‘Solos’ is all about ‘our shared humanity’
Star Beharie described taking part in series as both exciting, daunting
A human in a room alone: it’s an image that’s taken on a fraught familiarity during the pandemic.
It’s also part of the conceit of “Solos,” the latest Amazon Prime Video show from David Weil, creator of the buzzy 2020 series “Hunters.” His new anthology show, which drops Friday, has seven episodes, all but one of which feature a single actor.
The timing may seem odd, given that many of us are longing to flee our COVID cocoons and get back to a world with other people in it, but “Solos” is hardly the only TV show to mirror our pandemic isolation.
Earlier in the outbreak, HBO released “Coastal Elites,” like “Solos” an anthology series, in which each episode was a monologue by a lone character. Netflix had “Social Distance,” which had multiple characters, although they interacted by Zoom.
One series that mastered the actors-on-a-screen genre is the BBC’s “Staged” (on Hollywood Suite in Canada), in which David Tennant and Michael Sheen, playing exaggerated versions of themselves, attempt to remotely rehearse a play while battling pandemic boredom.
Nor is “Solos” the only new TV show with a dearth of actors. HBO debuts a fourth season of its two-hander “In Treatment” on Sunday, with Uzo Aduba (who also stars in “Solos”) in the therapist’s chair rather than original star Gabriel Byrne. In the latest version of the drama, the pandemic has Aduba’s Dr. Brooke Taylor working out of her home and seeing one of her trio of new patients via video call.
During a virtual Television Critics Association panel, Aduba called the role “easily one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had in my life.”
She’s in every scene of every episode and those episodes were shot over a brisk two days (“Solos” shot over three). But while it’s been one of the “hardest things I’ve ever worked on in terms of the preparation … it is also one of the most satisfying, fulfilling experiences I’ve ever had,” said Aduba, crediting the rest of the small cast for their “ferociously” hard work.
“This project … has brought an excitement and an energy; there’s a thrill. It’s theatrical when you go to work,” added Aduba, who came to prominence playing a mentally ill inmate in “Orange Is the New Black,” winning Emmys for that role and for “Mrs. America.”
Likewise, Nicole Beharie described taking part in “Solos” as both exciting and daunting.
“Although it’s a huge challenge and was also a little scary, it was really attractive,” she said in a Zoom call.
“It’s really vulnerable to know that there’s nothing else to distract you from (the performance). Normally you have a location change or something like a costume change … It was really just about staying committed.”
Unlike other recent shows with isolated protagonists, “Solos” isn’t set during the pandemic. Each episode takes place in the future and features a science fiction twist. Only one mentions the word “pandemic:” it stars Aduba as a woman quarantining in a smart home years after a virus outbreak.
Beharie, known for films like “42” and “Miss Juneteenth,” and the TV series “Sleepy Hollow,” plays a very pregnant woman at home alone during a snowstorm who goes into labour, but the episode doesn’t go where you think it will based on that premise.
Beharie enjoyed getting to “throw people off of the expectation” as well as the “really swift turns and sharp turns emotionally” in the other episodes.
The series also stars Anthony Mackie (“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”) as a man coming to terms with his legacy; Constance Wu (“Crazy Rich Asians”) as a woman whose desperate desire for a child leads to tragedy; Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”) opposite Oscar winner Morgan Freeman in an episode about memory; and two other Oscar winners, Anne Hathaway as a woman trying to crack time travel and, in the best episode, Helen Mirren as a senior hurtling through space in a one-person capsule.
Though each actor is alone or nearly so, each episode is about that character’s connection to other people: mothers, fathers, children, lovers, friends.
“I mean the entire series is about humanity,” Beharie said. And the choices her character makes “are reflective of all of our shared humanity when it comes to protecting the things we love and that we’ve created.”
So the timing isn’t so odd after all, then. Who can’t relate to the idea of being alone in a room thinking about people we love? “Solos” launched Friday on Amazon
“This project … has brought an excitement and an energy; there’s a thrill. It’s theatrical when you go to work.”
UZO ADUBA ON HER ROLES IN ‘SOLOS’ AND ‘IN TREATMENT’