Evil’s Kurt Boggs was on the outside looking in for a long time.
But then he got a firsthand experience with a demon during Evil Season 2, which sent his mind reeling.
Kurt Fuller is the man who breathes life into Boggs, and after Evil Season 3 Episode 4, we jumped at the opportunity to chat with him.
During season two, Kurt was so excited about the possibility of joining the assessors on a mission, wanting to get even more involved and write a book.
And then, he had his own close encounter and even a nose-boop, which significantly colored his world coming into the new season.
“Really, until he got booped, Kurt was an outsider. As Robert [King] said once, that I was patronizingly aware of what Kristen was doing, but I didn’t believe there was any meat to the bone there. She was doing it for money, and the other people were just loony, pretty much, until I got booped.
“And when I got booped, it may as well have been a two-by-four to my head because it changed everything. Because all of a sudden, for the first time, I experienced something I couldn’t explain away with science or education or empirical knowledge or anything in the corporeal world that would explain it. I saw something.
“And coming into season three, I still want to write that book. In fact, the book, in the second half of the season, becomes a major plot point.”
Sister Andrea is in the hot seat. Needing a psychiatric evaluation didn’t phase her because she knew she could trust Boggs after his experience. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy going for the Sister with Boggs on board.
How involved will he be? Fuller said, “In the second half of the season, I will say many, many, many, many, many interesting things happen to Dr. Boggs because of that boop and because of sister Andrea.
“And it goes in some very, very unexpected and exciting directions, I will say. By far, the best season for Dr. Boggs is coming up.”
One of the fascinating parts of Evil Season 3 Episode 4 came when Kurt and Sister Andrea met to talk in his office. Sister Andrea shared the story of her first vision, which occurred during a beautiful song. Later, Boggs was at the piano, seemingly hoping for another encounter.
“Oh, I think he’s searching and worried,” Fuller said. “When he’s assessing her in that session, she says things that are not exactly like what happened to him, but they resonate certain feelings, certain sounds.
“Her emotional connection to what she saw resonates with him and what happened, what he experienced in that hallway when he got booped.
And as much as he wants to say to himself, ‘Ah, it didn’t happen. It was just a weird thing. I was tired. I had taken my medication,’ whatever rational explanation he wants to come up with, her ‘irrational’ and yet very correct and spiritual explanation resonates with him.
And he really now has opened the door, a crack, to the possibility that there is a whole other plane of existence that he has never thought, never experienced, or even explored in his probably 50 years of practice.
“And he’s, I think, petrified and excited if something happened when he played those heavenly chords. I think it’s both things going on.”
While Boggs is struggling and thinking about all of these things, Sister Andrea comes to him, hoping he will help her case as the Church is railroading her into retirement.
But just how what Boggs has experienced will play into his assessment of the Sister is anything but straightforward Fuller said that until he had his chat with Sister Andrea, he was still 90% certain that he never saw anything at all. But he’s still searching for the truth.
“He’s been pretty successful explaining it away with the rules that he’s lived his life by, but it doesn’t fully cover it. And so the uncertain Dr. Boggs meets the incredibly certain Sister Andrea — certain, rock-solid certainty — that all these things I don’t believe in do exist.
“When his uncertainty meets her certainty, certainty wins. Because of her experience and how it hits something in him on a non-intellectual level, he actually feels what she’s talking about when she encountered her first other-worldly being; it makes sense to him. And it resonates in a very true way with him on a nonverbal level.
And that sort of opens the door to that world. And he ends up walking through and going in.”
Being a part of the Church’s proceeding into Sister Andrea also lets Boggs inside of the Church in a way he has never experienced. Unexpectedly, the door has opened to him, and he’s more than part of the group. He’s integral to Sister Andrea’s fate within it.
He’s also faced with the fact that the Church doesn’t always mean what they preach because what the Church is doing to Sister Andrea because of what she saw with the Cardinal is on another level altogether.
Fuller said, “I’ve never thought of Boggs as a particularly spiritual or religious man, except to the extent that spirituality can be used therapeutically for people, that even if it’s not true, if somebody believes it, that’s fine.
“If that helps you recover from something, I’m all for it, even though I don’t think it’s true at all. Well, now, he goes into the Church — and there are other scenes coming up where he goes back — because the existence of demons or devils exists.
“It immediately means that the existence of God is not only possible but probable if these other things exist because there are two sides to that coin. And Boggs, though, I think is essentially a good man. Leland has a part in this. Boggs is over-matched by the dark forces. He’s over-matched. He’s outmaneuvered, and he’s swept away.”
That sounds quite ominous and brings up a good point. Why is a man like Leland even in the room during a tribunal such as Sister Andrea’s?
Leland is the Sister’s accuser, but he has a presence as if he’s an essential member of the Church. That suggests that the Church has no idea what evil is, let alone how to combat it.
Fuller laughed. “Whenever he shows up at the Church or an office, I go, ‘What the hell? Why would they let him in?’ But Leland is shameless. He’s absolutely shameless. And he’s like Zelig. He just shows up places as if he belongs, and people accept it.
And in other episodes, he just shows up in my office. He’s just there. I’m doing something. He’s there. And I started talking to him. I don’t ever say, ‘How’d you get in? Where’d you come from? Why are you here?’ You don’t ask those questions because he belongs. He acts like he belongs, and it’s sort of hypnosis.
“You start to accept it. ‘Oh, here’s Leland. I guess he’s here now. Okay.’ I mean, it’s a very odd thing, but it’s very consistent in the show. So I know they’re doing it on purpose. You’ll see.
“I mean, he keeps showing up, and I never go, ‘Do you knock? The door was locked,’ or anything. He’s just in the room all of a sudden, like an apparition.”
It makes it seem like the Church is more demonic than they would care to admit. “Oh, absolutely. I think that’s without question. I think they’re dying to not be. And I think that it’s like we all do. We don’t want to think about it. We don’t want to admit it.
“And so we interpret things with the best possible outcome for us, but it’s not the true outcome. It’s just the one we can live with. And I think that’s what the Church is doing.”
New episodes of Evil Season 3 drop on Sundays only on Paramount+, and Evil Season 4 is already on the books.
Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She’s a member of the Critic’s Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on Twitter and email her here at TV Fanatic.
