Dead Boy Detectives Stars George Rexstrew & Jayden Revri On Season 1’s Romances And Heartbreaks

Warning: Spoilers for Dead Boy Detectives season 1!

Dead Boy Detectives co-stars George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri open up about joining The Sandman universe on Netflix. The world of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman franchise is getting ready to expand on Netflix, as another corner of his world is coming to life this year: Dead Boy Detectives. After a brief introduction on Doom Patrol, the Dead Boy Detectives are now getting reimagined as they are set to headline their own TV show.

Dead Boy Detectives follows the adventures of Edwin Paine (Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Revri), two detectives who died many years ago and are now doing everything they can to escape Death herself. They run the Dead Boy Detectives agency together, as new allies join their crusade and help the world with various supernatural mysteries. While the concept may have started as a spinoff from Doom Patrol, the show now lives in the world of The Sandman, and season 1 proves how connected the two series are for Netflix.

Screen Rant recently interviewed Edwin and Charles themselves, as Rexstrew and Revri discussed taking on some of Gaiman’s creations and joining a corner of The Sandman universe. Throughout the interview, the two Dead Boy Detectives actors chat about exploring the source material, their personal favorite storylines, and what they hope to see in a potential season 2.

George Rexstrew & Jayden Revri Break Down Dead Boy Detectives Season 1

Screen Rant: I love that we start in media revs long after your ghostly journeys have begun. But for you as actors, how did you get into the mindsets of your characters? Did you go back to The Sandman source material? Was it strictly script?

Jayden Revri: I mean, both. We were fortunate enough to get sent every single comic that the Dead Boy Detectives had appeared in, so I know me and George both read through those, and obviously, we got sent the script. So we were really spoiled for choice. We kind of took a little bit of the comics, but also wanted to stay true to the script that we had and yeah, we were just spoiled for choice, really.

George Rexstrew: It was very similar to what Jayden said, to be honest. I dove straight into the comics and gleaned as much from those as I could and then I mined the script as we did, and I researched into the period, the Victorian and Edwardian periods. I actually took a couple of ballet classes. I knew how I wanted Edwin to move. I got a sense of that, so I just thought, ‘Let’s sort out this spine of mine.’ But we were fortunate to have such a great creative team across the board, so when the costume came on, the hair was made and it all kind of fell into place.

Supernatural Romantic Sparks Are In The Dead Boy Detectives Air

The boys are dead, but romance is alive, it seems, especially the sparks flying between Charles and Crystal. What do you have to say for yourself, Jayden, what’s that trajectory like?

Jayden Revri: I think that Charles has spent 30 years with his best friend solving cases, and suddenly this beautiful clairvoyant girl has come into the agency and has seen him, and I think it immediately just sends his teenage brain everywhere and he becomes absolutely infatuated with her, but throughout the process, I think, forgets the feelings of his 30-year-old best friend. [laughs]

George Rexstrew: And I was fuming! [laughs]

You’re feeling like a third wheel, but you’re no slouch in the romance department either. The boys are buzzing. Can we talk about maybe some characters coming into your orbit?

George Rexstrew: Yeah, I might be the third world there, but I got three love interests, Tatiana, which is, I mean, who’d have thought it?

Jayden Revri: I mean, look at his face. How could he not have three love interests?

George Rexstrew: We’ve got Lukas Gage [as] the Cat King, and that was really fun to play because that really is a visceral kind of sexual awakening for Edwin. But I think it does go beyond that. I think the relationship with Monty is more innocent. Edwin’s definitely reticent at first, but he does soften and I think Edwin kind of discovers the concept of flirting with him and they share their first kiss, which is really sweet.

And then I think the final ultimate love is Charles, which Edwin comes to fully realize. I think it’s a really, really profound love. I think Charles in many ways is his first love, and I think the way that love manifests is difficult to articulate, actually, because I don’t think it’s the kind of love that you see between two male characters on screen often. There’s a real innocence too. It kind of feels like two kids at primary school, do you know what I mean?

Dead Boy Detectives Crossovers With The Sandman Universe

You guys are in the Sandman universe, and we see Death in the trailer. But if you get to carry on, what is one Sandman character you want to see your character interact with most and why?

George Rexstrew: I would love to interact with Desire. I think Mason [Alexander Park] does such a good job with that character, and I think Edwin would be so uncomfortable.

Jayden Revri: That’s literally all that’s going through my head is imagining Edwin and them together. I would choose Dream because I think Dream’s energy, I know that is the way he is, but he stays at one pace, and I think having Charles around might lift his mood a little bit. [laughs]

Dead Boy Detectives Season 2 Hopes & Wishes

The final moments of season 1 were sent from a demon in Hell to torture me personally for however long until season 2, but…

George Rexstrew: Were you gutted about Niko? You can’t be killed off in this show!

Jayden Revri: That’s the best part!

What aspects of your backstory, present-day, or agency would you like to explore in season 2?

George Rexstrew: I’d love to explore Edwin’s relationship with his parents because it’s something that you don’t really glean from the comic books. There are only a couple of illustrations of that relationship, and they’re with him on the way to school. They drop him at the boarding school, and they’re never seen again. I think I’d be really curious to play that.

Jayden Revri: I’d love to watch that.

About Dead Boy Detectives

Do you have a pesky ghost haunting you? Has a demon stolen your core memories? You may want to ring the Dead Boy Detectives. Meet Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), “the brains” and “the brawn” behind the Dead Boy Detectives agency. Teenagers born decades apart who find each other only in death, Edwin and Charles are best friends and ghosts… who solve mysteries. They will do anything to stick together – including escaping evil witches, Hell and Death herself. With the help of a clairvoyant named Crystal (Kassius Nelson) and her friend Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), they are able to crack some of the mortal realm’s most mystifying paranormal cases.

Check out our other Dead Boy Detectives interviews:

• Kassius Nelson & Yuyu Kitamura
• Steve Yockey & Beth Schwartz

Source: Screen Rant Plus