Hypable talked with Linden Ashby about the second half of Teen Wolf season 5 and what is in store for Sheriff Stilinski going forward.
Teen Wolf season 5, episode 11, entitled “The Last Chimera,” saw Sheriff Stilinski suffering from wounds inflicted in the mid-season finale. Once the culprit was identified as Noah, a chimera who had been crossed with a Berserker, Stiles was able to deduce that a piece of bone marrow was poisoning his father. It was removed, and the sheriff began to improve.
Does Teen Wolf season 5B feel different from season 5A?
I think [season 5B] is kind of a continuation of [5A]. It really was because 5A didn’t have a conclusion. It was sort of a cliff hanger, and it really was a continuation. It was interesting, last night, that I went and watched [the Redeyes Marathon], and I watched the first episode of 5A, I watched 501, and it was amazing to me how, that entire story…you don’t really see that kind of attention to detail in TV a lot. It’s difficult to do, and my hat’s off to Jeff.
How will the sheriff react to learning the real story about Donovan given his acceptance of Theo’s story?
I think it’ll be an entirely different dynamic [with Stiles]. That’s a burden that you never want your child to have to deal with. You never want them to bear that burden, to take a life. I think it will be very painful for me to have my kid going through that. It’s something that I never would’ve wished upon him in any way shape or form.
Stiles has obviously blamed Scott for what happened to his father, but does the sheriff feel the same way?
I would never blame [Scott] for what happened. Ever. I know that he’s doing absolutely the best that he can. We’re all dealing with forces that are so much larger than we are and stuff that we have never dealt with before. so no I would never blame him or hold him responsible in any way.
Why has Stilinski been keeping Parrish out of the field? Is he trying to protect him, or does he just not trust him?
I think it’s two-fold. I want to protect Parrish, but I also have no idea what Parrish is. He is a liability. He’s the joker in the deck. I look at it as a law enforcement officer and I go, “I can’t have this guy out there if I don’t know what he is. I know he has a part in this, but I have no idea what he is.” That’s an extreme liability. I know in my gut that he’s a good person, but that’s not enough. I need to protect him and I need to protect the community — from him, possibly. I also maybe need to protect him from himself.
Will Sheriff Stilinski now change his opinion about no exceptions?
I think it’s just seeing that doing it the old fashioned way, doing it by the book, it doesn’t work in these circumstances. You need to adapt and you need to make amends. You need to change the way you’re doing things. I think it’s been a gradual process, but luckily he’s one of those people who sees that something’s not working, and unlike me, he actually adapts instead of just continuing to do the same dumb thing over and over again.
I think he will realize that it’s a new paradigm. He needs to approach it differently than he has ever before in his life.
Is the sheriff coming around to Melissa’s point of view, then?
She was right. How’s that? Even when it’s make believe it’s hard for me to say. [laughs]
You know what I loved about that? There was no right and there was no wrong. It was two people believing in something and neither of what they believed in was wrong. I think that I had been pushed to such a point that you fall back on what you know. You fall back on what you’ve been trained to do. It’s like in military, in fighting, you do drills and you do drills and you do drills until they become automatic. These rules are there for a reason. When it gets hazy and when it gets blurry, there are a set of rules and protocols that you go to that take, for the lack of a better word, the guesswork out of it. Not the thought process, but they’re the tools you pull out of your bag. I think I’d gotten to a place where I didn’t have any answers, and I had no solutions. You go to what you know at that point.
How do you film an entire episode where you just lie in bed the whole time?
I love the special effects makeup guys. They’re amazing. We laugh a lot. It’s really a creative process. As you saw, the symptoms kept evolving and the makeup kept changing. It was nice and cool on set, I think, and I got in my bed and took a little nap sometimes. And then I’d get new makeup and come back. Yeah, it was pretty easy. It was probably three or four days [of that].
Special effects are great to look at, but they’re not always that fun to do. It can be a bit tedious and the makeup can be a bit uncomfortable and tedious. But like I say, we laughed a lot in the special effects trailer.
Will the sheriff be experiencing any future complications?
He doesn’t bounce back like a supernatural creature. It’s the real world. It takes time. Not as well as a werewolf and not as well as an 18-year-old.
Can you tease us about anything to do with 5B or beyond?
The layers just keep peeling and people’s motivations and what people are…you find out. I couldn’t have seen it coming a mile away. A hundred miles away. A million miles away. Couldn’t see it coming. And when it finally happened and all was explained, I was like, “Oh my god!” But it works. It makes sense. It ties [everything] up. It’s pretty phenomenal storytelling. I think it’s going to be a hell of a ride and I think people are really going to like it. The acting is really good. I mean across the board, good stuff. And the storytelling is good and the effects are good and the look of the show is great. I’m pretty proud to be a part of it.
You know, someone was talking to me the other day, and they asked me in an interview and I said the toughest thing for Jeff, and it carries through to everyone on this set, [is] there’s no compromise. And that’s really what I love about it. He would rather die than produce a mediocre show. He wouldn’t do it. He would just not do it. And I think that’s the way we sort of all feel. It’s hard. It’s hard to be good. It’s hard in the story telling, in the performing, in the making of the actual show. It takes time. It takes a lot of hours. It takes a lot of hard work from an entire group of people. When you actually see it on film, it all pays off. You don’t remember the hard work when you watch it. You’re just proud of what you did.
The story for season 6, as it’s been explained to me, is phenomenal. It’s great. I’m incredibly excited to film season 6. It’s really dealing with scary, scary stuff, but not necessarily monster scary stuff. Very kind of adult themes are being explored in season 6. And complex. And I’m just sitting here with a big grin on my face because it’s just going to be fucking good.
How do you think the cast will react to Tyler Posey directing an episode?
I think everyone will be incredibly supportive. I think he’ll be good at it. It’s family, man. We all want each other to succeed. We’ve got his back.
He’s got a good support system in place. It’s a whole different skill set, directing. It’s a lot of preparation and a lot of homework. And it requires…[laughs] well I don’t know if it requires a long attention span because Russell Mulcahy is pretty brilliant at it. Need I say more?
Hear about all this and more in our full interview with Linden Ashby on episode #115 of Not Another Teen Wolf Podcast.