Devin Druid talks 13 Reasons Why, His New Hobby and His Music
Devin Druid photographed on the Netflix roof, Los Angeles, CA by Ralph Palumbo
With the successful, fan favorite, “13 Reasons Why” and two new movies slated for 2020. What does it feel like to be a young actor on the fast train to success?
It’s pretty surreal, there are some days, during filming that I ask “what even am I doing”? This is part of my job, and that’s kinda weird. Then there’s another part of me that pushes that to the back and just keeps moving everyday so I can take care of my family. I was recently reflecting - I’m a huge comic book fan, and I come from a low income family, my mom is a single mother with a disability, and it was a struggle to get comic books, because we didn’t have expendable money. I heard rumors online that Marvel was going to do the Civil War story line for a movie, and I was like, man I always wanted to read Civil War, and I didn’t have the money to buy it, so read it online. I was at a comic book shop, and I found that comic book, and I bought it, it’s a reminder for me that I may some progress. Now, I own the Civil War comic book, and I own the Captain American Civil War movie.
Where does your creativity come from?
My family has alway been pretty creative, into some sort of performance art or artistic creation. My older sisters are into fashion design, singing and photography. My mom was a ballet dancer for years and sings a lot. I love singing, I was in a rock band in middle school, and even now I’m writing and producing my own music. I love telling stories, I think the way that people communicate is super interesting. Even across continents, with different languages, there is a universal language within, media and art that could be understood by people who have very different backgrounds, and I think thats a very unique and special thing. People can groove to the same music, or look at a painting and feel a similar thing, or watch a film and have an understanding and a care for someone they have never met, and I think that’s a vey cool thing. Telling stories was something that I always wanted to do, to some capacity. Wether it was a hobby, myself, making music, or wether woking on a big budget studio production. It was just a cool thing that I wanted to do.
What attracted you to your role on 13 Reasons Why?
It was more about what attracted me to the project, as a whole. My first audition was for the lead role of Clay. When I first got the audition, I got the names of the people who are attached to the show, and the studios backing it, and you see all of those people and you know the calibre of talent amongst that group, whatever they touch is going to be something good. You As an actor you want to be a part of that. Then I started to read the script, I saw the themes and conversation that could be started with the script, and how it talks about suicide and mental illness amongst teenagers and sexual assault. A lot of those themes are things that I have personal relation to, and things that I think could be beneficial to other kids, if this is something that they could watch. As a kid, whenever I had struggles with anxiety or whatever, I didn’t have this show to watch. I had music, by listening to musicians tell their stories about how they gone through things and come out the other end, it’s felt validating, it’s felt like there is a way out. A show like 13 Reason Why, on such a large scale like that, talking about these issues can potentially do that for a lot of young people.
What is your relationship like with the cast of 13 Reasons Why?
We are a very tight group, a big family. Since season one I’ve been the baby of the cast, I’ve been the youngest, I started this show when I was 18, and I’m 21 now. Season 4 introduces a new 18 year old, and she’s the new baby. It’s been fun having a little sister. The cast hangs out all the time, we started golfing together which is fun. I have a dream job.
Do you find that this role can be emotionally challenging for you?
I think so, I think that the character of Tyler is going through a lot of trauma, and a lot of ups and downs. As an actor, wanting to give my all to the character and wanting to do justice, to some of the experiences the character has, and represent the experiences accurately for people watching the show, it can definitely be taxing. I’m a pretty empathic person, as well, so it’s hard to not feel something for it. Between the cast, producers and my family, we have such a grounded, tight knit relationship. Almost like a comfort network, everybody is always looking out fir each other. It works and bring humility to the performance, and I stay healthy at the end of the day, so that’s good.
When you’re not acting, what do you do?
I’ve been writing and producing my own music. I’ve learned that one of the things that I love about film, and story telling is that ability to say things that you don’t necessarily know how to say yourself as a person, so you tell stories about it. But with acting in a show or directing, it requires a lot people to take a chance on you, to give you that opportunity, Where as, writing my own music, I have one program on my computer and I go home and do everything by myself. I program my synths, I put in my drum pattern, I record my vocals, I write my own lyrics, so I can say things that maybe I didn’t know how to say in an other way, and I could do it all by myself, which is cool. I also play a lot of video games, I build computers, my girlfriend binge various show and or movies at a time. We’ve binged all of the American Horror Story series, We’ve binged all of Game of Thrones, and now were on our Marvel Cinematic Universe marathon. And, of course, golf now...