‘Once Upon a Time’: Scott Michael Foster’s Kristoff makes the ‘Frozen’ leap

Scott Michael Foster seems to be as laid back as his character Kristoff is on ABC’s “Once Upon a Time.”

Stepping into a hybrid role made famous by the $1 billion-plus grossing Disney film “Frozen,” the actor, who calls Dallas his hometown, inherits a character who will have a big role in this season’s storyline. He also gets to work with a reindeer.

We caught up with Foster and asked him a few quick questions about about this version of Kristoff, his role this season, and working with Sven.

Show Tracker: Future-casting, what do you think Kristoff’s life, or even job, would be in contemporary Storybrooke?

Scott Michael Foster: He’s the ice master and deliverer of Arendelle, so I’d like to assume he does something with that. Maybe he runs an ice skating rink. Or, even though Storybrooke is in the 21st century, maybe there’s a nostalgic group of people who still have iceboxes -- like back in the day, when you didn’t have a freezer.

Kristoff was a survivor. He’d integrate. Speaking of which, how was joining the “Once” cast and crew?

It’s actually been really easy to get integrated with the show. It’s Season 4, so the cast and crew are a well-oiled machine. They know each other, as far as on their side of things, so they’re not trying to figure things out. They know what they’re doing. For us “Frozen” characters, there hasn’t been a transitional period for us. We kind of jumped in and hit the ground running, making some good television from the start.

How knowledgeable were you about the “Frozen” phenomenon before you got the role?

I’d heard about it before -- seen it once with my nieces and nephews. When I got this, I went to try to watch it again, so I was familiar with the storyline. But once we started shooting, they wanted us to stay as true to the movie as possible, but at the same time, they’re doing a new thing with it. They’re taking references out of the original Hans Christian Andersen “Snow Queen” story, so it’s not just based on what happens after the movie. There’s more to it than that. So, to take a character from the movie and make him real is not what we had in mind. We sort of made our own version of Kristoff, even though we all look similar, we definitely created something new for the show.

So he has a budding relationship with both Anna and Elsa ...

Anna, in the movie, you know they went off on an adventure and fell in love, so that’s where we left off from the movie. Now they’re engaged to be married, so there’s a lot of that fiancé/newly engaged attitude going on. They want to get married and spend the rest of their lives together. So Kristoff supports her in anything that she wants to do and wants to be there for her in whatever her journey is going to be. At the same time, and as we saw so far, he wants to get closer to his future sister-in-law Elsa. Anna asks him to sort of watch over her and make sure that she wasn’t alone, so they get to have a little bonding time. You start to see his relationship with Elsa grow a bit more. In the future, you’ll see more of him and Anna, and what it’s like to be engaged when all of this action is going on, and how they deal with that pressure.

In the show, Kristoff met David/Prince Charming way before he was a prince. Do you know much about their history?

They haven’t explained how that works yet -- the Kristoff-David connection -- and I have to say that I’m looking forward to finding that out myself. I’ve thought it for sure, and I’m definitely curious to see.

Now the question: How is it working with everyone’s favorite TV reindeer, Sven?

They say working with animals is one of the hardest things about doing TV or film. I gotta say, at first -- the reindeer’s name is Jack -- we were off to a bit of a bumpy start. He doesn’t want to be an actor, he wants to be a reindeer, and be in the woods all of the time. So, being on the set for probably 10 to 12 hours at a time is not really something that he’d be doing in life. He can get a little grumpy. But we’ve come a long way, and now we’re fast friends. I think he might try to get an agent in L.A. next month.

What should fans expect from Kristoff for this season?

Without giving anything away, you’re going to see that Anna’s on a mission. You’ll see what that’s all about, and how Kristoff can help her. There’s a lot of twists and turns. Kristoff is there, honestly, as support for both of the girls. He’s been trying to prove himself as a loyal brother-in-law and friend, and you’ll see more of him really supporting these two -- being a good brother-in-law and a good fiancé.