Actor has one word for his return: ‘Incredible’
Torontonian talks about ‘Homecoming’ Season 2 and his big-name co-stars
There’s something to be said for being an actor with a project to promote when the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down film and TV production all over the world.
Add the fact that it’s a prestige project, one with an Oscar winner producing and another Oscar winner onscreen, and that’s a lucky thing indeed. Stephan James certainly sounded grateful last week on a Zoom call to promote Season 2 of “Homecoming,” which hits Amazon Prime Video on Friday.
The 26-year-old was isolating in Toronto, his hometown, binge-watching TV, playing video games and writing — although he wouldn’t say what.
“It was awesome being part of Season1with Julia and Sam,” he said, referring to Oscar winner Julia Roberts, his former costar and executive producer of the series, and Sam Esmail, the “Mr. Robot” mastermind who directed the first season.
“It was probably one of the biggest joys of my career so far, and to be asked to come back and to join the second season, obviously this time with Janelle Monae and Kyle Patrick Alvarez, I mean it just felt incredible,” James said.
Last season, the buzz was all about Roberts starring in a TV series for the first time. This season it’s largely about Monae, a musician who’s becoming known for acting (“Moonlight,” “Hidden Figures”), and who’s front and centre in the series’ promotional images and trailers.
But James also has a key role in the new season.
In fact, writer Micah Bloomberg, at the Television Critics Association press tour earlier this year, described James’s character, Walter Cruz, as the vehicle for the show’s themes about the military industrial complex and how it affects the people who are part of it.
“We rely a lot on Stephan to carry that anger,” said Bloomberg, who created the series and the podcast it’s based on with Eli Horowitz.
“When I think of that pain and the injustice, I just think about Walter’s character.”
Last season, Walter was introduced as a young military veteran taking part in a mysterious program supposedly meant to reintegrate servicemen into civilian life, but which actually prepared them for redeployment by using drugs to gradually erase their memories of combat. Roberts played his counsellor in the Homecoming program, Heidi.
After moving to tiny Fish Camp, Calif., Walter appeared to have no memory of Heidi or Homecoming. But this season, he realizes that something’s amiss and searches for answers.
James said he was glad to get the chance to “colour in” Walter as a character.
“Because he was losing his memories essentially by the day, so much of who he was was getting lost in that process … to be able to recognize that something bad happened to him in that first season, and then to go down the path of ultimately figuring it out, I think that’s Walter’s biggest challenge this season.”
As Walter tries to unravel the mystery of his past, another one preoccupies viewers: the identity of Monae’s character, whom we first see waking up in arowboat in the middle of a lake with no memory of who she is or how she got there.
The new episodes, of which I saw the first seven, skilfully piece together her identity and her connection to Geist Group, the company behind the Homecoming program, and to other characters, including Audrey Temple (Hong Chau of “Watchmen”), the Geist underling who got a big promotion at the end of Season 1. New director Alvarez has maintained the ominous tone of the first season.
“While last season was more about a corporation, this is more about the individuals in that corporation, and getting into the humanity and the psyche of those characters,” James said.
He got to do a lot of his acting this season opposite Monae, but also had substantial scenes with Oscar winner Chris Cooper (“Adaptation”), who joins the cast as eccentric company founder Leonard Geist.
James described the latter as “a consummate pro,” and the former as dedicated and committed and “an awesome scene partner.”
The “Degrassi: The Next Generation” alumni has already hit some career highs, including winning a Canadian Screen Award for playing Jesse Owens in “Race”; getting a Golden Globe nomination for “Homecoming”; being part of the Ava DuVernay Civil Rights movie “Selma”; and co-starring in the Oscar-winning “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
His next project, interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, is to star in the film “Rob Peace,” directed and written by Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”).
Despite all that, I asked him if there was any pressure involved in holding the screen opposite stars of Roberts’ and Cooper’s stature.
“No pressure for me, honestly,” he said.
“At the core of it all I’m just an artist and I love stories, and I’ve been incredibly fortunate at this point of my career to tell incredible stories with incredible people.
“‘Homecoming’ is just another one of these things where I get to make art that reflects life … art that’s important to me, stories that I find interesting and, yeah, I’m just having fun while I’m at it.”