FAMILY TRADE
In ‘ZeroZeroZero’, the Lynwood clan aren’t exactly pure as the driven snow
Based on the international bestseller by Roberto Saviano, ZeroZeroZero (starts Thu., May 14 at 9.30pm; SBS) – which gets its title from slang for the purest, whitest form of cocaine on the market – is an eight-episode drama about the cocaine trade and its impact on the global economy.
Dane DeHaan plays Chris Lynwood, the sheltered son of a shipping magnate (Gabriel Byrne) who is forced to step up and help his older sister, Emma (Andrea Riseborough), navigate the seedy side of their business after tragedy strikes the family.
Until now, Chris’ father has kept him out of any criminal dealings because he is hearing-impaired and suffers from Huntington’s disease, which DeHaan took extra care bringing to life. “It was incredibly powerful to do it justice,” says the actor, whose character uses hearing aids and turns his impairment into a skill by reading lips. “He’s keeping [his symptoms] a secret from his family as his responsibilities become more and more, and he’s set on this journey with this giant shipment of cocaine.”
Emma, meanwhile, has no problem filling the shoes of her ruthless father. “You get to see a young woman starting out as a businessperson and almost end up as a don in her own city,” says Riseborough. “Working with [director] Stefano [Sollima], we developed the character to be a somewhat androgynous person who is surrounded by a lot of mistrust, a lot of power. Her way of inserting herself into the world is to adopt the behaviour of a man.”
Shot on location in Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal and the United States, ZeroZeroZero takes viewers along for an eye-opening ride. “Cocaine is everywhere. It’s a part of the world’s economy and everything that happens, and to take it out would crash the world’s economy,” admits DeHaan. “It’s never going to go away.”
By Sydney Bucksbaum