Check out our exclusive interview with ‘Lucifer’ actor Kevin Alejandro (Film Daily)

The mind behind the beloved Lucifer character, Detective Douche, is Kevin Alejandro. He’s known for so much more than his notable roles as an actor in Arrow, True Blood, and more. Family-owned production company Alejandro Films has been rising in popularity with new indie releases such as Adult Night.

Head over to Film Daily to watch their exclusive interview Kevin.

Who is Kevin Alejandro?

Kevin Alejandro works alongside his wife Leslie and his sister-in-law Dani De Jesus in their production company Alejandro Films. Before his production company kicked off, Kevin was known for his work as an actor in HBO’s True Blood and most recently the hit show Lucifer. We got to see Alejandro’s directing style in action across a few episodes featured in the Netflix show.

Lucifer is reaching its conclusion and Kevin Alejandro will have to wave goodbye to the beloved Dan Espinoza (otherwise known as Detective Douche). Fans want to know, what’s next for Alejandro and co.?

Got plans?

Adult Night has proven to be a big success for Alejandro Films with some familiar faces taking the lead roles. The short film follows a couple as they attempt to “live colorfully.” The strength of the relationship is tested by a situation where it might be more important to get out rather than get off. Good friends and Lucifer costars Lesley-Ann Brandt & Kevin Alejandro star alongside each other in this hilarious short film. 

With a great dynamic on and offscreen, watching Adult Night is a great way to avoid those lockdown blues and enjoy some comic relief. In our exclusive interview, Kevin Alejandro dives into the weird and wonderful world of indie filmmaking. Make sure you check out our interview transcript below.

You’ve stayed a consistent TV star over the years. Could you ever see yourself expanding to film, or do you prefer being a star of the small screen?

You know, what is there really? I go to work. Yes, I go where the context is and I’ve been very fortunate to have the career that I have now. I’m enjoying wherever the journey takes me honestly. You know, I would love to do some films. But like I said, I absolutely love where I’m at today. Wherever the work is and wherever someone will trust me to actually be part of whatever projects, that’s where I will go.

Directing or acting?

Well, I love every aspect of this business. The longer I’m in it, the more it puts its hooks into me. The directing and producing came from my desire to want to learn every aspect of filmmaking. I started a little YouTube channel to challenge myself as a director and whether or not I could actually tell a story from a different lens, so to speak. But acting will always be my first true love. And now that Lucifer is coming to an end in the next several months, my mind is starting to shift its focus onto what my next acting move will be. That’s always first and foremost in the decisions that I make for my future. But that being said: yes. 

During this hiatus and during my inevitable evolution of my career, directing and producing has become a very prominent part of myself. We do have Alejandro Films and we are in various stages of development for what we believe are some great intellectual, entertaining projects that not only challenge a conversation, but it also heightens and elevates the conversation. That’s what Alejandro Films is all about. We want to bring up issues in an entertaining way that we don’t usually think about. We want to give my Latino culture a place and a platform to tell the stories that we have, and we want to elevate the Filipino culture as well, you know my business partners are Filipino, and they’re also my family: my wife and my sister in law. We love what we do. We love this business and we want to have a presence in it for as long as it will allow us to.

What made you want to found your own production company?

My wife and my sister in law - she's [Dani De Jesus] a superwoman - she was in the industry, working for a production company for years and years and decided, “I want to affect the world in a different way.” So she moved off to Hawaii and became one of the most successful high school teachers in the history of this school. And then finally, the love for telling stories crept back in and she’s like, “I think it’s time for me to come back. I think I’ll have an influence. I have someplace to speak from.” So, with her collaboration along with my wife and myself, all the sides pointed to yes. You know it is with everything that’s going on in our world right now - the entire changing of what 2020 is and the upcoming election, just what we’re going through has just really inspired us to really want to move forward and tell important issues.

Why do you think it’s important for people (such as yourself) to use their fame & power to help tell more diverse stories?

