GCE Exclusive: Interview with Paul Amos

We caught up with the actor during the filming of Lost Girl season 4.

In between filming scenes from the second last episode of Lost Girl season 4, Paul Amos came to join us on the police precinct set for a quick interview. We talk about his character, Vex, Captain Canuck and the possibility of convention visits from him in 2014.

Vex can have lots of mood swings. Playful one moment, evil and malevolent the next. What side of him is more fun for you to play?

All of that is changing as the characters get more in depth. First of all, it was fun to begin in the show for him to be borderline in terms of him being the funny bad guy who does really sadistic things. Then there’s this playful Vex that he’s developed through speaking with, hanging out and making friends with Kenzi. His humor and how he sees life and even how he sees humans in general has changed a lot because of Kenzi. But, at the same time he’s lived X amount of time as this sadistic fae that just lives for the moment and I think he still does that. Now, two worlds are crossing a little and it’s going to be interesting to see where he goes.

What does humanizing do to him? Someone with that much power as a human and something bad happens to you and you start to see things and care about things, do you lean one way or another and to which extreme? We may even see a much, much darker version of the sadistic Vex and I think that’s going to be very interesting as we move along with the character.

In terms of what do I like best, I really like both. Playful Vex is fun with all the costumes and makeup and the funny lines and quips, but where we started was really cool too. The dark, sadistic Vex is a lot of fun to play, but in a different way.

What attracted you to Vex when you first read the script?

When I read the script, I first saw the sadistic humor that runs throughout with the character that comes from that sort of ‘better to burn up than fade away’ kind of attitude that he has about life that I really loved. I think it was in season 1 episode 8 with Siegfried the vampire where Vex puts his hand in a carburetor–it was so fun and the more we got to talking about how we could develop the character–I had this idea of making him this London street goth and I could see a really nice melding of humor of what they wanted to do on the show with what I was trying to do. That was attractive. For me, that sort of character was always something I’ve wanted to play. I’ve done a lot of classical stuff and theatre and I was on Murdock Mysteries playing a psychologist for a while so it was at that point in time, a big change.

Paul Amos as Vex

Will the show begin to peel back the layers of Vex as we move into season 4?

Because we’ve developed him in such an interesting way–characters like Vex can burn out very quickly in a show; you have to be very careful with them. There’s characters like this on shows that I’ve seen that are overused or underdeveloped and then I don’t buy it. I honestly feel like they’ve done justice to the character and knowing what I know in season 4 and what we’ve done today [on set], what could now happen in the future with the character is very exciting. We’ve added so many layers to him and you will sort of find out why he is so darkly malevolent and then there’s the bit in season 3 when you find out what he was doing by being humanized by Kenzi and Bo and living with them. Then in season 4–coming back with his powers and being in this world and subsequently everything that happens in 4 and how does that affect him if we were to move on into season 5.

Your character reminds me a lot of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer in that he came in and collected this huge fan base. People are always wondering ‘when is Vex going to show up next’?

I actually bumped into James Marsters at Dragon*Con this past year and we talked about Spike and Vex and the similarities between them so it’s funny you should mention that.

What you find in lots of shows like this or even in classical dramas like Shakespeare or Greek materials they are very archetypal characters and they do tend to go on very similar journey’s throughout the scripts. The same characters are in different plays. What happened in Shakespeare’s time is that one character would have played that very same character in each play and that’s what happened. The characters start off small and as they develop and maybe become fan favorites, they really have this great, long story arc on the show that becomes layered. That’s fun.

What can you tell us about Mister Gold in Captain Canuck Episode 3?

Episode three is my biggest episode of the five [Captain Canuck episodes]. It’s practically all Gold! You get to find out who Mister Gold is, what he’s about and what he plans to do and you get the first face-off between Canuck and Gold. It’s a really great episode.

Do you have any conventions you’ll be attending this coming year?

There will be a bunch next year. As soon as we start getting details, we pass them on. I think a lot of us will be out at conventions. I know I plan to do a bunch. Maybe they’ll be with Ksenia, or Emmanuelle so you might get Morrigan and Vex or Kenzi and Vex. We love doing the conventions all over so I’m sure you’ll see lots of combinations of actors next year for Lost Girl.

Thank you so much, Paul! You can follow Paul on Twitter at @rogerpaulamos and don’t forget to catch Lost Girl on SyFy and Showcase!