Exclusive: Arjun Gupta Talks The Magicians

Arjun GuptaTonight Syfy premieres an all new episode of its series The Magicians, based on the book series by Lev Grossman. The story follows Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) who discovers that magic is real and becomes a student at Brakebills University for Magical Pedagogy.

The students all have a special discipline, including Quentin's classmate, Penny, played by Arjun Gupta, who can "travel."

Recently Gupta sat down with Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview to talk about his work on the series.

The actor first talked about how he got the role of Penny, and why he took it on. "I got an appointment to audition for the script. It was in August when I was working on How to Get Away with Murder, and I skimmed it, and I saw Sera Gamble's name on it. I had worked with Sera a couple years before on a pilot, and so I was excited to go in for her, to talk with her, and just work with her on her projects.

Arjun Gutpa"And so I read the script; I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a risk. I thought it was incredibly ambitious; I still think it's incredibly ambitious.

"And so I auditioned, and then a month later I had a call back, and then a month after that tested, and am very fortunate and grateful to now play this part."

Gupta is a fan of the books, but he didn't read them until after he joined the cast. "I have read the books; I love the books. I read them multiple times. I didn't know the books before I auditioned, but once I got the part I dove into them head first."

The actor talked about how the series was changed in adapting it from a book, and what was most important to him. "You have to in some ways understand that the books are going to shift, because we're adapting it to TV, and TV is such a different medium. So I understood that there were just some changes that needed to be made.

"But what was most important to me was understanding the core elements, the essence of the books, which for me, were the characters and their development.

"There's such a beautiful take on growing up at this time where people are very disconnected with themselves, and I think the books really capture that in a really poignant way.

"And I think that we are capturing that as well, and that was what was most important to me, and that's what I'm really excited for to continue. There's so much that happens in our episodes, and it's all amazing, and a lot of it's crazy like experience stuff, but there's also underneath so much deep character stuff that John [McNamara] and Sera built in that's really fun to get to play and do."

His character of Penny, as such, was expanded on for the series, as were other characters. "The books are told very specifically through Quentin's point of view, and our show is quite an ensemble show really. So I think that with every character, we're all getting expanded, because we all kind of float in and out of Quentin's story, in the books that is. And now we get to fill in those gaps that we didn't see.

"So in the books, Penny might be there at the beginning, and then he dips away for a little while, and we don't really know where or why, and then he comes back. And now we get to explore the parts we didn't see in the book, which is really fun for me."

The actor didn't actually have a particular favorite scene; he loves them all. "I love filming every scene. Literally there's no scene that I don't, even if we're just walking down the path. I love what I do; it's so fun."

Gupta feels he is very different than the character he plays. "I think there's an intensity within Penny that I hold; I think that we're quite different in that. I like people more than Penny does most of the time. Penny and I come from wildly different spaces. I think that the way that Penny acts out, I think in a lot of ways there are universal qualities to him, to everybody. But I think for me, the biggest difference is that he just really doesn't trust people, at all. And I, Arjun, I trust people more."

Arjun GutpaThe students at Brakebills are divided by their magical specialty; Penny's is traveling. "Everyone has their discipline, as they call it, their specialization in magic. It's like when you go to med school, and you choose which field you want to go in to. We kind of all have something that's inherent to us, and Penny, he's someone who's always heard voices. And when they tell him, "you're psychic," it's almost a let down, and then he realizes he's got this crazy power, that he can travel.

"And what's fun for me about it, is that everyone thinks it's the coolest and most badass super power, or magical power. It's something that Penny just finds immensely burdening.

"It's not exciting at all for him. In his mind, it's just something that he's coming to Brakebills to get fixed. He's trying to fix himself, because he thought there was something wrong with him. Then he finds out there's even more stuff that he's got to figure out.

"So that's really fun, to kind of play with, for me. And the traveling, his ability, I don't like to call it a power actually. I think of it more as an ability, but his ability, is going to become quite important as the season goes on."

Penny struggles with the decision of whether or not to anchor his ability with a tattoo, an idea that was introduced to him in the last episode. "It's a struggle to decide what to do with this ability and how to navigate it now. Stanley (M.C. Gainey) is in one ear telling him to get the tattoo, and then he's with Kady (Jade Tailor), and she's like, "You're seeing it all wrong." There's unlimited potential.

"And then there's the astral projection to the dungeon, and it's not only a dungeon, but he thinks it's another world. So it's all new. It's a crazy decision for him to have to make.

