Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with A Dark Place’s Luke Baines

Luke Baines has built his career playing multi-faceted characters who blur the line. His latest role finds him diving into the shoes of a young man haunted by his past and struggling to create a future for him and his girlfriend. As the pressure builds, he discovers a secret that leads him down a self-destructive spiral. Pop Culturalist chatted with leading man Luke Baines about A Dark Place and developing a character grounded in reality.

PC: Tell us about A Dark Place, your character, and what drew you to this project.
Luke: I play Alex, a guy who’s a bit lost in life. He’s struggling to find his place in the world and put his life back together after a series of mistakes and reckless behavior. I was attracted to the project and the character because it’s so grounded in reality, more so than anything I’ve done before—I’ve done a lot of horror, sci-fi stuff. I love the fact that the main focus of this film is the relationships: the relationships between him, his friends, and his girlfriend. That was something that was appealing and interesting to me because I got to live in reality and I didn’t have to imagine myself flying. [laughs]

PC: Christopher Pinero [director] has said in his previous interviews that you were the only actor that he saw that really understood Alex’s complexity. How did you prepare to tackle all of his different dimensions and play someone so widely different from yourself?
Luke: Honestly, it was all in the script. Chris wrote such a well-rounded script that really spoke to who this guy is and where he’s coming from. You learn a lot about Alex through his actions. In the past, I’ve played a lot of “character” characters. For that, it’s really understanding a look and feel of who this person is and what they’re scared of, what their mannerisms are, all that sort of stuff. But for Alex, it was so much about what he was doing and what he had just done that I got the chance to play the scene and the human emotions that were there.

PC: When we’re introduced to Alex in the film, everything in his life has or is going wrong. Which event or relationship plays the biggest role in his spiral?
Luke: I think it’s his relationship with his girlfriend, Theresa. She’s Alex’s lifeline. She’s his source of hope, and in her, he places a lot of his faith and belief that he can actually get himself out of the situation he’s in. Even when their relationship isn’t going well, there’s a big part of him that believes if she accepts and loves him, then he can love himself. I think it’s a mistake that a lot of people go through, and one that I’ve definitely made in the past. Shout out to my exes. [laughs] But it’s one of those things where he focuses so much on her that everything he does is for her, so when he learns about the cheating, it unravels him in such a major way.

PC: I imagine it was a challenge for you jumping into Alex’s mindset day in and day out. With this film being shot in twelve days, how were you able to balance all of that? How did you decompress after a day of shooting?
Luke: It’s actually really funny. When I officially said yes to this project, I was hesitant to go into it because I was scared of not being able to pull everything off in twelve days. There were a lot of contrasting scenes that were filmed back-to-back, like the ending and his and Theresa’s first date together. I literally felt bipolar running from complete depression to complete happiness. I was really scared that I wouldn’t be able to pull that off.

My manager called me when I officially said yes to it, and she was like, “Listen, I’m a bit concerned about you getting out of the headspace of this character.” She was like, “I know you never have trouble getting into the headspace, but how do you get out of it?”

I actually told her that I didn’t know. It’s something that I’ve had trouble with in my career—letting it go once I leave set. It feels like a hangover where you’re not drunk anymore, but you feel very sick. Whenever I play a new character, I usually create a playlist to get me into the headspace of the character. She actually suggested that I make a playlist of music to get me back into my headspace, so I did. It’s a lot of ’90s pop, the worst of it. I’m talking Aqua, S Club 7, just the cheesiest crap you’ll find. I would listen to that on the way back from set and force a smile on my face.

PC: You’ve built this career playing characters who blur the line between good and bad. Do you naturally gravitate towards those roles? Did playing Alex prepare you for playing Jonathan on Shadowhunters?
Luke: Thank you for saying blur the line. I appreciate that. [laughs] Whenever someone interviews me, they’re like, “What’s it like playing someone evil?” and I’m always like, “Well, that’s up for debate.” I think because of how I look, people naturally want to cast me in those roles, which I completely understand, with the big forehead and deep-set eyes. I look a bit shifty, you know. But, what I love about playing these characters is getting to play different levels. I don’t think I’ve ever played a character who doesn’t have something else going on inside his head. There’s always a next moment that he’s thinking about or some kind of manipulation or something; there’s always something that’s going on. They’re always very complex characters that I play, whether they’re good or they’re bad, that’s interesting to me. I think I would get very, very bored if I had to play someone two-dimensional because I would just need something else going on.

What’s was really interesting doing this film was it was one of the first times I didn’t self-moderate myself as an actor. A lot of the times, it’s a really bad habit or trick to fall into as an actor where you don’t want to look like an idiot. You give something that is somewhere in the middle, as opposed to going all out and hoping that the people around you are going to support you and make sure you don’t look stupid. This is one of the first times I ever did that.

Like I said earlier, I was a bit hesitant going into this project, and then I met with Chris. He was so passionate and dedicated to this that I thought, “Alright, let’s do this! If I’m going to do it, I’m going all in. I’m going to commit, and if I end up looking like an idiot, I end up looking like an idiot, but that’s not on me. That’s up to somebody else to direct and edit.”

Going into Shadowhunters, I had a lot more confidence in my ability to really lean into the character. Jonathan is a very complex individual, who in the twelve episodes I did, goes through a lot. He’s up and down. He’s chained up. He’s tortured. He’s beaten. He’s this. He’s that. I don’t think I would have given myself the freedom to actually go there as an actor had I not had this experience.

PC: With the film out now, what do you hope audiences walk away with? What was the biggest takeaway for you?
Luke: I hope that audiences recognize how talented someone like Chris is. He wrote, directed, and produced it. I think it’s really important because it’s so hard for people to get a start or leg up in this industry. Chris really deserves one and so does Jazlyn, who plays my girlfriend, and the other guys, who play all of my friends. Everyone in this film is so talented. I was so fortunate to be surrounded by so many great people. I hope that if the movie does anything, it gives those people a bit of a platform to show what they can do.

For me, it was a nice opportunity to move into something a little bit further from the fantasy space that I’ve worked in in the past. It was really nice to be able to play a human emotion. I got to dig deeper as an actor than ever before.

PC: Besides A Dark Place, do you have any other upcoming projects that we can chat about at this time? What’s next for you?
Luke: Not at this time. After Shadowhunters, I wanted to take a minute. There have been a couple of opportunities to take on similar characters to what I’ve done in the past, and I would love to do that again, but I want to sink my teeth into something that’s a bit different. That may not necessarily just be the character, but maybe the format. I’ve been writing a bit, so maybe that’s a space that I’ll enter.

To keep up with Luke, follow him on Twitter and Instagram, and catch A Dark Place wherever you stream movies.