PASSING THE TIME
‘Kindred’: how a modern-day writer and her husband travel back to 1815
TONY nominee Micah Stock (“It’s Only a Play“) is having a moment vis-ávis his breakout role in the long-awaited adaptation of “Kindred.” Premiering Dec. 13, the FX series (which streams exclusively on Hulu) is based on the 1979 novel by iconic Hugo-winning sci-fi author Octavia Butler. The plot follows a modern-day black writer, Dana (Mallori Johnson), who finds herself inexplicably time-traveling from her home in LA to a pre-Civil War plantation in 1815 where her ancestors are living. The plantation is presided over by Thomas Weylin (Ryan Kwanten, “True Blood”); her white love interest Kevin (Stock) gets swept up in the centuryspanning journey, too, and ends up traveling to the past alongside Dana and struggling with what he sees there.
“I was drawn to Kevin because I like people and characters who function in the grey area, who you don’t know whether they’re going to succeed with the lot that they’ve been given,” Stock, 33, told The
Post.
He noted that Butler, who died in 2006, always wanted to see her work adapted onscreen. “Unfortunately, that wasn’t something she really got to see in her lifetime. But I was familiar with ‘Kindred’ in a broader cultural context before I had read the book,” he said. “It had staying power and a voice for many decades for a reason. There’s a lot of people who have been waiting to see this for a long time. More than the pressure of ‘Is it going to be right, is it going to be an accurate adaptation?’ I think [showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins] took the heart and spine of Octavia’s book and expanded it for a different medium.”
The show has made several changes to the source material — for instance, in the novel, the “present day” time is in the 1970s. In the series it’s 2016, and Kevin’s role is also expanded. In the novel, he was Dana’s husband; onscreen, he and
Dana are just meeting and getting to know each other, giving their relationship more room to develop.
“Kevin is a very central role in the book, but given the nature of a television show, we get to check in and spend more time with everybody,” Stock said. “So, in this version, we get to see things that in the book, only Dana saw. Now we have two perspectives … and I got on like gangbusters with Mallori. I care about her deeply [and] she’s become like a sister to me.”
Stock has appeared in other series including Showtime’s “Escape at Dannemora,” but this is his biggest screen role yet. He comes from the theater world, and earned the only Tony nomination for “It’s Only a Play” in 2014 starring alongside Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.
“[‘Kindred’] was a little bit like doing an off-off Broadway play, but just on a much larger scale,” he said. “So many of us have met plodding our way through that downtown theater scene. The way you play and communicate as a theater actor is very specific, and there’s sort of a shared language. All of us in the cast have at least some experience in theater, so that made it really fun — and it also provided us with a certain level of care when exploring difficult themes.
“The story at its heart, is an adventure story,” he said. “And I think that all the best adventures stem from internal conflict. One of the special things about ‘Kindred,’ and why it’s had such a lasting effect, is that it’s really the inward journey pushed outward. I think people who sign up for the ride will be pleased to find that not only is it entertaining but, like any true adventure, you’re also going to stumble upon some of the inner workings of the human spirit.”