[Warning: This post contains spoilers for Netflix’s The Society.]

You need to know something about Alex Fitzalan, who stars in Netflix’s latest bingeable teen drama The Society: He’s Australian. I bet you didn’t think Harry, the spoiled rich boy who pretty much screws over everyone in New Ham, could get any hotter. Welp, add an Aussie accent (and a way less problematic personality) and you’ve got the potential for another K. J. Apa.

If you need a little bit of a recap, The Society follows a group of teens who are stranded in a closed-off replica of their town and forced to create their own form of government, find a way home, and, most important, survive. Harry doesn’t make this easy. When HBIC Cassandra (Rachel Keller) attempts to rally the hordes of scared kids, Harry fights her for power every step of the way. Once she’s killed and her little sister Allie (Kathryn Newton) steps up, it’s the same deal until he eventually teams up with literal psychopath Campbell (Toby Wallace) for a violent overthrow. But there’s more to him than a hunger for power. He’s suffering from depression and an opioid addiction. By the end of the series, he hardly seems like a vicious adversary.

Maybe it’s the hair, but there’s something about this anti–Peter Kavinsky that is impossible to ignore. Cosmo spoke to Alex about season 2, Harry’s hate-on for Cassandra, and why he almost gave up on Hollywood right before The Society.



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Set the record straight: Is Harry a good guy or a bad guy?

I don’t think he’s either. I don’t think he’s either a good guy or a bad guy. It’s up to the viewer to decide, because everyone has a different moral view. Just generally speaking, he fits into a really gray area, where some things he does are good and some things he does are bad. And that’s a really interesting place to sit because we’re not sure how to feel about him. So that was a lot of fun.

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Why did Harry hate Cassandra so much?

Before the show kicks up, Harry’s been promised a lot. He was born into a family of privilege with a silver spoon in his mouth, so he’s come to expect a lot before we meet him. And part of that comes with an air of arrogance that he thinks he’s on top. And when someone challenges that, it’s quite confronting. So for him to deal with that in a healthy way is almost impossible. His relationship with Cassandra, someone who challenges him in school and ultimately beats him in a lot of things, is really difficult for him to process because he doesn’t know how. He’s used to getting what he wants ever since he was a kid.

There’s a theory that they dated and it didn’t go well, right?

[Laughs] Yeah. I never actually [pictured] it that way. I think there’s potentially an attraction, because in most of the scenes we had together, I noticed there was this kind of, like, tit for tat, almost flirtatious energy, but it was in a negative way. I don’t think they dated. I think they were mainly rivals in high school.

Netflix

If you get to season 2 and it comes back, how do you think Harry is going to be as a de facto leader?

Cosmopolitan

I think he’s completely unstable by the end of the series. He’s trying to keep it all together, but it’s going to come around and bite him in the ass because there’s a way that anyone can be led astray in the position he’s in. He is not recovered, he’s just putting on a facade—there’s no way he can think and make decisions and ultimately lead.

He has depression, right? It’s such a prevalent issue...and an opioid addiction. When you take these drugs, they almost make you feel better up until a certain point, then they stop working, so you need to take more and more. We didn’t really get to explore that, we only got small glimpses of it. I guess in the end, he never overcomes it.

If we ever do pick up for season 2, that’s where it’ll begin from, this issue he’s going through that he never really resolved. He’s just distracting himself from the real problem.

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I’m probably the only one, but I really care about Harry. He feels guilty for what has happened to Cassandra and it’s eating him up. This scene was really painful. You can’t just tell someone with depression to get your shit together & get up, that’s not how it works #thesociety pic.twitter.com/1ruGhRVfGO — mila (@boranbulbeni) May 11, 2019

How would you react if you were in a situation like the New Ham kids?

Oh my gosh, I have actually not thought of that. Let me think.

How could you not think of that?!

It wouldn’t go down well. I would be incredibly anxious the entire time. In my life, like Harry’s life, I’ve been told things are laid out, you know, we have a plan. You finish high school and you go to college, and then you’re brilliant. Once you have a degree, you get to work. I think this would just send me in the same direction as Harry—hopelessness that there is nothing that can be done. My sense of purpose would just escape me entirely and I would be very afraid.

So, what will we see in season 2?



It’s my theory, and I think it’s the right theory: There’s a way back. There definitely is, and I don’t know whether we find it or not, but I think it’ll be very interesting to watch us try and find it.

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You might not have noticed, but Netflix has a way of launching some actors to teen heartthrob status: Noah Centineo, Jacob Elordi, the whole cast of 13 Reasons Why...are you prepared to be a teen heartthrob?

It kind of scares me a lot...stuff like that. I’m just a kid from Brisbane and I found myself in Boston and we just made this thing. I got a call that I got the show when I was about to move back to Australia, because I was hitting so many roadblocks in the process of, you know, trying to live in another country and establish myself.

I’ve had a lot of false starts. I’ve trained myself not to allow myself to accept something unless it’s really happening. So I did three pilots. And all of those didn’t get picked up. This is my fourth pilot, and it’s actually happening. So yeah, I’m very anxious to see what people think.

Emily Tannenbaum Entertainment Editor Emily is the entertainment editor at Cosmopolitan, which is a nice way of saying she watches way too much TV and constantly wants to tell you about it.

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