Developed by Jeff Davis, the hit MTV drama series Teen Wolf has returned for a super-sized, 24-episode third season. Picking up four months after the events that nearly ended Jackson’s (Colton Haynes) life and resurrected Peter Hale (Ian Bohen), Season 3 finds teen werewolf Scott McCall (Tyler Posey) and his friends Stiles (Dylan O’Brien), Lydia (Holland Roden) and Allison (Crystal Reed) beginning their junior year of high school while having to deal with a new threat has arrived in Beacon Hills – a deadly pack of Alpha werewolves intent on bringing Derek (Tyler Hoechlin) into their fold.

With the filming relocated to Los Angeles, Collider was invited to check out the set and chat with the cast for a series of exclusive interviews. While hanging out on a break from shooting, actor Charlie Carver (who plays one of the twin Alphas this season) talked about how he came to the show, wanting to do a different kind of role after Desperate Housewives was done, how much he enjoys the action stuff and the prosthetics, how nice it is to join a show that’s already a proven success, and what it’s been like to work with his twin brother, Max. Check out what he had to say after the jump.

Collider: How did you come to this show? Did you and your brother sign on for this, right after finishing up on Desperate Housewives?

CHARLIE CARVER: Yeah. There had been whispers, over the summer, that this role was coming up and that Jeff [Davis] was interested. I didn’t know what I’d be doing in the fall, and I ended up doing a couple of indies and a Lifetime thing. But, I really liked the sound of it. They’d been on a twin hunt and we went in for the final reading, and then tested for it.

Was it nice to go from playing a kid on Desperate Housewives to a role that’s a bit more adult?

CARVER: Definitely! It’s so funny that it feels like it was so long ago, but Housewives in May (2012), and here I am, doing something completely different, only a few months later. It was such a good experience there, having such good mentors on set, with Doug Savant and Felicity Huffman, who we worked with the most. Here, it’s a completely different style of set. You can tell it’s like a family, and I feel like they’ve welcomed me and Max right in.

Was it important for you to do a very different kind of role?

CARVER: Yeah! Right off the bat, they were like, “Okay, we’ve gotta get you to the gym. We’ve gotta get you some stunt work and some movement coaching.” It’s been really exciting because it’s the kind of thing, growing up, that I really aspired to do and wanted to try, especially the action stuff and getting to have prosthetics.

Does it feel like you’re really using all of yourself, with a role like this?

CARVER: Yeah. The days on set are very dynamic because you can be moving from one shot that’s more intimate or casual and teenage, and then they cart you off to another place where you’re slicing open bodies with your bare hands. It’s really fun!

Is it nice to join a show that’s already a proven success?

CARVER: Totally! I’ve watched all of the episodes now, and I so appreciate the writing and how it seamlessly moves from funny and entertaining, but it has this edginess to it that I don’t think a lot of stuff has, especially for a teenage/young adult audience, although it’s transcended those audiences, too. And the way it’s shot is so cinematic. Watching it, I’m just like, “Damn, this looks really good!” And it hasn’t ever gone too far, or jumped the shark, in any way. I’m new, but I can feel that this season is right alongside seasons past.

What can you say about who your character is and how he fits into the story this season?

CARVER: Well, the Alpha pack is in town, and my brother and I are the youngest members. We’re the twin Alphas of the group. Our mission is to infiltrate the school and insert ourselves tactically into this group of kids to test things out and wreak some havoc.

How has it been to work with your brother, Max?

CARVER: I like talking to Jeff [Davis] because he’s a twin. When I heard about the stuff we would be doing, I was like, “Oh, that sounds so complicated!,” but I trust him fully. He’s definitely writing my brother and I different parts. We each get our own things to do. I think he’s excited about it because he gets to put himself in there, too.

