Steven Krueger addresses Hollywood “stigma” attached to actors from the CW network
Steven Krueger has been an actor on the rise for the last decade, and his recent work on Showtime’s Yellowjackets has brought him the most visibility and acclaim he’s enjoyed in his career thus far. When Far Out recently spoke to him about season three of the show, he revealed several doors have opened for him in Hollywood thanks to Yellowjackets. However, it wasn’t always like this due to the “stigma” attached to actors with his television background.
After a handful of roles in TV shows like Parenthood, Pretty Little Liars, and Two and a Half Men, the Wisconsin native’s career truly kicked into gear when he landed the role of Joshua Rosza on the CW’s Vampire Diaries spinoff, The Originals. Krueger remained a fixture until The Originals’ last episode in 2018, and he admitted that he was grateful for how much working on the show taught him about the television industry.
However, Krueger revealed that even though a lot of actors who began their careers on the teen-skewing network have gone on to enjoy huge success like he has on Yellowjackets – such as Reacher’s Alan Ritchson, Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles, and The Tomorrow People’s Peyton List – it’s always been a difficult path to walk. However, he has noticed that Hollywood tends to view CW alums in a certain way.
“Man, I loved the CW back in the day,” remembered Krueger. “I thought that it was such an awesome on-ramp and runway for young people in the industry to kind of come up and work on good material, work with other talented people, work on storylines that really resonated with a younger audience.”
Unfortunately, though, he admitted, “I’ve seen it be difficult for people to make the jump from those types of shows to something that is a little bit more in this elevated world where Yellowjackets lives. So, I think for me, this has been a wonderful opportunity to solidify myself in that world. Hopefully, this leads to other things that are kind of at this level. These are the types of people that I really want to be working with.”
When asked to elaborate on the barrier he believes exists for stars who began on CW shows, Krueger insisted, “It’s not just actors, sadly enough. lt really upsets me. Honestly, it’s people behind the camera, people who are cinematographers and directors and writers. There seems to be a stigma that if you started on the CW and worked there for a while, they don’t know if you’re actually good enough to jump into the higher-level stuff. And to me, that’s the opposite of the truth.”
“The amount of talented people that I worked with when I first started in this industry is mind-blowing,” Krueger said. “So, yeah, I hope that stigma goes away over time. I think that it will. I think that will kind of fade as people realise, ‘Oh, that was actually really high-quality stuff that we were doing on that network, and people who were working on it should be doing other things.”
“You were doing an awful lot of work as well,” Krueger added. “That, to me, is part of the amazing thing. Like, you know, whereas now when we shoot an episode of Yellowjackets, we have about 14 days or so to shoot. We were shooting episodes in seven and a half days back when I was in The Originals. Granted, the scripts were a bit shorter because you were playing for commercial breaks and all that kind of stuff, whereas now we’re doing a full hour. But still, we had much fewer resources, right? We didn’t have as much money, and we had much less time, and we were still putting out really good, high-quality television shows.”
“I just think that you cut your teeth in those trenches a little bit, and you learn the ropes, and the people that were doing that work are very talented,” Krueger added. “So, I certainly hope they start to get more opportunities as we get further away from the relic of the CW.”
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