The Umbrella Academy’s Robert Sheehan on the Origins of Season 2’s Klaus Cult

When the first full trailer for The Umbrella Academy season two arrived there was an element of the new episodes that much of the fandom quickly latched onto, and it can be summarized in two words: Klaus cult. After the Hargreeves children find themselves scattered to the winds, Klaus finds himself in the most precarious situation of them all by being the leader of a new-age cult in the 1960s. ComicBook.com spoke to Klaus himself Robert Sheehan about the new season and the origins of this idea, which doesn’t find its roots in the comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá.

“Actually that came out of me and Steve (Blackman, showrunner). That’s the truth. That’s the God’s honest truth,” Sheehan said. “So we were talkin’ about the ’60s being the kind of likely time period we jump back into it. And, I was like, ‘You know what makes Klaus interesting? It’s when he’s sort of tumbling into a different form. He’s transforming into something, he’s changing, changing, changing all the time.’ And I said that it would be good if he became a cult leader.”

He continued, “There was many ideas kind of spittin’ around. It came out out of them chats, I assume, you know? But then all the rest of it was Steve and the brilliant writers who, who then decided to kind of make the, make the Klaus, make the cult Destiny’s Children. Make it a sort of another allegory, a symptom, of what’s bugging Klaus underneath. Sort of what’s buggin’ him when he’s sober.”

The one other element about season two that rivals the hype for Klaus’ cult is the fandom’s interest in how he and his deceased brother Ben (Justin Min, now a series regular) spend their time together. The love and adoration for this pair is one of the strongest among Umbrella Academy fans, but for Sheehan that love is something best kept out of sight and out of mind while working.

“That’s a tricky one now…You can’t be kind of absorbing too much of that up for fear that your ego will swell up to the size of the garden shed,” the actor told us “And then we’ve got one eye on their opinion, their imaginary illusory opinion, which you can’t know and then it starts to F with the natural process. So, I think there’s, there’s an element of mental gymnastics in order to kind of keep that where it should be, which is offset, frankly.”

Set to premiere on Netflix on Friday, July 31, The Umbrella Academy season two also stars Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Aidan Gallagher, Ellen Page, and Emmy Raver-Lampman.