Reshaping our sense of reality
Netflix series The Innocents has a science-fiction twist — but Australian star says it doesn’t feel that way to him
When you’ve had a career as long and as notable as that of Australian actor Guy Pearce you can afford to be choosy about the projects you take on.
“Out of every 10 scripts I read there are probably only one or two that interest me enough to choose,” he says in a phone interview. Mind you, even of those he chooses, some start out well and then become a slog a couple of weeks in. And then there are what he calls the “gems.” The 2011 HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, for which Pearce won an Emmy Award, was one of those. He considers The Innocents, the series that debuted Friday on Netflix, another.
“The script was just really compelling,” says Pearce, known in North America for roles in movies ranging from Memento and L.A. Confidential to The King’s Speech and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. “I found the writing very honest and emotional and fascinating, really.
“I was taken into that world. I believed the way it unfolded.”
The series, created by Brits Simon Duric and Hania Elkington, follows a teenage couple on the run, June (Scottish actress Sorcha Groundsell) and Harry (English actor Percelle Ascott).
But what starts out as a story of young love and adolescent emancipation takes a turn. June is glad to be free of her overly strict father, but it soon becomes clear he kept her cloistered to protect her: she’s a shape-shifter — like her estranged mother — able to take on the appearances of other people.
Pearce plays Halvorson, a doctor who is studying the shape-shifters, who are all female, in a sort of colony on a Norwegian island.
Although the story is supernatural in nature, it feels compelling and real to Pearce.
Director Farren Blackburn made it clear, the actor explains: “We don’t want to treat this like science fiction, we don’t want to treat it like it’s fanciful. He really wanted it to be grounded to make it feel like a totally feasible medical condition, even though it’s rare and kind of freaky.”
Indeed, Pearce says the shape-shifting is like an extreme version of “the ways in which we can take on the qualities of other people.”
Pearce — who describes himself as interested in human behaviour and psychology — imagined Halvorson as someone who is genuinely interested “in solving the mysteries of our bodies,” but also as someone whose ego led him to become ostracized from the British medical world.
“He wants to be one of those doctors who’s discovered something,” he says.
“He genuinely needs to help these women … but that ego is constantly there bubbling up. It’s great stuff to play,” adds the 50-year-old. “It’s fantastic to play someone who’s really driven by doing the right thing but, at the same time, for all of us we have moments where our egos take over.”
In his 30-plus-year career, Pearce has appeared in many films — he filmed the 2008 film Traitor here in Toronto, for example — as well as several TV series, the latter often based in Australia. His first job was in the Aussie soap opera Neighbours, which he joined when he was just 18.
“It’s funny when you do TV, like a miniseries, on some level it’s really just like an extended movie, anyway,” he says.
“As an actor going into it you’re having to hold the whole thing in your head, anyway, from start to finish: the development of each character, the tone of the thing. Whether it’s an hour and a half or eight hours doesn’t really matter aside from the fact it gives you more time to explore and delve into each element and each character.”
Pearce admits that he doesn’t watch much TV.
“I find if I’ve got the time to sit and watch a lot of television I’d rather be in my studio making music … I just can’t do it. I’m itching to sit and play guitar and write some songs.”
But, of course, he hopes viewers will take the time to watch The Innocents’ eight episodes, filmed in England and Norway.
“You want anything you do to resonate, and you want people to go back to it and think about it,” he says.
“You want it to feel real, you want people to go, ‘Wow they really made me look at the world in a different way.’ I want people to feel the same way I felt when I read it.”