BARNES AND NOBLE

Outcast’s Patrick Fugit on summoning his inner exorcist for the show…

What kind of a person is Kyle Barnes?

When we meet him, he’s at sort of his low point in life. He has a dark history with possession. His mother was possessed, and everybody in town sort of knows that. Just under a year prior to the pilot Kyle had a very violent incident in his house with his wife and his child, and there’s a lot of mystery surrounding that. So Kyle is sort of plagued by a bad reputation and possession and darkness. But Kyle’s a goodhearted beacon of light that’s sort of contained at the moment by darkness.

Robert Kirkman has said demonic possession may be a real phenomenon. What’s your take on it?

I don’t know. The way Kyle feels about it is he’s seen it with his own eyes. But I think that there’s enough pain around those memories that he’s tried to smooth over the mental scarring by saying it was mental illness, that his mother was sick, imbalanced or something like that. And obviously the Reverend is all in. He believes in God and the devil and demons.

How does he explain the effect he has on people?

It’s only through the first three episodes that he’s discovering along with the Reverend that he has sort of an inexplicable effect on these demons, these possessed people. Kyle believes one way, that’s all logic. And the Reverend believes the other way, which is all religion. And they have to sort of come together in the middle.