Naveen Andrews

The former Lost castaway hits the road for the Wachowskis’ world- spanning Sense8

What were your first impressions when you read the script? The first thing that struck me about the script was its incredible epic scope and the fact there are moments of great intimacy, that I rarely find in any writing, on this vast, international canvas. Was the globe- hopping a challenge as an actor? The cast was like a band on the road. We would shoot a scene in Chicago and then the very same scene would be shot again two months later in Reykjavík, Iceland. We knew this when we did rehearsals. We thought, we have to learn everything because we don’t know when and where we might be called upon to do the same scene again in a completely different way. What the Wachowskis brought forth in the work was that each city has its own soul. Jonas is an enigma for the audience. How did you approach his character? For both me and Daryl [ Hannah, who plays Angel], when we got to San Francisco for the read- through we had all these questions about our characters. Daryl actually wrote them down on a piece of paper which she gave to the Wachowskis and never got a reply! How I discovered this character was from watching the Wachowskis work on set, particularly Lana. That required a lot of trust on our part which we were more than happy to give. I mean, they’re artists and you want to give everything to that because it’s a rare experience to work with artists. I try to be involved in work which hopefully in some way is ground- breaking, there is no other way to put it. I’ve never been in a scene where the camera pans from one character to another and as it pans you go to a different city. David West