Eric has this tendency to lore drop in interviews and then kind of apologise for doing it. I know he doesn’t want to derail the interviews, but I want to hear him speak for hours about all the ways he relates to Daniel.
People always joke that he’s not acting, and I get what they mean and it’s funny, but he is still acting. It’s so difficult to not just play yourself when you have so much in common with a character. It can be helpful but it can be detrimental too. He doesn’t get the escapism the others get. You can’t so easily vanish into a character you see so much of yourself in and a lesser actor would just play a caricature of themselves. But Eric and Daniel are still distinct. There’s no point where you forget you’re looking at Daniel.
And he portrays Daniel with very thinly veiled vulnerability. You rarely see it, and then he lets the tiniest little bit and it is soul crushing every time. There aren’t these huge moments where he breaks down because the world has hardened him in a way that it hasn’t the other vampires. He didn’t have immortality to shield him. He had to build a shell around himself all alone.
I don’t know where I’m trying go with this. I just think Eric is wonderful.