How Aidan Gallagher landed the role of Five on The Umbrella Academy

Good child actors are hard to find, so that The Umbrella Academy found someone as bloody good as Aidan Gallagher to play Five is a small miracle.

The Umbrella Academy’s group of eclectic and bizarre characters make the series what it is. But it wouldn’t work if the cast wasn’t pitch-perfect. And while all the characters have their quirks, there’s no one more special, odd, or out-there as Number Five, played by Aidan Gallagher.

An older assassin and time-traveler stuck in the body of a 13-year old boy, finding someone to play Five must have been tricky; what child actor can successfully embody a violent middle-aged man? Chatting with fans on Reddit, series creator Steve Blackman explained the tedious process of finding the perfect Five.

"We read/saw hundreds of kids from Canada, US, UK and Australia. But I just couldn’t find the right actor who could play such a complicated character. Then Aidan walked into the room. He was 12 or 13 at the time. He sat down and said he would kill for this role. He knew everything about the graphic novel and was very insightful.When he read the sides (the scenes we write for auditions), I was blown away. You need a certain gravitas to play a fifty-eight year old man trapped inside a thirteen year old’s body. Aidan had that… and then some.I think we can all agree we made the right choice!"

No argument here! After watching Gallagher do his thing on The Umbrella Academy  for two seasons, I can’t imagine anyone else playing the character better, or at all. The whole idea of Five is crazy, but Gallagher makes us believe it.

When it comes to live adaptations of comic books and graphic novels, the creators owe it to fans to do their due diligence. They can’t just throw someone up on the screen and hope for the best, or the write the story any way they please. Blackman did his homework finding Gallagher, and it paid off.

Gallagher did his homework, too, telling Collider last year about his comic fandom. “I grew up a fan of comics and hanging out in local comic book stores,” he said. “I got turned onto these two graphic novels, and it was unlike anything that I had read before, so I was instantly hooked. You can imagine how excited I was when I realized I would get to audition.”

And a lot of us were hooked on the Netflix show the minute Gallagher appeared on our screens. He was one of the reasons I knew I was going to keep watching this series when it returned.

I’m anxiously awaiting news on a season 3 renewal, because I think I speak for most of us when I say we need more Five in our lives!

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h/t Cheat Sheet