The Umbrella Academy's Robert Sheehan and Justin H. Min on their characters' special connection
The Umbrella Academy is, at its core, the tale of a dysfunctional family and all of the sibling rivalries, super powers, robot mom drama, and talking-chimpanzee-butler hijinks that sort of story usually entails. The show gets a lot of mileage out of throwing different combinations of the Hargreeves clan together and watching sparks fly, but its most entertaining familial bond is between Klaus and Ben. Klaus (Robert Sheehan) is a charismatic, pansexual free-thinker who is frequently on and off the wagon and has the ability to talk to the dead. Ben (Justin H. Min) is much more cautious and reserved, and he also happens to be dead, which means Klaus is his only line of communication with the family. Their yin-and-yang dynamic gets even more complex in The Umbrella Academy’s second season, which teleports them back to the 1960s. With little reason to believe they’ll ever make it back to the proper timeline, the two settle into the decade, taking advantage of Ben’s powers and their foresight of future events to fashion Klaus into an early-New Age cult leader. Ahead of the second season premiere, The A.V. Club spoke with Sheehan and Min about their brotherly bond, the appeal of a Sheehan-led cult, and how that all—somehow—parallels America’s two-party system.
The Umbrella Academy season two hits Netflix on Friday, July 31.