Interview: Harold Perrineau on Why His Characters Keep Getting Lost and Hunted by Monsters
The star of such television shows as ‘Lost’ and ‘Oz’ finds himself once again trapped in ‘From’, which was recently renewed for a second season.
With so many options to stream at home, often there are hidden, seemingly familiar gems going about their business with surprisingly little fan fair, despite clearly having a following. Epix and Paramount’s From, a show which until this week was lost in the copyright ether and couldn’t even reach worldwide audiences, is just such a gem.
From follows the nightmare of a mysterious town that traps all those who enter. People from all across America go on road trips, but end up in the same place, and find they cannot escape. As the unwilling residents fight to keep a sense of normalcy and search for a way out, they must also survive the surrounding threats, including the animalistic ghoul like creatures that slowly stalk the residents when the sun goes down.
Harold Perrineau stars as self-appointed Sherriff, Boyd Stevens, and while his role is drastically different from his other well-known characters from Lost (2004-2010) or Oz (1997-2003), the situation seems oddly familiar. Perrineau sat down with FilmSpeak to celebrate the worldwide streaming release and recently announced second season of From. We wasted no time in asking the big question… Why does he keep gravitating towards shows where there’s no escape, and a violent death seems almost inevitable?
“At the end of the day, it's just this thing that fascinates me”. Perrineau explains. “When people feel like they're in places and they don't have choices, what do they do? How do you survive? What do you do to live? What do you do to thrive? What will you do to get it? So those questions have been part of my brain my whole life [and] I've been fortunate enough to have worked on a number of projects that let me explore that kind of stuff. Lost of course, was like that and now here we are [with] From”.
It remains to be seen if From will have the same rabid fanbase as its spiritual sister-show, Lost, but it’s undeniable that part of the appeal of these stories is the mystery behind it, and the slowly unravelling world building that takes place within its universe. Yet, much like the audience, the actors within these shows, as Perrineau will attest, get only tiny morsels of information on a need-to-know basis as well. “They don't give you a lot of information. But the thing that's really great about it and in From in particular, is the immediacy of what's happening ‘right now’ is enough to deal with”. Perrineau explains that keeping both himself (and fellow actors) in the dark (sometimes literally) about what is happening is just as exciting for he and his fellow actors as it is for the audience. “The immediacy of the show is the thing that's also really exciting about it. I don't have to have a real history of the place or any of that stuff, and that's what I think the audience is going to really enjoy about it. It's really jarring and ‘in the moment’.”
Perrineau seems like the kind of person who appreciates the moment perhaps more than a lot of other performers. He recalled working with Baz Luhrmann on Romeo + Juliet in the mid-nineties as “a lot of fun”, but made specific reference to how often he’ll get lost in thought in his surroundings when on a shoot. He describes his time in Calgary, when shooting The Edge as ‘beautiful’, and loves that he’s back in Canada (Halifax this time) shooting From. He simply wishes there was something we could do about the Canadian winters. But this journeyman actor, who has been in massive blockbusters and critically acclaimed television very much has his moments of uncontrollable fanboy-ing. “ I messed up the first three days of work on the Matrix [Reloaded], because I kept giggling about being on the Nebuchadnezzar”. That passion continues with all these fascinating sci-fi and fantasy projects he’s been a part of, and could easily explain why the fans who found the show have gravitated towards From.
The complete first season of From is available on Paramount+ now.
Be sure to check out the full video interview, below:
