Dutch actor Gijs Blom chatted with Digital Journal’s Markos Papadatos about his 2021 Daytime Emmy nomination for the family-friendly fantasy series “The Letter for the King” on Netflix.
“The Letter for the King” follows a teenage knight-in-training Tiuri (played by Amir Wilson), who receives a secret letter from “The Black Knight,” and the fate of the kingdom depends on that letter reaching the king. Tiuri embarks on an epic quest to deliver it to King Favian (Yorick van Wageningen), in an effort to stop the world from being plunged into darkness.
Blom is nominated for the 2021 Daytime Emmy Award for “Outstanding Lead Actor in a Daytime Fiction Program” for his superb acting performance in “The Letter for the King,” where he played the villainous Prince Viridian.
On scoring this Daytime Emmy nomination, Blom remarked, “I felt honored, and it feels kind of weird. I just finished my degree in theater last week. I am really happy with all of the other nominations for ‘The Letter for the King’ as well.”
He was drawn to his character, Prince Viridian, for many reasons. “I loved the challenge of playing this character. I really enjoyed him because he is the villain of the show so to portray a villain you need to make him your hero. I had a lot of fun,” he admitted. “Also, getting to go to New Zealand for the first time was amazing, and shooting in Prague was awesome,” he said.
“It was awesome to be able to portray a character in a book that I read when I was a child. The movie is based on a Dutch novel,” he added. “To see this Dutch novel getting turned into this huge Hollywood-like production is fantastic.”
This series earned a total of 12 Daytime Emmy nominations. Aside from Blom nominated for “Outstanding Lead Actor,” Amir Wilson is vying for “Outstanding Younger Performer in a Daytime Fiction Program,” Andy Serkis is up for “Outstanding Guest Performer in a Daytime Fiction Program,” and the directing team has been recognized for “Outstanding Directing Team for a Daytime Fiction Program.” “All of these nominations are totally crazy. I feel very happy about them. It was such a huge show, it was the biggest thing that I had ever worked on and there were so many people involved,” he said.
He had great words about working with Amir Wilson, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis (who played Lavinia), and the entire cast. “They were really nice, I enjoyed spending time with them. To be honest, I loved everybody in the cast,” he said. “We had a lot of fun and I am glad that I got to meet all of those people. I have fond memories.”
On his daily motivations as an actor, he said, “Doing film allows me to experience things and meet new people and see new places that I would otherwise never get to meet and see. I find that very exciting because I get easily intimidated. At the same time, I just love movies and I love to tell stories myself. Film is the closest thing that you can get to actual magic, in my opinion. I love the whole package of it so that’s what inspires me to work every day.”
His advice for young and aspiring actors is: “Never take it for granted because it doesn’t matter if you are going great or if you are in an all-time low, everything can change at any second or any day. That’s just the truth. Just keep working at it and don’t give up.”
On the title of the current chapter of his life, he responded, “New Beginnings.”
For his fans and supporters, he said, “I want to thank them, and I want to tell them that they touch my heart. I know that there are a lot of people that have followed my journey since I did a very small Dutch feature film called ‘Boys’ back in 2014 and I still get messages from those people on a weekly basis. That amazes me because those messages come from everywhere around the world. While ‘Boys’ was a small film, the story resonated with people.”
Blom defined the word success as when he is “really enjoying” what he is doing. “Success is something different for everyone,” he explained.
He concluded about “The Letter for the King,” “Take children seriously. They are the ones that still act out of their heart and out of what they feel is right instead of what they are told and what they think is right.”
For more information on Dutch actor Gijs Blom, follow him on Instagram.
