero and the villain are gone what are we left with? It’s just us.”

Peyton Alex Smith: “Nobody knows what’s going to happen. Am I coming back? Is Hope coming back? Who’s coming back and going to run the school?”

Aria Shahghasemi: “Do we remember anything? How are we going to remember everything? There’s so many questions that are left unanswered at the end of the first episode. It basically establishes and reinforces the things that we need to get.”