From the jump (pun intended), I’ve been a staunch advocate of Victor (and Scott McCord, who plays him), and this season, he’s been put through it. On the heels of sending Tabitha off into the unknown and having her return with his father, he unearths the long-suppressed memory that as a boy he sent his mother on a quest to the bottle tree, and her and Eloise’s death, because he trusted Thomas. Once again his psyche is nearly shattered. He’s resilient to a point. And now, Tabitha’s retrieving memories that are not her own, suggesting an even tighter tether to Victor and Henry.
Buckle up, #FROMily, because the finale is coming this Sunday. But take heart that we’re getting a fourth season in 2026. And that’s not a typo. Before you panic, remember there were 15 months between Season 2 and Season 3 and you did fine, and it was worth the wait.
Earlier this week, I chatted with McCord about Victor’s journey this season, and since we know we’re coming back, I’ll share part two of our conversation next week. First up, he talks about getting to play the father/son arc opposite Robert Joy — and look for another sweet scene in the finale that will absolutely make you ugly cry.
Like the other cast members we’ve spoken with, McCord knew nothing going into Season 3, and when he ventured a guess, he wasn’t even close. “One hundred percent of the time that I get this idea where it’s going, it never ends up going that way. I didn’t know that there was gonna be a Henry, I didn’t know there was gonna be a father. And even when we met the father in those first scripts, because they usually set up two scripts at a time for each block – that’s how we shoot – I didn’t realize that he was gonna make it into town,” he says.
“I didn’t realize that, not only was he gonna make it into town, but then even when that happened, you think, ‘Okay, maybe by the end of the season we’ll end up converging somehow, something will happen.’ And you never know where any of it’s gonna go. So I saw those first two scripts, probably within a certain amount of time, and the reveal of Henry and Tabitha meeting Henry, and all of a sudden we’re in Maine, and Victor has a last name, Victor Kavanaugh. It was all new to me and yet, wonderful. [Series creator and showrunner] John Griffin, bless him, has just given me great season after season in terms of Victor’s story and arc, and everything.”
“So, then all of a sudden, I got episode five, and they’re like, ‘Nope, you’re meeting him. It’s happening. It’s on.’ We never know the milestone events of the season for anybody, the story points, the arc of it, or where it’s gonna even end up. In terms of moving forward from episode 10, which you’ve seen is pretty epic, I have no idea where it’s gonna go. I go for walks and I sort of think to myself, ‘What happens now to Henry and Victor?’ We’re always trying to guess.”
The moment where Henry and Victor see each other again was devastating and beautiful and extraordinary to watch unfold onscreen. McCord explains that there was a method to how he and Joy were able to capture all of that emotion in their reunion. “What a thrilling and challenging, beautifully challenging, adventure to go on with Robert, because with a big ensemble show, we had these scenes together while that adventure was being thrust forward, and Victor’s clearly on this plight of right. Not only saving them, but saving him,” he shares.
“Robert’s a veteran of the business. He’s been around for a long time. A wonderful, beautiful human being, a generous actor. We were always consciously trying to find those moments in [our] scenes, and it was just there in the writing, where you have the father and son trying to find each other.”
“And not only that, but trying to figure out what it means. How do I be the son? How do I be the father here?” That dynamic that was set up was wonderful, of course, to have to be tackling that while we’re going down in the caves, while I’m trying to take charge and be the parent in that situation.”
Because the show shoots two episodes at a time, McCord and Joy ended shooting Victor and Henry’s meeting second, but they managed to keep themselves isolated from each other ahead of filming that pivotal scene. “I always say in my head, it would’ve been great to have done that meeting scene first, but because of the piecemeal nature of filming, you’re just shooting things out of order,” he explains.
“It actually worked out wonderfully, but it worked out that there was a another scene that we did first, which is the scene following that in the next episode where Henry is in my room and I come in and tell him I have to go and do this thing, and he says, ‘I’m coming with you.'”
“So we did one of these scenes where we’re trying to connect, really, for the first time as this new adventure, this new thing, is beginning. I was so nervous meeting Robert to begin with, and of course I was hearing all these things about him, and I was doing my best to not know anything. I wanted it to be as raw and real and as new to me as possible. I wanted him to be as new to me as possible.”
“Sometimes as actors, when we’re gonna work with a certain director or an actor, we can look them up. This is the beauty of what we have now. Everything is available to us. And with him, I did nothing. There was this thing with Victor, as he says, ‘I never drew pictures of him. I made him into dreams,’ as Victor did with a lot of his traumatic memories.”
“So the thing that came up for me initially was, ‘How often have I thought about him? And [if not], what’s the trauma [of seeing him now]? So what was cool was we went in on that first day together to do this scene with [director] Alexandra LaRoche. And we did this neat thing where we met [as Scott and Robert], kept everything very brief and simple, and we didn’t gun ahead and try and really get each other and be around each other and get into each other’s energy too much. Because the next scene that we were gonna shoot was the meeting scene.”
“And similarly, on that day we were separated for that shoot, which went on for about four or five hours, so that we weren’t seeing each other between shots even. What was nice is that by the time, and we shot that scene in pieces, that we got to the hug, that hug was really happening for the first time. So that certainly helped the scene. And I think Robert felt the same way, and to be on the other side of him and those eyes of his.”
“Every time we go in and shoot, I’ve been talking about this a lot lately… I was scared to do the scene that day, of course, but the emotional resonance of it all, the homework that I had done, was so much about this guilt that I felt towards him, and this whole lifetime between us that had been lost.”
“And so I thought, ‘If I have that, all I have to do is show up, and I’m gonna just look at his eyes and sometimes, I didn’t wanna look in his eyes. Each time we did a take, it was different. But as soon as I looked at him, he would say my name, the way he would say Victor, and I think he touched me. It was a tough shoot in a way, just the challenge of really trying to get there. But I feel like we hit something.” [I give you Exhibit A below.]
From wraps up Season 3 airs this Sunday, dropping first on the MGM+ app at 12:01 am ET and airing linearly at 9 pm/8c on MGM+ in the US and on Paramount+ via Prime Video subscription channels in Canada. All episodes through 309 are available on MGM+ online and via the app and on Prime Video in the US, and on Paramount+ in Canada.
ICYMI, all of our previous coverage — 40+ pieces, including new Season 3 interviews with Corteon Moore, Pegah Ghafoori, Ricky He, Robert Joy, and Catalina Sandino Moreno — is here. Check back this weekend for my preview of Sunday’s season finale and a new conversation with Harold Perrineau. Look for part two of my conversation with Scott McCord next week.
Photos courtesy of Chris Reardon/MGM+.
