Memories From The Set: Kevin Alejandro

SHARK

"What a big break that was for me," Alejandro says of his role as Danny Reyes, a Los Angeles ADA who eventually joined the prosecutorial team led by James Woods' title character. "If there was any actor that a young actor could hope to work with, it would be Jimmy Woods. He's super-intense, but in a really fun way — a jokester, but when it comes to the work he just gets it." Woods would change things up on the fly, and famously didn't like to do a lot of takes, "so you had to be on your toes," Alejandro recalls. "If any actor upped my game that early in my career, it would be Jimmy."

SOUTHLAND

On this cancelled series that was famously plucked from the ashes (TNT gave the nixed NBC drama a new home), Alejandro played Detective Nate Moretta — and discovered "a genuine love" for his cast that would only be rivaled by what he most recently enjoyed on Lucifer. "Here's a cool fact: every one of the leads — myself, [Michael] Cudlitz, Shawn Hatosy, Ben McKenzie and Regina King have all gone on to direct our own things," he notes.

When Season 3 rolled around, and with the gritty crime drama on the bubble yet again, Alejandro was courted to join HBO's buzzy True Blood, leading to a difficult decision. "I asked [executive producers] Chris Chulack and John Wells what they would do in my situation, and they were like, 'You gotta take the job.' They then killed me off in such a poetic way that made an impact on the audience" — and led to a helluva going–away cake. "It had my picture on it, laying in a pool of blood, and said: Good Luck With Your Damn Vampire Show!"

LUCIFER (CONT'D)

Sizing up Detective Espinoza, Alejandro says, "My favorite thing about him is how flawed he is, and how within his flaws there's a desperation to be good." But is Dan truly good? Previewing a future that may not be, Alejandro says, "That was something we were going to dive into in Season 4, him questioning, 'Am I just 'playing' a good cop? Or am I inherently bad and should I stop fighting that?" Then again, the #SaveLucifer campaign isn't truly and sincerely dead yet, so Dan's self-exploration miiiiiiight see the light of day, somewhere...? "Keep raising your voices," Alejandro urges fans, "because conversations are being had!"

TRUE BLOOD

Season 3 of HBO's bloodsucker saga added Alejandro as Jesus Velasquez, a witch who was also Lafayette's lover. "I got to go big" with that role, he reports. "My inner demon would come out, and my face would change into this serpent-like thing" — akin to Lucifer's own Devil face, "but even more intense," Alejandro attests. (After all, he notes, "It's kind of hard to ugly up Tom [Ellis]!")

Following the SouthLAnd/True Blood one-two punch, Alejandro says in retrospect, "I was perceived to be on a different caliber" of actor. "People started to take me a bit more seriously."

LUCIFER

About a week after his run on A&E's The Returned wrapped, Alejandro was invited to dance with the Devil on Fox's adaptation of the Vertgo comics character. "I had seen Tom [Ellis]' work on Rush, and I was like, 'I want to work with that dude.' I thought he was fantastic," Alejandro says. On-screen ex Lauren German, meanwhile, "is one of the best, one of my favorites," he raves. "I spent a lot more time with those two, and we're the same kind of clowns. We get each other."

All told, "Everything felt right about it, they trusted me enough to give me the role, and everything else is history, man."

ARROW

Because Greg Berlanti produced Golden Boy, Alejandro soon after received a call to play Sebastian Blood, a Starling City mayor who as "Brother Blood" covertly led a cult of mirakuru-juiced super-soldiers. "When Greg called me up, I researched the character and was like, 'Ooh, of course I want to be a part of this world!'" Alejandro remembers. "What was great about that character was that, like [Lucifer's] Dan, everything came from the heart. He really loved the city and everything he did was to make it a better place — even though he did all the wrong things! It was a cool chance to play a villain but not play the villain."

GOLDEN BOY

This one-and-done CBS procedural starred Theo James as Walter Clark, an ambitious cop who, we learned in flash forwards, would one day become the youngest Police Commissioner in New York City history. Alejandro played a fellow homicide detective, alongside Chi McBride. "That was my second experience being in love with my cast. We were pretty tight," he fondly recalls. "We were this little 'gang' of actors. We felt like we owned the streets!"

DRIVE

In this gone-too-soon, Nathan Fillion-fronted Fox series about a cross-country road race, Alejandro and J.D. Pardo played a team of brothers — "and J.D. and I are still friends, all these years later." Among the sprawling ensemble cast (as glimpsed in the photo here) was future film star Emma Stone, who had a memorable snacking habit on set. "I remember her as this young girl walking around with a paper plate full of potato chips," Alejandro recalls with a chuckle. "She had a plate full of potato chips, all the time!"

24

Alejandro's first recurring TV role was as a terrorist (named Kevin!) who figured into Jack Bauer's fourth very bad day. "I've always loved Kiefer Sutherland, so it was a great learning experience for me," he shares. "I would sit in the shadows and stalker-ishly observe how these guys do it." As for working with Sutherland himself, "Yeah, he was in my last scene — where he just sort of walked up and shot me in the head!" (As Jack Bauer is known to do.)

CROSSING JORDAN

Kevin Alejandro's first TV role came via a Season 2 episode of the Jill Hennessy-led procedural, where he played a man suspected of terrorizing his wife — which is a bit ironic, considering what was going on backstage. "I happened to book this early in my relationship with my now-wife [Leslie]," and as such "we spent Valentine's Day in my trailer!" he recalls with a laugh.

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS

Though he was playing accused child killer Dominic Hughes, "Dude, Y&R was probably the absolute most perfect, best experience I could have had at that time in my life," Alejandro effuses. "I come from the theater, so being on a soap opera kind of reminded me of that, because we got to go through so many ranges of emotion within an eight-hour day, and there's so much dialogue." As for playing another sketchy fella, yeah, that was an early theme in Alejandro's career. "I was all thugs, man! I was tough, edgy.... I don't know what happened!"

SLEEPER CELL

Long before "prestige TV" was ever a thing, there was this before-its-time Showtime drama, in which Alejandro played a gang member who converted to Islam and befriended Michael Ealy's Darwyn while in prison. "Sleeper Cell was one of the smartest, most interesting shows that I have had the honor to be a part of," the actor avows. "It painted such a scary, realistic picture of how 'the monster in your backyard,' so to speak, happens to be the coach of your kid's Little League team. An awesome experience."