‘Cruel Summer’s Blake Lee Breaks Down Episode 9’s Huge Twist

No actor has experienced as much career whiplash as Blake Lee. Four months after Lee broke ground on Lifetime for starring in the network’s first LGBTQ+ Christmas movie, the actor appeared in Cruel Summer, where he captured one of the creepiest characters of the year. And as Episode 9 shows, if you thought Martin Harris was unsettling before, you don’t know the half of it.

“A Secret of My Own” is a break from the rest of Cruel Summer. Instead of darting between three different timelines, it almost entirely focused on the relationship between the kidnapped Kate Wallis (Olivia Holt) and her vice principal and captor, Martin Harris (Lee). Up until this point, we’ve been sold a certain narrative about Kate’s kidnapping, a story that involved an unhinged man cruelly grabbing a damsel in distress and locking her away in his basement. The reality captured in this bottle episode is far more unsettling. Over the course of 42 minutes, the episode chronicled exactly how Martin groomed this teenage girl into thinking she had to make a choice: Martin, or the outside world.

It’s a chilling installment that works largely due to Lee’s restrained performance that deftly walks the line between giving his character humanity and never forgetting the monster within. Decider spoke with Lee about what it was like filming this standout episode, how Ted Bundy characterized his performance, and what’s ahead for the show’s finale.

Decider: This must be a crazy few months for you. You made history with Lifetime’s first LGBTQ+ holiday movie, The Christmas Setup, and then you turned around and played one of the creepiest characters in TV.

Blake Lee: It’s been a very bizarre year. And then wrapped up in a pandemic? It’s been wild. It’s one of those dream years as an actor to play such different roles, to be in a romantic comedy that’s set around Christmas with my husband and Fran Drescher. And then I get to go play the most evil, dark, manipulative, creepy guy. It’s been it’s been a great exercise in acting, for sure.

Since you have gone to these two extremes, which do you prefer?

I wouldn’t say I prefer one over the other. The lighter romantic comedy stuff is definitely easier for me, it’s in my wheelhouse. This was me stepping out. I’ve never gone to these places as an actor ever. I was really excited to take this job to be able to do that. It sounds weird to say I was excited about it, but to play a character like this is so rare, and I haven’t had that opportunity before. So I was really looking forward to it. Then doing it, working with Olivia (Holt) on this show has been just the most incredible experience. It was a really collaborative experience between the writers, directors, producers, and the actors, more so than I’ve ever had on any show.

Tia (Napolitano), our showrunner, had an open door policy and, as the scripts would come, we could reach out. We’re kind of sharing a brain with her. I’ll speak for myself, but for Martin’s character, Tia and I know more about what he’s thinking probably at any moment than anyone else. So it was great. I would call, and I’d be like, “I don’t know. In this scene this bumps for me,” and then she’d be like, “OK, let’s discuss it.”

You certainly feel that collaboration in “A Secret of My Own.” I’m really blown away by your performance in this episode. You give Martin such surprising empathy, and yet it never seems to overshadow or excuse all the trauma he’s caused Kate. How did you walk that line between giving him a bit of like empathy, but still keeping him a monster?

When I first auditioned for it, I didn’t play him as a villain because I was like, “I don’t think any villain presents as a villain.” A bad guy isn’t like, “I’m a bad guy.” I was like, I’m going to play him as a person. I’m sure he thinks he’s a nice guy. I’m going to just play the nice guy. And they were like, “That’s so creepy. You have the job.”

Going into it, I did a handful of research on, not necessarily pedophiles, but I watched The Ted Bundy Tapes and I watched Kidnapped in Plain Sight. Especially from The Ted Bundy Tapes, it was this person who was doing these horrible, horrible things, who then could go to the grocery store and go to the movies and go order a coffee and had the night before brutally murdered someone. Where is that separation?

That made me think a lot about Martin. He’s able to go to work, and he’s able to go to the grocery store and do all these normal things, knowing that there’s an underage girl that the entire community is looking for in his house. How does he do that? Basically, I just was like, “I’m going to make it an obsession.” He loves this person. I tried to make Martin do everything from a place of love. But as an audience member we know that’s not true. He’s manipulating her and grooming her. But I think that he’s also convinced himself that it’s love… I think that’s the only way he was able to continue living his life and not blowing his brains out at some point. Because how do you live with yourself when you can do this to a child? That was the thing. It was him convincing himself that I love this person. I love this person. I love this person. Any of the empathy or stuff that comes through, I think that that’s maybe where it’s coming from.

This is the episode where we learned that for half a year, Kate wasn’t locked up, and she was allowed to roam Martin’s house. How early did you learn that their relationship wasn’t the stereotypical kidnapper and victim relationship we were led to believe?

I learned it when we were shooting the pilot. The creator of the show, Bert V. Royal, mentioned to me, “This is where we see the character going, and you won’t find out until later in the season.” I didn’t know it would be this bottle episode that really only highlights that.

Tia Napolitano, our showrunner, called Olivia and me, and we had a Zoom. She went through the whole story. I think that Olivia and I were just mouth agape, for 20 minutes just silent. Like, what? Oh my god, what are we getting ourselves into? There was an excitement to be able to go there as actors, but there was also a fear because you want to tell an honest depiction of this story. You don’t want to glamorize or romanticize this. That was really important to Olivia and I, and our whole creative team, actually. We don’t ever want the audience to root for this relationship. That was really refreshing to us because it’s rare. A lot of TV shows and movies highlight, or they want the audience to root for, underage relationships, which is just insane. It’s insane that’s been acceptable for so long. So I was very happy to be part of a show that was not doing that.

It is wild. I’m rewatching Gossip Girl right now, and I’ve lost track of the number of times like a teenager is with an adult.

I’m curious if the new Gossip Girl will do that.

That’s what my friend and I have been talking about endlessly. But back to the episode, there’s a very specific arc where we see Martin and Olivia’s honeymoon phase down to the collapse of their relationship. How did you approach this bottle episode with Olivia?

Once we got the script, Olivia and I met outside of work on a weekend. We were like, “Let’s read the whole script, beginning to end and talk about it after.” We sat in the park and tried to wrap our brains around the whole thing and where our characters were mentally in each scene.

Alexis Ostrander, who directed this episode, was unbelievable. She is the third major part of this episode — Olivia, me, and Alexis — because she brought so much depth to the episode. She had done so much prep work. Her script, there was no white paper she had so many notes. Any question that we had, she already had an incredible answer. She had thought about it. She built in a day of rehearsal for us, which is really rare on TV. We got to go to the house on a weekend, the day before we started filming. And we ran through every scene a couple of times. We also just talked about it. We talked about grooming, and we talked about personal experiences of being manipulated or taken advantage of by someone in a power position. It was an emotional day because we went to really honest, dark places, and we allowed each other to speak, and we just listened to each other. It really set the groundwork for the episode. I do I think it comes across that it was a lot of heavy stuff we were having to unpack. But I’m really pleased with the outcome of the episode.

How do you think fans are going to feel about the finale based on what you know about it?

I think fans are going to be blown away. I’m such a fan of TV. So it’s so fun to be on a show where, when I read the last script and I turned literally the last page, I gasped. They are keeping us surprised until the last moment… When you invest so many hours into a show as an audience member, you want to have that. I am really am proud of our show because I think we do a good job at the finale. I think the fans are going to be thrilled. I really do. It’s a really, really special finale. And a lot of things are answered, but just enough is left open and ambiguous.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Cruel Summer airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on Freeform.

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