Posted in: Paramount+, TV | Tagged: Kristian Ventura, School Spirits

School Spirits: Ventura on Show's Prophetic Themes & Lasting Bonds

School Spirits star Kristian Ventura spoke with us about how the Paramount+ series makes you think about life and the friendships he's made.

One resonating theme on the Paramount+ supernatural drama School Spirits is family and the need to build community. While high school is the perfect place to build that, most spirits stuck at Split River High School are forever bound to the campus grounds. It's something that Maddie Means (Peyton List) discovers when she's caught between two worlds as she tries to find out what happened to her, having originally investigated her disappearance before her body resurfaced. With season three, the secrets of the school are still being unraveled as the incoming superintendent (Jennifer Tilly) threatens to shut it down, and Maddie and her friends, alive and dead, race against time to uncover them all. Kristian Ventura, who plays Simon Elroy, was originally Maddie's best friend and her only means of contact with the living world, finds himself in a precarious situation as he's now in a similar position to the one Maddie was in, stuck between the living and dead worlds as she finally returned to her body. Ventura spoke to Bleeding Cool about how the series has made him think about its confrontation with mortality, and how he's embraced and grown with his TV family.

School Spirits Star Kristian Ventura on How Supernatural Series Affected His Outlook on Life and Bonding with Castmates

Since you've been on School Spirits from the beginning, has the show shaped your outlook on life and/or spiritually?

Well, it will always be life's greatest mystery what happens when the lights are out. Not that this show is trying to offer an answer to that, because it can't possibly be answered. It has made me think about time and how we age. The problems that the ghosts go through are expected to be solved when you're 45 or 50 years old, and you had enough time to think. You have kids, you're teaching them how to live, and certainly you have your shit handled. No, they don't.

These guys are a hundred years old, and they don't. It kind of makes the show, not in the spiritual sense, but in the reality sense, it makes me question, how much time do we really have to look at our problems in the face before we grow old and we're the same person? That's what this show makes me think about: Time is not the true metric for personal development; it's just something that goes.

How do you feel that you've grown with your fellow castmates like Peyton, Milo [Manheim], Nick [Pugliese], Sarah [Yarkin], Spencer [MacPherson], Kiara [Pichardo], Rainbow [Wedell], and everyone else?

It has. A lot of us started the show, maybe like 21 or 22, it was our first gig, truly, and it's rare for a show to even get. It's a dog-eat-dog world as an actor. You book one thing, it's done. To be able to return to the same place in Vancouver, now that we've known each other for four to five years. It is sentimental that no one became a prick, honestly. These guys had baby faces when I met them, and we are still talking. I'm going to see Rainbow tomorrow. She's still in LA, and she lives in Canada and Australia. We love each other throughout the off-seasons, because we saw each other when we were young and vulnerable. They say, "Fame or wealth doesn't change you; it just magnifies who you are." I'll tell you right now, Tom, who it magnified this cast…they're great people, and I hope that comes across in their performances because they are Class A people.

New episodes of School Spirits, which also stars Ci Hang Ma, Miles Elliot, and Josh Zuckerman, stream on Wednesdays through March 4th.

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