How ’A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Villain Neil Patrick Harris Helped His Co-Stars Cope On Set

Neil Patrick Harris has to be the bad guy. At least, he’s the person bringing the evil, nefarious darkness to Netflix’s hit family series, A Series of Unfortunate Events. Harris plays Count Olaf, a cartoonishly awful villain who is constantly trying to capture the wealthy Baudelaire orphans, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny. It a sinisterly funny show that dips dangerously close to the darkness. Death and chaos abound in the show, so much so that you could say that A Series of Unfortunate Events is a literally grim fairy tale.

Harris explained to reporters at a Netflix press event in January that it was the show’s very darkness that made it right for kids. “I, for one, think that kids enjoy a dark sense of humor, he said. “At least, I’m noticing my kids, who are seven, they want to see dark things. They’d rather read the Grimm’s Fairy Tale and have something caustic happen as the moral.”

As it happens, it often falls to Harris’s brutal Count Olaf to establish this cruel tone. Even though much of the humor comes from the character’s outlandish disguises, he’s also the primary source of menace.

“[Director and Executive Producer] Barry Sonnenfeld thought it was important at beginning that Olaf really strike Klaus across the face in Season 1 — with no regret — so you don’t empathize with him at all,” Harris said soberly. “You truly establish that this is the kind of person who could really harm these children so he becomes a real point of threat.”

Well, Count Olaf is back in Season 2 of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the threat is still very real. In contrast, Harris said that he’s made a point of mentoring his young co-stars. As a former child star himself — What’s up, Doogie Howser? — Harris is in a unique position to understand what actors Malina Weissman and Louis Hynes are going through and to give specific advice to help them navigate their work.

“I have watched them grow both in size and in emotional stature and I’m very proud of both of them,” Harris told us before explaining why he did his best to teach them how to challenge their directors. 

“It’s such a challenge as a child actor to be comfortable enough to challenge because you’re often being pulled from school and you’re plopped on your mark and you’re told to say it quickly and to not ask questions because if you ask questions then they have to relight it and that takes time and as soon as they’re done they go back to school. And they’re back and forth,” he explained. “I really encourage them to not challenge for the sake of hearing their own voice, but if they have thoughts of how something could be different or opinions, that they should voice them because they’re leads in the show. They’re not just kids, right?”

Harris said he thought Weissman and Hynes were “taking ownership of that” and credited the support structures in both young actors’ lives: “They both have great parents and they’re very smart kids, so we’re very lucky to have them.”

Ironically, Harris’s own kids came up a lot during the discussion. He explained that he was drawn to the series because he was now more aware of what was and wasn’t appropriate for kids to watch. Harris was also asked if he could foresee his own children, Harper and Gideon, ever following in his footsteps.

“Well they’re both extroverts in their own way,” he admitted before explaining that acting might not be for either of them. “They see the process so much that they’re probably less than enchanted by it because they know that I fly back and forth from Vancouver to New York and that it takes three hours to get into prosthetics and I’m tired a lot. So who knows? I’ll keep them away from proper spotlight as long as they’ll let me.”

The word “process” came up again. For Harris, it’s important that his children understand what goes into his transformations. “They find it all sort of fascinating, but my work I’m probably over-explaining to them,” Harris admitted. “Maybe that comes from when I did Hedwig [and the Angry Inch] and they were four or five at that time. And I didn’t want them to think that I’d just went to work and they didn’t know what that meant and if they accidentally saw me in drag backstage that they would be so confused as to what it meant. So I was constantly explaining to them and showing them how eyelashes go on and what the character is doing, so they get that what I’m doing is work and I’m not just ‘Mr. Crazy Pants.'”

Season 2 of A Series of Unfortunate Events premieres on Netflix on March 30th.

Stream A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix