The Strain – Q&A with Corey Stoll

In the last episode we saw the vampire children kind of going into full action now.  Can you tell us how much—what factor will they play in the future episodes?

Corey: Well, the feelers are the formidable part of the Strigoi Army.  They’re fast, they can crawl on walls, and they play an important part of the master’s arsenal going forward the rest of the season.

What about Eph’s alcoholism? Can we expect to see that affecting how he handles the whole situation?  Will that play a big role?

Corey: Yeah, definitely.  He does not sober up the rest of the season.  He was never the best fighter in the world; but, no, he’s a little easier and a little bit more handicapped.

Has your life changed much since the big hit movie [referring to Ant-Man] came out? Are you recognized more?

Corey: You know, I have not noticed a big difference. I was pretty recognizable before and was stopped pretty often.  The one thing that I was sort of bracing myself for was that children would be stopping me and that would sort of be another level of, sort of, intensity, but I think children don’t quite…they’re not expecting to see people from movies walking around.  

I remember growing up, my elementary school was on the same block as Christopher Reeve’s apartment.  I remember very vividly seeing him, you know, we were a group and seeing him walking down the street and you know, everybody just is going crazy that there was Superman.  Then occasionally he would have like a disguise he would put on.  He had glasses and I think he even put on a fake beard or something, because you know, that you had Superman living on the same block as an elementary school could be a real problem.  So I was sort of expecting the worst, but that doesn’t seem to be my problem.

There’s a lot of great makeup and special effects and everything in the show.  Can you talk about working with them, and also was there anything that’s ever really grossed you out?

Corey: This season there were a few things…in the beginning in the first season, there was like a bashed-in head and a couple bashed-in heads and the autopsy.  In this season there seems to be a little bit of, at least from my feelings, this is my exposure to it, a little bit of a break from that.  

Just in terms of my exposure to the makeup, it’s sort of a daily—it’s an amazing thing to see on a daily basis.  You come in at 6:00 in the morning on a Monday and the makeup people have been there for hours already churning out this army of vampires who all have their own unique, you know, level of transformation and different degrees of turning into vampires.  It’s really an incredible level of artistry and industry.  It’s really a bit of a conveyor belt, but every vampire is sort of a bespoke job.