Tto Ellis waits. The coronavirus shuts down production of its TV series Lucifer. He has recovered from surgery after some kind of food reaction – he will not dwell on details, and only say, “I have a meat with meat.” Most important of all, however, is that his children are thousands of miles away, in the United Kingdom. He shares allegations with his ex-wife, EastEnders star Tamzin Outhwaite, and was scheduled to try to film her wrapped up on Lucifer’s fifth season, when the outbreak hit, meaning he had to go seven months without seeing them.
“It’s hard,” he confides to Zoom out of his Los Angeles home. “There’s a part of you that is not there when they are not.” However, as we speak, he prepares to fly back for a long-awaited reunion; part of a complex transport scheme involving several flights back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, punctuated by quarantine on opposite sides. His thoughts stay back to the UK.
Ellis’ brush with the U.S. health care system has made him nostalgic for the NHS. “People here just go to the doctor because they can’t bear the consequences that can happen financially,” he says. The halt in Lucifer’s production, coupled with her difficult conclusion (the sixth series will be the last), has him longing to return to the London stage. “It’s like rehab for acting,” he says. Ellis name controls delicacies in the UK such as ‘Allo’ Allo, the snooker and Challenge Anneka. As he carries the desire to his homeland, he wears a Three Lions baseball cap. And yet, while Ellis is recognized around the world, in the United Kingdom, he is best remembered for a nearly decade-old sitcom.
We’re here to talk about Lucifer, the show that has kept him in the US, and is about to return to Netflix for its fifth season. This is a big deal. A TV Time Study last year found that the series is more successful than anything else streaming in the world, and even hit the monolith that is Stranger Things. But Lucifer’s popularity is not entirely global. When I told people in the UK that I would be interviewing Tom Ellis from Lucifer, I was particularly met with low stars. Then I would say, “You know, Miranda’s friend,” and the pieces would fall into place. Ellis, you think, is accustomed to this reaction.
‘I get so many Garys [his character in Miranda] if I get Lucifers in the street there, without a doubt, ‘Ellis claims. “Miranda is so engrossed in British popular comedy culture that I think it will always be there. And that’s wonderful. When I was growing up, I watched sitcoms with my grandfather. And the moments of ‘You’ve Watched’, where they would say the name of the actor below them and they venture to camera and all that, that’s my experience of growing up. But I have to look at it and go, ‘That’s really fun. There are two characters I remember. ‘”
Lucifer is a deceptively strange program – imagine Murder, She Wrote, but with the devil playing the part of Jessica Fletcher – but part of her charm is his refusal to die. In 2018, after three seasons of medium-term success, Lucifer was canceled by her network, Fox. Ellis was at a fan convention in Rome when he learned of the fate. ‘I had just come off stage with my Q&A with the audience,’ he recalls. ‘And then the call came through. I was at my lowest ebb when I found out. ”
Fourteen hours later, however, the cancellation was made public and all hell broke loose. Fans of Lucifer – Lucifans, if we really have to – started a terrific grassroots campaign to save the show. The next day, Peter Roth, the head of TV at Warner Bros. (who produced the show), called Ellis to say, “We are aware of this reaction and we are looking for a new home for it.” Ellis threw his weight behind the case, even appearing on Newsnight to spread the word.
“It was a strange time because I put myself in it against my better judgment,” he says. ‘Against the advice of some of my team, myself. Everyone kept saying, ‘It is very, very unlikely that this will happen.’ And I’m still going to say, ‘Are you saying there’s a chance?’ ”
The cavalry appeared in the form of Netflix, and responded to the write-up with an offer to wrap the show with a two-season deal. That, after saying goodbye to Lucifer, Ellis returned for a fourth season, in which the popularity of the show exploded around the world. The scale of that success seems to be something he is still processing.
“The show is really, really popular in Catholic countries,” he says, shaking his head in astonishment. He had a meeting with Instagram late last year, in which he was informed that 35% of his followers only come from Brazil. “I think it’s just a general fascination with the devil himself, as opposed to just the show,” he rationalizes.
Netflix feels like the natural home for Lucifer. The episodes there are longer and looser and shagger, less crushed by the regimental demands of an ad-driven American network. I was not a total fan in his Fox days, but on Netflix it’s a different matter. It’s now stranger and funnier (and dirtier; too; Ellis’ bare bottom is so much on screen that it deserves separate billing) and much more willing to take big swings. The upcoming season includes a musical episode, a black-and-white episode and an episode in which the desperate showrunner of a fictional version of Lucifer gets murdered. Oh, and Ellis gets to play Lucifer and Lucifer’s twin brother. The new series is so much fun, in fact, that just as Ellis was preparing to say goodbye to the character again, Netflix kicked in once again.
“I had plans to spend this season in my own grief process,” he says. “And then, just towards the end, literally because we were already thinking about how we were going to end our show, we had a call from Netflix saying, ‘Do you want to go another season?'”
The Lucifer showrunners agreed and, if the Covid regulations are lifted, Lucifer will finish shooting season five before rolling directly into season six. That, Ellis argues, will be real. “I know we’re the Lazarus of TV shows, but this is definitely going to be last season,” he suggests.
Since he now had to perform twice at the end of his show, I wonder if Ellis had a chance to think about what to do next. There are plans for more television, with his wife, Meaghan Oppenheimer – creator of the Facebook series Queen America – and with production company Jason Bateman. However, he says, “Again, the big one for me is theater.”
Theater is actually also where he started, when a self-proclaimed “horny 16-year-old” in the theater class of his school was lured by the number of girls there. From there came plays and stimulating feedback from one of his mother’s actor friends. ‘And then I got a place at the Royal Scottish Academy,’ he recalls. ‘I went to Glasgow for three years and had the time of my life and that was it.’
He sighs, his mind returning to Covid. ‘Of course, that’s just hard to talk about with anyone who’s currently working in the theater. But of course I believe the theater will not die. It will come back. And I want to be a part of that. ”
That’s still some way off. First, he has a season and a bit of Netflix’s most popular show to make. More urgently he has his children to try. “I really never want to be in that main room again,” he says. “Try to stay positive while the world falls apart and have your kids away from you and not knowing you’ll see them, was just …” He pauses, trying to find the right words, then sighs. ‘Yes,’ he smiles sadly.
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