Alexander Eling is truly ‘one to watch’ as he reprises his role of Javier in Netflix’s Another Life in addition to starring in the highly anticipated Netflix show Tiny Pretty Things.
Tiny Pretty Things is based on the bestselling book by Dhonielle Clayton and Sona Charaipotra. The series explores the world of mystery and sabotage in an elite ballet academy in NYC and charts the rise and fall of its young dancers.
“It’s just a story about these young really talented individuals who will stop at nothing to chase their dreams. It’s steamy, suspenseful, mysterious, and quite dark if I do say so myself.”
Alexander said the entire cast read through the book for character research, but Alexander didn’t have that luxury. His character, Matteo, wasn’t in the books. He says that there are things from the books that have been expanded upon and for those familiar with the book, Alexander says Matteo is based on a few characters but ultimately it’ll be a surprise.
“He’s his own thing and I’m really proud of that because I got to have a lot of fun with that and he fits in in a pretty interesting way. Matteo is a working-class dude who’s lived in Chicago all his life, his family’s got deep roots there. And he’s just a guy trying to make ends meet. He may have dreams of pursuing an artistic side of himself that maybe he’s not as inclined as he’d like to be, you know, he can be very content with things and I think that bothers him a lot. And the way he gets involved in the story kind of pushes him to expand his views and expand his thought process, and maybe the trajectory of where he wants life to go. He opens some eyes and gets his eyes opened in a way. The creators and I looked at him as sort of the audience’s lens into the dance world if they’re not as familiar with it.”
Alexander was drawn to Matteo the minute he read the script.
“When I read it I was like ‘oh, I could do this,’ There’s a feeling you get sometimes with things that you think are so right for you, like when you just think the stars are aligning and that’s how it felt when I read (the script). The fact that it was based on a book also really excited me because you have essentially a Bible to base everything on for the creative team as well behind the scenes. Also, the fact that it’s a book means that people already know what it is. And people follow it and people will be excited to see it come to fruition on-screen… It felt great. It all felt perfect and I just jumped into it at first and luckily things panned out.”
When asked if we’ll get answers to the season one mystery, Alexander advises us to keep watching.
“I promise it gets good, and that’s all I’ll say. It gets good and just when you think you have things figured out, something else happens and it just puts you right back to square one. It’s a wild ride, it’s a really fun ride.”
Alexander has also been super busy with Another Life season two.
“We started production on Season two in March of this year. And there was talk of the coronavirus but no one really knew what it was. Then it started coming to North America. We film (Another Life) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and the talk just started building and building and there’s a bit of hysteria starting to spread amongst everybody because no one knew what was going on. We were maybe like an episode and a half into filming, like just maybe two or three weeks in, and then I got the call. They said ‘we’re shutting down’ and everyone thought it was the end of the world like everything just went to pandemonium. We started back up in August and just as a few days ago, we wrapped the entire production season two. It’s crazy. But just like anything, it’s an obstacle and everybody’s in it to do the same thing and get the job done safely. And we did just that.”
Because they just wrapped filming, there is no word on a release date yet and there isn’t a lot that can be said about the season. Alexander does say we can expect the same craziness that was in season one, just more.
Tiny Pretty Things season one leaps to Netflix tomorrow!