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Jeff Davis recently answered some more fan questions. Check out what they asked and what Jeff had to say below:

Q. Were you all of you just trying to throw us off by saying there’d be “no Sterek” this season, or do you consider what we got these first two episodes really “no Sterek”? ’cause I gotta say… If this is no Sterek, then we love it! Derek and Stiles had some AMAZING scenes together so far! And then I can’t wait for you to write some “actual Sterek”. LOL.
A. I think you’re referring to someone saying there would be very little Stiles and Derek interaction this season. I actually don’t remember ever saying that.

Q. could blue eyes mean that you were dead before? since peter and jackson both have blue eyes
A. Nope.

Q. Will we see any Scott/Cora interaction?
A. Yes indeed.

Q. Does Dr. Deaton have anything to do anything with Derek’s past?
A. He does indeed. He was especially important to Derek’s family.

Q. Hi Jeff, Do u have any comments about the poltergeist Hale family theory being the ones terrorizing beacon hills?
A. Poltergeists? The movie scared me as a kid but that’s all I can say for now.

Q. when derek accused lydia of using him to bring peter back to life, was derek aware that lydia was being controlled and didn’t actually have any agency?
A. Yes. He’s just a sourwolf.

Q. Hi Jeff, I was wondering if the special handshake/high-five at the beginning of Chaos Rising was a Scott and Stiles thing or a Tyler and Dylan thing? thanks!
A. That was a Tyler/Dylan thing! A pretty fun improv. “No look me” says Dylan.

was the mark on Allison and Lydia’s arm just for the bank, or was it also something else?
A. It’s more important than just a bank symbol.

Q. Was the blonde female in the storage room with Allison Erica or Heather? I’ve heard it could be either.
A. That was Erica. Underneath all of that makeup was the lovely Gage Golightly.

Q. We saw Dany in hospital in the trailer and you said he’ll date Ethan I HOPE YOU DID NOT HURT HIM TOO MUCH!!
A. I wouldn’t hurt Danny! But I might kill him

Q. If Scott had to choose between saving Stiles and Allison, who do you think he would choose?
A. He would find a way to save both.

Q. Where is the Camaro?
A. Derek has new wheels this season.

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Tyler Hoechlin plays broody Alpha werewolf Derek Hale, who recruits Daniel Sharman’s Isaac Lahey in his new pack in Season Two. Holland Roden plays popular student Lydia Martin, who finds herself in the middle of it all, plagued by terrifying visions. Crystal Reed plays Allison Argent, who is trying to deal with her secret relationship with werewolf Scott McCall and her family of werewolf hunters.

So we’ve seen the trailer for Season Three and it was really dark. A few days later you released another clip which also seemed to have a very Hitchcock flavour to it. Has there been a conscious choice to embrace more classic horror?
CT: It was a conscious choice, because the show is maturing. Jeff and I and some of the other writers didn’t really think we delivered on what we’d wanted to do, so we thought we’d do a lot more horror and suspense but ended up having a lot more action as well!

But yes, there is a tonal shift and I think it gives the actors a lot more interesting stuff to do. I think as the characters are maturing there’s an essence of how me mature in life we often encounter darker issues we have to deal with. I think the show has done a good job of building on each season.

Between Season Two and Season Three, some people have left the show, but you have a whole lot of new characters. How does it feel to have so many new people on set?
CR: I think we’re lucky in that we have really talented actors in our show, which makes our lives a lot easier. Not even just that, we also have just some really great people on set too.

HR: Yeah, personalities have mixed well.

CR: It makes a real difference when you’re comfortable and you like the people you’re working with. I think it’s a natural progression, I think people come and go. It’s interesting because we have, like, our core people [points at Sharman] He’s not one of them!

TH: We’re all waiting for him to make main cast!

DS: [Looks at watch] I’ve got ten minutes and then they’re going to kick me out.

CR: But as you can tell it doesn’t really matter. We all just mesh. Everybody gets along.

HR: It feels like Daniel’s part of the core!

CR: I know!

CT: Maybe, maybe he’ll be in the title sequence.

