This show is not a great advert for parenting
As M Night Shyamalan’s Servant returns, DANIELLE DE WOLFE learns more from the director and one of its stars, Rupert Grint
RUPERT GRINT has revealed that becoming a father has given him a new perspective on starring in the psychological horror Servant. In the M. Night Shyamalan drama – which is returning for a second series – the Harry Potter star plays the brother of a woman who, after her baby tragically dies, gets a lifelike replacement doll.
Rupert, 32, told Sky News: “It’s probably the worst show to be a part of if you’ve just become a dad.
“It’s not a great advert for parenting I don’t think, but it actually kind of helped in a way… Because it’s a very unique kind of love, and it’s a very powerful love.
“Dorothy (Rupert’s character’s sister) would do anything to get Jericho (the baby) back and it really helped understanding that and getting into that kind of head.”
The actor, best known for playing Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, and his partner Georgia Groome welcomed daughter Wednesday in May last year.
He explains the birth came during a forced break in production of the second season of Servant.
“I think we were six episodes in and then we had to shut down and we had a break. How long was the break? A month? I had a baby in the break,” he says.
“And then we came back and it was very different. We had to re-think every element of shooting this show. We were all separated into zones, we were all living in bubbles and there were masks... visors, we were tested three times a week.
“Full on. But I think rightly so, the main priority is keeping everyone safe.”
With almost all scenes taking place inside the confines of a single house, the impact of Covid-19 on filming felt exacerbated for the show’s cast and crew.
Yet the single location is the very element that makes this series unique, bearing all the hallmarks you’d expect from a Shyamalandirected project.
“It’s a set that’s got challenges,” notes Rupert.
“I mean, it’s such a small stage, you can’t really hide, it’s quite exposing in that way. “But I do really enjoy it, it’s kind of like theatre in a way.”
Servant’s first series told the tale of a Philadelphia couple, TV reporter Dorothy and top chef Sean, in mourning after losing their infant son.
Unprepared yet to accept his death, Dorothy chooses to believe her son is still alive in the form of a reborn doll. Not wanting to shatter his wife’s illusion, Sean plays along with Dorothy’s fantasy, the two of them going so far as to invite a nanny into their home: Leanne, played by Game of Thrones veteran Nell Tiger Free (Myrcella Baratheon).
It’s a perplexing world created by Shyamalan, famous for his thrillers like The Sixth Sense and The Village.
This time around, however, the director was forced to approach the project a little differently.
“When we started, we were like ‘What is this? What do we call this (project) that we’re doing, these half-hour things all in one place?’ We call it a sitthriller. Like a situation comedy,” notes Shyamalan, 50.
“We had a tone and a discovery in the first season.
“The second season was the season of ‘Hey, let’s figure out the story, let’s just figure out the whole thing, right now.’
“So, there was a moment – and it aligned pretty well with where we had to stop, because of the pandemic – to kind of say, it would be really, really helpful to work it all out and then come back and finish Season 2. “And that’s what we did.”
The returning 10-part psychological thriller sees a rapid expansion of the Season 1 storyline.
“The idea was that we pick up exactly where we left off but things transition, they change almost immediately when you’re in the episode,” says Toby Kebbell, 38, who plays Sean.
“So, hopefully we’ve accomplished that. And then of course things changed from what the ideas were to what we could shoot, because we shot four episodes in complete isolation.”
“We adapted beautifully,” notes Toby of the new Covid-19 filming restrictions and on-set social distancing measures.
“The writers worked well to do that, and for the directing of those episodes, those last four, we did the same.”
Lauren Ambrose, 42, who plays Dorothy, agrees: “The characters are, for the most part, essentially doing this intense play for half an hour at a time.
“That’s a great acting opportunity and provides a nice framework for a lot of creativity from all of the departments.
“Shooting this show feels like getting shot out of a cannon.
“When we were in our bubble, in quarantine, shooting half of the season, we only took one day off a week, so it really felt like we got to breathe afterwards.
“But, you know, it’s good to have that intensity for that amount of time and then be done with it.”
Despite the confined setting of the series – one whose audience is drip-fed information at the slowest of paces – the Apple TV+ offering manages to avoid the pitfalls of stagnancy and monotony associated with such a restriction.
“The creak is only scary upstairs when you’ve established there’s no one in the house, and so you have to quieten everything down and everything becomes threatening,” notes Shyamalan.
“And so, for me, making it one location for the entire series is my way of quieting down everyone’s minds so that every single thing, every glass falling, every door knob turning, means something.
“I don’t think of it in that sense of moving artifice, it’s a natural movement, but the stakes need to rise for the character – and the physicality, as a result, can rise as well, as you’ll see season to season.”
Developing the characters’ surroundings, room by room, is just one of the tricks deployed by Shyamalan as part of the forthcoming series.
“One little thing I am doing is expanding what we’re calling ‘the house’,” he says. “We’ve added the attic and the house keeps expanding, and each season it’s going to keep expanding into what you see. What you thought was the house keeps on growing.”
“There are so many more elements to the house that we didn’t know, we didn’t see in season one,” seconds Rupert.
“So it is this kind of growing organism and it’s, yeah... something a little bit different.”
Servant Season 2 arrives on Apple TV+ on January 15