'The Umbrella Academy's' Aidan Gallagher Says Season 2 Proves 'Family Is All We Have'

If there is anything the Hargreeves siblings are good at on The Umbrella Academy, it's saving the world from doomsday. But there is one thing that the unlikely superheroes are just as good at: fussing and fighting with one another.

The family disputes are at an all-time high on the second season of the Netflix original series, which picks up with the Hargreeves kids Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Ben (Justin H. Min) and Vanya (Ellen Page) popping up in Dallas in the early 1960s after their attempt to save the world from destruction in the year 2019 goes wrong.

Five, played by Aidan Gallagher, is there too. But just as he showed up well after their father's funeral back in Season 1, he's late to the party this time around, too. And when he finally does get all his siblings together in the same room to inform them of yet another apocalypse on the horizon, the bickering, nit-picking and arguing commence.

"It is quite a head trip to play someone who's teaming with the rest of his family, but then they're like little children running around and arguing about things that are very insignificant in the face of a nuclear doomsday," Gallagher told Newsweek during a phone interview on Monday.

He has a point, though. It is pretty silly to be mocking your sister for her unwillingness to use her special powers—as Diego did to Allison during one incredibly dysfunctional dinner scene—when you know that the United States is about to be blown to smithereens by the Soviets with a Hiroshima-level bomb in three days. But, just as we witnessed in the first installment of the Netflix adaptation of Gerard Way's comics, the Hargreeves do eventually manage to put their differences aside and get to work.

How have you been holding up with the quarantine?

I've been alright. I'm lucky enough to live in a situation where most of the things I do happen around the house anyway, and plus I would find it very hard to complain with the amount of luck that I have in terms of my living situation. Quarantine has really affected me in terms of thinking about what the rest of the world is going through and what isolation within a small space might be like. This is a crazy time in the world.

Was Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy the last thing you worked on before the pandemic?

Interestingly enough we were working on The Umbrella Academy [when the pandemic arrived]. We just finished working on ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement) for the show quite recently from home because with COVID we can't drive up to the studio and work, and things like that. So it's interesting because whether we're all in London, LA or New York, we were recording from our bedrooms.

How was it when you guys did get back together again for Season 2?

Anytime you approach a new season of any show it's fun because you have a newfound history with these characters. Coming into Season 2, we understand who the characters are, and understanding new information opens new doors to explore. It's always fun to see how the season might go and how it might differ from the previous version. In terms of getting to see the cast again—we all have a very close relationship. We almost feel like family on set because we spend a lot of time together. We all have really great chemistry. We get along very well, and I'm always happy to see my castmates.

The chemistry is definitely noticeable on the show, especially in the dinner party scene during Season 2. It's a wonder that you guys manage to get anything done when you're all together in one scene.

It definitely takes a long time, because Umbrella Academy scenes are very interesting from a writing point of view with all these very off-the-cuff, oddball characters who are all different from each other. And we have these very dramatic, cinematically-filmed moments between all these dynamic characters. As actors, I think we all feel very blessed to be able to interact in that capacity. And whenever we get a scene like that when we're all together, it's truly blissful because each character is such a counterpoint to the other. So there's a lot of contrast but at the same time, there's a lot of connection to all those people. We really do have this dysfunctional family but sibling bond happening. I think unanimously the entire cast enjoys when we get to film altogether.

Do you have siblings?

I do not. In a way, the cast serves that function on set. It's very easy to tap into that because you do honestly have that sort of connection with the rest of the people there.

So the 1960s obviously occurred many years before you were even born. What did you do to prepare yourself to enter that timeframe?

I knew that Season 2 would be resembling the second graphic novel, so I went back and reread Dallas just to familiarize myself with what world and what I may be entering in this time around. But it's very easy to immerse yourself in the world of Umbrella Academy because of the incredible job our production does, the incredible job the writers do, everyone on set, my fellow actors. When you have a world that is built that skillfully, as an actor when it comes time for the director to yell "Action," you can have an honest connection to what your character is going through, where they are, what's happening in their headspace. It's very easy to fall into character and immerse yourself in the 1960s when the people around you who are bringing that world to life are incredible at what they do.

