Welcome to Seventeen’s Watch Club, where we talk with the celebrities behind your favorite latest binge, bring you exclusive content, and take you behind the scenes of the biggest hits you’re obsessing over. This week, it’s all about Shadow and Bone. Check back daily as a new interview with a cast member of the series is released and read more on the series here.
It's hard to imagine anyone other than Freddy Carter as Kaz. The actor, who has proven to have a wide range in his skill thanks to his appearances in Free Rein and Pennyworth, knew he wanted to play the leader of the Crow Club from the moment that he read about him in the pages of Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows.
"The certain point was about three sentences into the book where I was already getting hooked," Freddy told Seventeen. "I actually parked the books during the audition process."
Like so many who have already driven deep into the book series, Freddy knew of the great big world of the Grishaverse and what a key role Kaz would play in it, especially with how much of natural leader Kaz is.
"The thing that I love about him is when he's two steps ahead of everyone else and you think he isn't. What (creator and showrunner) Eric Heisserer and his writing team have done really well is captured that side of him. It makes you go, 'Why is he doing that? That's not going to work.' And then he's always got an ace up his sleeve," he said. "Which I would love to be like that. I'm always two steps behind everyone."
Despite what he says, the actor also had an ace up his own sleeve when bringing the character to life: Leigh Bardugo. While having the author who created the world on set to talk to them was something that was available to all the actors, there's a special real life connection not seen in the other characters. The author based Kaz's right leg on her own experience with osteonecrosis, which causes her to use a cane just like Kaz.
"I certainly felt a big responsibility of having lots of conversations with her when she spoke about the importance of that, because of her condition and Kaz's injury. I think we had a really useful conversation where she spoke about how she saw people on screen with canes and it was always the villain," Freddy recalled. "It was always the sort of Bond villain twirling them around. But Kaz is not a villain. He may be an antihero, but he's definitely not a villain. She really wanted that to come across."
Freddy noted that "the cane was something that Kaz loved about himself," when talking about the character. In many instances in fiction and real life, walking around with a cane can be seen as a sign of weakness, furthering the notion that having any sort of disability keeps you from being your so-called best self. But as Freddy quickly points out "it was something that actually made him stronger."
"It added to the myth around him that people whispered about in Ketterdam. It's something that he's incredibly proud of and would never shy away from. It doesn't stop him doing anything. He fully embraces it about himself," he said. "Leigh wanted someone to represent that side of her personality on screen: someone who was totally unashamed and, in fact, loved their cane."
As the leader of the Crows, Kaz starts the series on a brand new journey with the rest of the trio as they head off on an adventure never before seen due to the time that Shadow and Bone takes place in. Freddy knew the importance of bringing that relationship to life, especially as Kaz is slowly figuring it out himself in the series.
"We all just loved the books and wanted to make this show as good as it possibly could be. That involved a lot of conversation, but also a lot of rehearsal and playing around with stuff to try and figure out those dynamics," he said. "The Crows stuff, for me especially, sort of lives and dies on that dynamic of the three of them. They're almost like siblings sort of bickering sometimes, but then they have a lot of love and trust for each other. And then sometimes they're sort of cutthroat and ruthless."
Out on their own as a trio, Kaz also grows from club owner to mastermind. While the group already have an established relationship in the books, this was a brand new starting point.
"He learns that he needs these people around him. At the start, he sort of keeps them close by, but he doesn't know why. Because Jesper is a bit annoying and he has these feelings for Inej that he doesn't particularly know how to articulate or do anything about. He views them more as a hindrance than anything, but he still keeps them around," Freddy reveals. "By the end of the season, he's slowly admitting to himself that this is his found family and he needs them just as much as they need him. That was so beautiful."
In all the excitement of bringing the series to life, there's also a need to remind each other of where their characters are in Shadow and Bone versus where they know they're going to end up thanks to Six of Crows. For Freddy in particular, it was something he had to keep in mind constantly with the help of Eric.
"I am such a fan of the book and I just wanted to be like, 'Here's who Kaz is and why he's like this.' Eric, our excellent showrunner, kept having to kind of pull me back and say, 'No, no, just keep it like that.' So that was a challenge. But one that I'm very glad to have," he admitted.
Even with the differences, Freddy noted that he used the books "as a sort of Bible to take advice from if I was sort of struggling with a scene." Luckily for him, things were a lot easier with fellow cast mates Kit Young and Amita Suman on his side.
"The first scene that Kit and I had, just the two of us, he just made me laugh non-stop. I kept breaking character, because I was loving so much what he was doing and admiring him so much. And the same goes Amita. Not that our scenes were a laugh a minute, but it felt very sort of special doing stuff with both of those guys," Freddy said.
With a big fanbase behind him, Freddy noted that filming felt "more like a responsibility than a pressure, because I'm also such a fan of the world. I wanted it to be as good as the fans do." But he knows that he's one of the lucky ones because he gets to help bring it to life along with the rest of the cast.
"When we walked into the Ketterdam set for the first time, it immediately felt like it had been lifted out of my head," he said. "It had been so fully realized that I remember when we were walking down the street and saying that we didn't really need to do any acting. My imagination was sort of being brought to life and that was very, very special."
It will hopefully feel the same way for fans of the book as they get to see Ketterdam for the very first time through the eyes of their favorite characters as the book moves from the page to the screen.
This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
Tamara Fuentes is the current Entertainment Editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers TV, movies, books, celebrities, and more. She can often be found in front of a screen fangirling about something new. Before joining Cosmopolitan, she was the entertainment editor over at Seventeen. She is also a member of the Television Critics Association and the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