I think it’s relevant with any culture. Anyone who has a platform to sort of pay it back, pay it forward. The world is ever changing, and so the old school set of rules don’t work anymore, even though we try to make them work. So, really it’s our responsibility to move with the times and let people know that they’re not alone with this evolution. Let people know that we will move with them together. That’s really what’s important to us: moving forward. Not preaching. I’m not a fan of that at all, but just letting people know that there are issues and that there are people out there who want to tell stories. And if we’re the right fit, then let’s do it together.

What is it like working with your wife on Alejandro Film productions?

One of the things that we realised, as we get further and further into discovering each other and how we all work together, is that from the moment that we leave home, our nest, our family, we subconsciously start to create another family. And that’s with our friends and the people that we surround ourselves with. So, that is the root of where we stem from. It’s not just our immediate family here, it’s the family that we’re creating outside. What we want the people who get involved with us to understand that’s where we come from. That’s what is important to us, and that’s when we invite you in and when you invite us in, then there is no choice but to become family. 

If you can’t deal with that then maybe we’re not the right ones for each other. It's important for us to come from that angle because then we care. You don’t want to do anything you don’t care about. So that’s why it’s important to us and that dynamic is very relevant with the things that we try to do together.

What was your first filmmaking experience like?

I started to want to learn all the aspects of filmmaking, so I started a little YouTube channel. I had an old camcorder that my wife got me right before we had our baby so I could film stuff, and I would shoot little short films on it. And then, my childhood best friend moved out to California with me, Steven Monroe Taylor, who’s also an actor - he had come up with a concept for a web series that, inevitably, Charlie Sheen ended up executive producing for us because he was on his show at the time and they really enjoyed each other’s company and Charlie had faith in the project. 

So Charlie funded it, and then my friend Steven Preston was like, “I think you would make a great director for it.”  So, that was the first thing at that level that I got to get my toes wet. It all goes back to family. I keep going back to family, but that’s what it was. Even that experience as my first time was with my best friend. Everyone that surrounded us were people that we knew and loved. So maybe it’s a safety net, I don’t know but I don’t mind it. I only want to make pictures and make movies with people that I enjoy being around, because what we do is supposed to be extremely fun. So the ones who don’t make it fun, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.

It was that little pilot that we took and shopped around. Inevitably, we got some interest but it wasn’t something that people were looking for at the time and you know it was a very, very specific kind of project. But it was that project that I submitted to the Warner Brothers directors program as my version of directing television. And somebody over there saw some potential, I believe, and said, “Well yeah I think you can do it.” So that’s what got me into the Warner Brothers directors programme, and within that program I was surrounded by top level like Bethany Rooney, Mary Lou - people who ran the program. And I’m learning from the best of the best. It’s surrounded me with other filmmakers that had already done things at a higher level. So, I was very lucky and fortunate to be a part of that back then. It was that program that actually launched my ability to direct at a higher level, directing Lucifer episodes. So now I’ve directed three of those, including the season premiere of season six that I just finished last week.

What was your experience like directing on Lucifer? Is it weird to direct yourself and your co-workers?

It was overwhelming, but amazing because I was with people that I trusted. It was different though because people, up until that point, have always  only ever known me as the jokey actor. I’m very light on set. I’m cracking jokes all the time, trying to pull pranks, I’m that guy. I’m the class clown, basically. So to take on the hat of director, I had to really learn how to balance that out so that people would A) take me seriously and B) I can get my point across without taking my foot out my mouth... kind of interesting, my foot in my mouth. 

So it was different, but it was a very eye opening learning experience. I had a bunch of people who had my back and that was one of the first things that I learned. These people who’ve been here since the beginning at this level. They know what the show is and when I had questions I had no hesitations to ask them, and to learn with them. And they all understood that too. I think that my first episode gave me much more confidence for my second. You can really start to see me developing my own style. And even, it’s more evident in the third one. So each step begat the next, and gave me more confidence to deal with the next. That first one was amazing and I was like a kid in the candy store, but there were also some nerves and unsureness.