"I kind of liken it to when you go to college, and everything's new, and you don't know what you're doing. You don't know what's going on, and so you're just lost. And I think Penny is finding himself, for the first time in his life, super lost."

The actor, however, would not reveal anything about the future of Penny's ability. "I can only say it will all be answered. It will all be dealt with."

If the actor had Penny's traveling ability, he would love to go everywhere. "I would like to travel everywhere, but first of all, it's 9 o'clock where I am, so I would teleport over to my grandmother's house in India. I'd have some breakfast with her; I'd hang out with her for awhile.

"And I don't know. Where should we go today? Let's go to Antarctica. Let's do that.

"That's the beauty of it. If I have this power, I don't have to decide; I can just go.

Arjun Gutpa"You know what? Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I want to go under water, for like twelve seconds, and then pop out before I die. Go deep to the sea floor. I don't know scientifically how long you could exist there without dying, but I would like to go for that period of time and then pop right back out."

When asked where he would go if he could visit a fictional word, the actor revealed what first popped into his head. He would visit the world in Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime Division series, which are fun and whimsical books.

Gupta talked about working with the special effects team. "We have an amazing special effects team up in Vancouver. You know, Darren Marcoux, and Pat O'Brien with the props. And Dan Shea with stunts is heavily involved in everything that we do. We do a lot of practical stuff, so that has been really fun.

"As an actor, I got a little nervous, like how much green screen were we going to do, how much imagination work? It was all fun, but difficult, and honestly, it's more fun to react to something that's real; we've been pretty fortunate.

"You know, we set things on fire a lot. In the second episode when I break the mirror, I really got to do that. That was real. No CGI; no nothing. It was just me throwing a chair through a mirror. So that was fun. We have a blast up there; we really do."

The actor expanded more about doing his own stunts and working with Dan Shea. "He's great. Dan Shea's awesome. We get to have so much fun. There's a lot of stunts that we do, and I specifically, fight the most with Dan to let me do my own stunts, and there were only a few that he didn't let me do.

"But I can't speak highly enough of this crew of people we got to work with. As actors, we get a lot of the praise right now and a lot of the attention, but it's really important to me to give a shoutout to those guys, because we couldn't do it without them, at all; we just couldn't."

Gupta doesn't really have a favorite part of the set, but he would hang out a lot in the costume office. "I don't know if I have a favorite part of the set...but I would hang out in the costume office a lot, which was right off set, because our production office was right next door. So me and Magali [Guidasci], who was the costume designer and has become one of my close friends, we would just go in there and just have blast. We'd just be laughing and having so much fun."

The actor talked a bit about his character's future. "It seems like people are responding to Penny. I think that you're going to find out a lot more about Penny in the next few episodes, like we get to see Penny continue in situations that force him out of his comfort zone, which allows us as an audience to see more sides of him. And that's exciting to witness, hopefully, and it was exciting to do."

He has been enjoying the response on social media, which he likens to theater. "I'm not a big social media guy, but there's something amazing about social media, in that the one thing that I love about theater, and I run a theater company, is that there's an immediacy between the actor and the audience. There's no separation of time, or physically there's very little separation. And so with social media, it's the closest that it gives to that experience. For me, as an actor, it's like it's on air and people are responding at the same time.

Arjun Gutpa"I think it's interesting that people do it. I find it fascinating, because I just can't while I'm watching shows. I can't live tweet them as a viewer because I get sucked so much into the story. So I'm always curious to hear from people who don't live tweet it, who watch it, and then have thoughts afterwards. Because I'm really curious to hear those people as well."

Gupta is also currently involved in other projects besides The Magicians. "For any of your Southern California readers, my theater company, Ammunition Theater Company, opens its play this Thursday, February 18th, and runs for the next four weekends, Thursday Friday Saturday, and all that information and tickets can be found on ammotheater.com.

"...And I have a podcast that I host weekly with my closest friend Akaash Singh. He's a comedian from New York, and the podcast is called American Desis, and it explores what it means to be South Asian in this country today through conversations and interviews."

For now, don't forget to watch Arjun Gupta on The Magicians tonight on Syfy as Penny, who he describes in three words as a "hawk amongst pigeons."

He was able to tease a tiny bit about what's in store for Penny tonight in the episode. "Penny's going to confront his deepest fear in episode six. It's not what people are going to expect."

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