Cast: [Laughter]

CT: The thing that’s great this season, you’ve only had one here? [In the UK] Anyway, it’s not a secret that we’ve got this thing called the alpha pack coming, a whole new group of people, and we ended up getting some really fantastic actors. There are two twin boys, well, young men, and they’re really great personalities on set, they’ve been a lot of fun. And then we have our lead bad guy, who’s amazing, so it’s been really fun and they’ve been great additions.

That’ll switch out again, because we’re doing two parts to this season, we’re doing twelve and then another twelve. Jeff [Davis] likes to structure things so it’s like a mini-movie, a three act structure within twelve episodes. We’re doing a whole new storyline for the second twelve, and we start shooting that in July.

HR: What I love about it is that we’ve had a kind of graduation process from very much a romantic, teenage, John Hughes, personality-in-vain kind of show, which was a lot more innocent than almost anything else on TV, with stories very rich in romance, to a show where most of the new characters are adults.

It’s really taken a darker turn this season, almost moving more into the True Blood vein, getting a lot grittier and a lot more violent. Most of the newer characters are adults, so we’re moving away from the high school pack a little bit.

DS: The filming has also reflected that, there’s a lot of really- certainly in the first twelve, a lot of maturation. There are some really beautiful shots this season, from what I’ve seen. It was weird, because there are so many new characters this season, but [to Christian Taylor] I don’t know how you guys do it, they’re all such lovely people. They just fit in, it must be so rare.

CT: We got lucky!

DS: The twins were so much fun, and Gideon Emery is great, they all fit in. It seems to go along with the maturing of the show. It’s been a lot of fun to shoot.

TH: Well like you said about the cinematic thing, it’s always been something that we’ve pointed out about the show, that it feels cinematic. I think seasons one and two had their moments where it really felt that way, whereas this season, it’s the whole thing, it feels like you’re watching a feature film.

CT: Something happened this season, we got very lucky. We were shooting in Atlanta, which was a great experience, but we ended up winning something called the tax lottery, and we moved everything to Los Angeles. It’s a different experience shooting in Los Angeles, because it’s an industry town that was built over a hundred years, so if you need, say… a fire hydrant, you can get it in two minutes.

TH: Remember that, there’s a very important fire hydrant this season.

DS: Christian keeps it in his hotel room.

TH: He’s going to get fired for a spoiler on that one.

where do you think the appetite for this kind of genre fiction is? Is there a degree of saturation with so many shows about the supernatural on TV?
CT: It’s interesting; because I think what Jeff has done with this show is quite clever. It’s sort of a little bit postmodern in the sense that it’s very funny and doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it allows, in the sense of the show, to be quite scary and action packed.

I think for young people, this kind of stuff is very good to access, to talk about important things without actually talking about them. It gives them a framework to talk about issues that are important to them so I don’t think it will ever go away.

I think the Twilight stuff- not to rag on one of the most successful things in the world- but I do think that after that people have had to do it differently. I think we’ve seen with other things that have tried to mimic it that it doesn’t really work.

This show is succeeding because it’s a bit like The Little Engine That Could. We’ve been on like three or four major top ten lists of ‘guilty pleasures’ because people watch it for whatever initial reason and then realise it’s a bit more sophisticated and complex than they thought it would be. There will always be genre because it’s a great space to talk about things allegorically.

DS: Character archetypes in particular, no? That question is quite an interesting one, and I think our show stretches certain boundaries of what a genre show is. If you look at it as a genre show and you watch it through that lens you start to see things that don’t necessarily fit the mould. That gives it a bit more leg than maybe something that takes itself more seriously. It beats out the genre label by stretching a few boundaries.

CR: I think the show is sustainable because it’s grounded in real life relationships and it’s dealing with problems people often face, like parenting problems, sexuality, relationships with friends, even depression. All of these are things that people, teenagers and young adults don’t often have a place to talk about, so seeing it on TV can make a difference and I love that Jeff keeps that in play.

CT: I am also astounded by how amazingly dedicated fans are to the show. It’s so inspiring on many levels, and exciting, and they have their own dialogue about stuff on the show. They also create their own storylines about things that might not necessarily relate to the show directly but it gives them a creative outlet, which is great too.

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