Can you tell us what your experience was like shooting your most recent short film, Adult Night?

Yeah, that was a great experience. That was another one of those Alejandro Films family adventures. So Leslie Alejandro, my wife and I, we directed it together. When we do things together we go under the name Los Alejandros because that’s who we are - the Alejandros. That was a really interesting experience because up until this point both of us were both directors, but up until that point, we’d always been responsible to have answers to all the questions individually. So now this was an opportunity for us to do it together and start to understand what our strengths and what our weaknesses were. 

And once we started to figure that out we’re like, “Okay well that’s really not something that I’m particularly great at, so then you will handle it.” And it just sort of fell into place. She knew what her strength was and I knew my strength was, which was communicating with actors and getting performance. My wife is very visual - she’s a photographer by trade, so she was good with the lighting and communicating with the DP, like what the tone of the setting was. We framed the shots together. So we made an excellent team. But what made it even better was the fact that I got to do it with Lesley-Ann Brandt. Because she and I discovered on Lucifer pretty quickly that we had some pretty good chemistry. We wanted to act and do things together beyond what our audiences know us as presently. This was just an opportunity written by a close friend of mine, directed by my wife and me, and produced by Lesley-Ann as well as ourselves, and I got to co-star with somebody that I trust. We did it like an old school play. We mapped out the set in Lesley-Ann’s garage area, and we rehearsed it like a play over and over and over and over again so by the time we got to the space, we knew exactly where we were going and what we were doing. It was a wonderful experience. I hope that we get the opportunity to do more. It was a really fun set.

Independent filmmaking is fun. What I love about independent filmmaking is that even with any production, you run into issues...you run into problems. Specifically, with independent filmmaking though, you don’t have the budget to get yourself out of this hole sometimes. So you have to really think on your feet, and be super as creative as you can in a moment to get yourself out of any kind of situation. For example, on the day of shooting, we realised that there was no door in this set. So we’re like, “Okay, there’s no door. We’ll just simply buy a door.” We got the wrong measurements. The door was too big. And this is the morning that we’re setting up the door so that we can shoot. We have one day in the location right. Oh man! What do we do? We couldn’t figure out this door. It wouldn’t go on. It was important that these people have a door so that they’re locked into their situation. There’s no way out. And we didn’t have any saws. We didn’t have anything. But two of my friends - I was like, “Will you take my truck, go to Home Depot, see if they’ll cut the door for us?” 

Okay, good plan. While they go to Home Depot, we shoot some other stuff. They get back, and they’re like, “At Home Depot, they won’t cut doors. It's against their policy.” But one of my friends has an English accent and was asking the guy, “Hey, would you mind?” And he was like, “Oh shoot, I recognise that accent! I like that accent. For you, I’ll do it”. 

So he broke the rules for us, and they got there like minutes before we had to start shooting that scene. But it’s independent filmmaking. We had to think outside the box and had to get it done. And it’s like the magic of theatre - somehow the show goes on. And it does, you know. So that’s what I love about independent filmmaking.

Do you think you’ll ever expand into feature film directing?

100%. 100%. I’m currently looking for what that project might be for me. I have a couple that I’m working on that we’re developing ourselves as Alejandro Films, but I’m also reading scripts as well. But, you know, just to see what that next one would be.

What’s next on the docket for you?

Other than we’re looking, there are some irons in the fire I guess is how they call it in Hollywood. And, you know, I think it’s probably my Latin side - my Latin superstitious side - I don’t like to jinx anything or talk too much about the things that could potentially happen. So, just know that we’re looking, and we’re trying to move forward. That’s where we’re at.

Do you believe Detective Dan is a douche, or is he just misunderstood by everyone?

He’s 100% misunderstood! Because you can see how much love there is in the guy, and how much he just wants the right things. He just makes the wrong douchey decisions - the wrong choices. But I think I think he’s just a little bit misunderstood.

(Source: Film Daily)

Written by Rianna de Bonno-Smith