Austin Basis tells TV Guide Canada what’s coming up for J.T.
Just like Vincent’s true identity on Beauty and the Beast, not a lot of people know that The CW’s latest hit (loosely based on the original ‘80s series) is filmed right here in Canada. The show is set in Austin Basis’ hometown of New York City, but it actually calls Toronto home.
Basis, who plays J.T. Forbes on the edgy new drama, says he’s never witnessed a Toronto winter before. “The only thing I know from a Canadian winter is a Vancouver winter, which means rain every day,” he tells TV Guide Canada. “And so far, Toronto hasn’t disappointed.”
The Beauty and the Beast star says the cold weather reminds him of New York, which is where he caught the acting bug as a kid. As a child who lived off Spielberg movies and family sitcoms, he loved to dress up in costumes and become different characters.
After graduating from The Actors Studio Drama School (the same organization that hosts Bravo’s Inside the Actors Studio), Basis did a slew of guest stints on shows like Supernatural and Grey’s Anatomy. He landed his first series regular gig back in 2010 with The CW’s short-lived series Life Unexpected.
The fact that Basis had already been on a CW show helped him score his role in Beauty and the Beast. He met with producers and casting directors and nabbed the part of Vincent’s best friend without even having to test for it. “It’s kind of this big thing in TV pilot land where you kind of sign the contract and then you go into a room of 10 or 20 people and you get narrowed down,” Basis explains.
“I don’t know if that’s gonna happen a lot,” he adds with a laugh about the simple casting process.
It’s no secret that his character provides a lot of the comic relief on the new show, which recently received a full season order. However, the Brooklyn native doesn’t feel any pressure to be funny. In fact, he’s more worried about audiences believing in his character’s actions as opposed to laughing at his jokes.
“I’d rather play the reality and convince someone that what they’re seeing is actually what’s going on and they believe my performance, as opposed to trying to play a joke for the joke’s sake and the joke fail,” he says.
What Basis loves about his character is his ability to keep changing. “A lot of times unfortunately you have to play the same thing every episode because your character doesn’t’ evolve,” he says, “But because everything is changing so much with Vincent, I think J.T. is able to, as a character, evolve and start not always disagreeing with Catherine – now they’re both trying to save Vincent.”
He tells TV Guide Canada that J.T. might join forces with an unexpected character in the near future. “To give a little sneak, J.T. and Evan may start working together in a way, which is interesting to get to work with the other actor that I haven’t worked with all season because they’re in the police station and I’m in the warehouse,” he reveals. “There’s these two different worlds that Catherine fluctuates between and we don’t really interact.”
The actor says the midseason finale spotlights Evan, who starts to do some snooping around on the cross-species DNA he keeps finding. Basis reveals Evan will get closer and closer “towards a point where he could discover the existence of Vincent.”
Despite all of the drama on screen, Basis says it ends as soon as the director yells “cut.”
“I think a lot of times when you have a pilot that’s successful or gets picked up, it’s almost like a confirmation that the chemistry between the cast and the crew, the writers and the producers all kind of worked, to a degree,” he says.” And I think in our case it was to an extremely high degree.”
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The midseason finale of Beauty and the Beast airs Thursday, Dec. 13 at 9 p.m. ET on Showcase/The CW.
theloop.ca