Do you do any physical training to prepare you for the fight scenes?

I always look at the motives behind each scene. You can play that out tonally with how you express yourself or you can do that with your physical expression, your physical presence. So I always think about what physical presence I want to embody in each scene. From a stunts point of view, most of the time when I'm doing choreography I get one or two one-hour sessions a day or two beforehand, and on rare occasions, I'll be running choreography right before we shoot a scene because Five is always in so many different places. I think there's something really interesting about the anarchy that happens when Five fights because it's not so uniform, it's not so perfect, it's not so dance-like. There is a certain chaos that Five embodies as a killer. The fact that The Commission bonded his DNA with that of murderous, psychopath assassins throughout history—I think that's very reflective of his fighting style. I almost like it better that it's a bit more chaotic.

What do you like the most about Five?

Probably his relation to his siblings, because Five, for the most part, is a lost soul. He hasn't really found his place. He's been working to save the world his entire life. He's never taken the personal time to figure out what he wants to do. There's a lot less humanity in him and a lot more logical thinking of what is the most important thing to do at a specific moment. Whenever he gets a scene with another character or if it's something delicate like him dealing with Vanya (Ellen Page) or ensemble scenes with the whole cast, it brings out a different side of Five. It grounds him a bit more to someplace and space and time, because he's been constantly traveling through space and time so he has nothing to grab on to. The siblings in Season 1 have their initial lives and loves, and then in Season 2 they all plant themselves in Dallas and establish some sort of life for themselves. But Five doesn't have any of that. All he has is his family, and to see that sort of vulnerability in Five in relation to his siblings—you just don't see Five open up in that way a lot. Whenever I get a scene with the entire cast, it brings out so many new interesting flavors.

He often seems more like the oldest.

The funny thing about the show is that we're all born at the exact same time, exact same instance, and then Five leaves and is somewhere now in his 50s or 60s while the rest of them are 30 years old. Klaus time travels back to Vietnam and becomes older, and then they all get thrown into separate years in Dallas, so their ages are a bit more scattered than they used to be.

You got a lot of interaction with Kate Walsh, who plays The Handler, this season. How was that experience?

I really loved working with her. Kate is incredible. She brings so much to that character. There's a very intriguing style to The Handler, a certain suave, persuasive essence that is such a nice counterpoint to the rest of the Umbrella Academy that whenever I get a scene with Kate, the room sort of opens up. Kate does a really interesting job of making everything The Handler does seem effortless.

If you could time jump to any year would you do it?

I'd probably want to go to someplace before the pandemic, but I think it would be nice to travel through time with someone—have it be like a little adventure. I like traveling from place to place. I don't know that I'd be reserved to one specific place and time.

If Five time-jumped into today's world with the pandemic, would he think humanity was on the verge of a third apocalypse?

In relation to the doomsday he's faced, he would probably think that the pandemic is a very minor problem because he's always had to figure out how the world ends and how to solve it. With the pandemic, we know how to get past it. It's just whether or not we can sort of get each other together and work collectively to reach a solution. I don't think Five would see it as that hard of an issue at all. A lot of the time, he's faced with a space-time continuum crisis. The pandemic is straight forward. If we all stay inside for a certain amount of time, wear masks, social distance and don't hang out with people who are hanging with people who are hanging out with other people, we'd be able to get through this. It's just whether or not we can act collectively.

If there's one major takeaway from Season 2 what would it be?

If you work collectively you can do incredible things, but if you're looking at the Hargreeves siblings and their relationship and how they really rely on each other from season to season, I would say that family is all that we have. No matter how broken it might seem, if you open up with each other and have an honest connection, it can do incredible things for you and those around you.