Who do they think they are?
Josh Duhamel on playing an ageing superhero whose children are struggling to live up to his past feats… Leslie Bibb
JUPITER’S LEGACY
Available: Friday 7 May Season: 1 Episodes: 8
Run time: 50 mins NEW DRAMA
After decades fighting crime and combating evil, the world’s first superheroes are ready for their children to pick up their mantles in Netflix’s ambitious new superhero saga, Jupiter’s Legacy.
But following in their parents’ footsteps doesn’t prove easy for the young superheroes.
The eight-part series opens in 1929 with steel tycoon Sheldon Sampson (Josh Duhamel) losing everything in the Wall Street Crash and travelling to a remote island in the South Pacific with wife Grace (Leslie Bibb), elder brother Walter (Ben Daniels) and three friends.
While there, all six gain superpowers and form The Union of Justice led by Sheldon AKA The Utopian. For nearly a century, the union keeps mankind safe by following a strict code of honour, but in the present day Sheldon and Grace’s two children – Brandon and Chloe – struggle to live up to their parents’ legendary public reputations and exacting personal standards.
Here, Josh, 48, tells TV Times more about the epic series, which is based on the comic books by Mark Millar
(Kingsman)...
Were you excited about playing a superhero?
It was great to play a superhero for the first time in my career, but I was just as excited about the drama of this family and exploring the complex and fractured relationships they have. It’s fun to play a legendary character like The Utopian but he also goes to dark emotional places too. You get to see the complete evolution of a man over the course of more than a century, which has been the most challenging and gratifying experience that I’ve ever had as an actor.
Sheldon goes on quite a journey through the series, doesn’t he?
The show spans roughly 100 years, from the 1920s to the 2020s, and it was really fun to play Sheldon as a young man, because he’s much more human and uncertain before he gets his powers. In the present day, there’s a weight to Sheldon and he’s a grizzled leader. He’s done this for 100 years, so when he’s flying and he lands, he just immediately keeps walking. There’s nothing fancy about this to him!
How did it feel to put that cape on every morning?
Getting into these costumes literally transforms you and I’d feel my posture immediately change — my back would straighten, my shoulders would broaden. I needed prosthetics to age me for some scenes and that was a new experience as I’d never worn them before. I’d come in early and they’d put wrinkles under my eyes, give me the beard, and when they were done I looked completely different. It was like magic!
What makes this different from other superhero shows?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything in the superhero genre that deals with normal family dysfunction like
Jupiter’s Legacy does. These are people with incredibly powerful abilities, but at the same time they still deal with the same things that any mother and father or sister or brother might deal with at home. Sheldon has very strong beliefs in how things should be run, but his kids have different beliefs. They have their own ideas about what to do with these powers and the pressures that come with them and they’re questioning The Union’s code. I’ve never seen a superhero go meet with a therapist, but Sheldon does!
What can you tell us about the actors who play your family?
Ben Daniels, who plays my brother Walt Sampson, AKA Brainwave, is just incredible. I’ve worked with Leslie Bibb who plays my wife Grace, AKA Lady Liberty, so we had an immediate shorthand. And people are going to absolutely love Andrew Horton who plays my son Brandon and Elena Kampouris who plays my daughter Chloe.
Do you think fans of Mark Millar’s comic books will enjoy the series?
I think they’ll be thrilled to see it come to life because we’ve worked very hard to honour the original material and keep it accurate to what Mark set out to do in the comics.