La Brea Season 3: Creator and Cast Members on What to Expect from Those Auroras [Interview]

It all started with a sinkhole that led to 10,000 B.C. for the characters to later discover the auroras in the sky and the possibility of time traveling through them. In La Brea Season 3, more characters will be time-traveling through auroras and fighting to find their way back to their loved ones.

I recently spoke with creator David Appelbaum and actors Jon Seda, Chiké Okonkwo, Jack Martin, and Veronica St. Clair to discuss what these auroras mean and how time traveling has affected their characters.

When creating the show, Appelbaum wanted to create something that felt real and different. Even though he hasn’t seen the Aurora Borealis in person, he’s always wanted to and that inspired him to create the auroras we see from the beginning when Eve lands in 10,000 B.C. and looks up to the sky.

“I really just wanted to create a striking image of a time travel portal that I hadn’t seen before. Also based on something that in reality is part of the natural world,” Appelbaum said.

As viewers, we may think that creating these images and making them look like realistic time traveling portals is the most difficult to transfer from the paper to the screen. However, as show creator, Applebaum says the most difficuilt thing is the emotions.

One of the tasks he has as writer and creator is to make sure everyone around him understands what he is trying to tell and the emotions he wants to convey. From actors to directors and all other departments involved in the development of the show, they need to be on the same page.

“You have a certain feeling of what you want the story to feel like, but getting a hundred people on that same page to all tell the same story is difficult and it’s really a challenge of communication. Even if I’ve got a good imagination and create something, it’s another question of can I communicate my vision,” Appelbaum said.

“I can just type something on a piece of paper but whether the dozens or hundreds of people who need to translate that understand it as well is one of the most difficult things.”

Once everyone in 10,000 B.C. started realizing time traveling was a possibility depending on which sinkhole you fell through, Josh and Riley were some of the first characters to visit another era. Jack Martin and Veronica St. Clair believe this time traveling has shaped their characters.

Martin explained that his character’s storyline is strongly tied to his mom’s, while Riley’s is to her dad’s. Therefore, having the opportunity to visit other eras and be on their own forces their characters to grow up in an environment they wouldn’t have been in otherwise.

“There’s no one in charge anymore but you,” said Martin, “and you have to make the decisions and that’s the big effect that it’s had. By this final season you see them really grown up as a result.”

St. Clair believes jumping from time period to time period has given Joh and Riley the chance to become best friends. It is the adversity that they have faced together that has made them come closer. Hopefully, La Brea Season 3 will allow their romantic relationship to grow as well.

“It’s been a great joy to play these two characters and to also become best friends with Jack along the journey.”

While Josh and Riley were jumping through auroras and exploring different time periods, Martin and St. Clair were facing different challenges as actors.

Whether it was a tough scene that left them feeling emotional for the rest of the day or an action scene that made them try new things, they both feel thankful for the work they’ve been able to do on La Brea.

St. Clair remembered the exact season and episode of every scene that challenged her or inspired her. During our talk, she mentioned La Brea Season 1 Episode 3, “The Hun,” in which Riley performs surgery on her dad with Scott and Josh. “[It] was a really fun scene to shoot because we did it in real-time on set, and it really felt like we were in surgery,” St. Clair said.

She believes as actors the show has allowed them to do several fun things, including their own stunts. “I think my favorite thing to do as Riley has actually been, surprisingly, all the medical stuff that I got to do mostly in La Brea Season 1 and some in La Brea Season 2.

As for Martin, filming the death of his fictional dad was extremely emotional. “That was a really difficult emotional scene for me to film. I was genuinely sobbing the entire day when we did it,” Martin said.

But the same way he has cried, he has had a lot of fun driving over sabertooth tigers, which he recognizes will never happen again in his life. “I was really driving a Jeep with no doors or roof or windows or anything with cameras attached to the car in the middle of the Australian outback.”

La Brea Season 3 is now giving another character the opportunity to time travel. Ty Coleman finds himself in 2021 trying to find away to bring his friends back from 10,000 B.C.

As seen thus far, his biggest challenge is convincing 2021 Sam to help him. Even though these two characters have been friends from the beginning, that friendship must start over as Ty has all the information of what’s to come but Sam is oblivious.

“As the season starts, you’ll see our characters in a new space,” Okonkwo said. “It was a nice journey for me because I got to really work out how to get through to someone who I know really really well but don’t quite know at all as well. It was an interesting combination.”

On his part, Seda highlighted what an incredible journey this was for both their characters and them personally. The two filmed their first scene before the pandemic when they started shooting the show.

“To see how it evolved and how we connected just as friends off screen and then on screen having that journey of Sam and Ty it was a lot of fun. I’m so glad we got that opportunity to do that this season,” Seda said.

As fun and intriguing as it will be to see these two characters navigate 2021 together, fans of Ty and Paara wonder what his disappearance from 10,000 B.C. will do to their relationship.

Okonkwo described Ty pre-falling into the sinkhole as a man without a mission and ready to end his life. However, in 10,000 B.C. he was able to find healing and love.

Now that he has been separated from the group, he is excited to see how the storyline will resolve itself.

“I was excited reading the script because he’s just found love, he’s just found himself a home and a purpose, and then he gets ripped away from it at the beginning of the season. So, much of this journey is to try and work out how to get back to Paara and how to get back to the life that he really wants to build. ”

He also highlighted the irony of Ty being in 2021 and wanting to return to 10,000 B.C. when the rest of his friends want the opposite. For him, it’s about wanting to find his way back to his family.

While discussing La Brea Season 3 with the creator and the stars, we also had to talk about what it feels like to know the show was coming to an end and how they prepared to bring this story to the finish line.

Seda noted that typically, no one knows if it’s going to be the last season, and he tried not to let that occupy a lot of space in his head. What he focused on the most, as he does every season, was trying to make everything as believable as possible.

“So I think the approach [to the character and story] is the same, but maybe somewhere in the back [of my mind] there’s ‘let me really give that extra hundred and five percent just to really give a stamp on something that might be the last go around,'” Seda said.

Okonkwo agreed with his co-star, highlighting the importance of trying to stay in the moment and invest in what’s on the page.

As hard as the goodbye might be due to the fact that they’ve been working together for several years, “it’s also really nice to be able to tell a whole story from beginning through the middle to the end. We have that great privilege on this show,” Okonkwo said.

While the actors focus on giving the final season their very best, Appelbaum said it was a challenge to wrap up all the stories. However, from the beginning, he’s known a place where he wanted to go.

“At the beginning of the season, I really had to pivot to figure out a way to bring everything to a great, emotional conclusion. It was a really big challenge, but I had a great group of writers and production team that I worked with to realize all the things we wanted to do.”

If, as viewers, we are afraid that six episodes won’t be enough to say goodbye to a show properly, Appelbaum guarantees they bring everything to a great climax and conclusion.

“I think the audience is going to be really satisfied that they’ve stuck with it from the beginning and they’re gonna want more, too,” Appelbaum said. “They’ll have to live with the ending that we have which I think is a great one.”

It will be exciting to see what this ending is and where our favorite characters end up.

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La Brea airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on NBC.

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