No matter how unlikely it may seem at a time when the real-world pandemic is still looming over topics, HBO Max Limited’s thoughtful and elegant series station eleven – which reflects the emotional and interpersonal repercussions of an even more catastrophic and blissfully fictional epidemic – applauded by the public and critics.
Adapted for television from Patrick Somerville’s bestselling novel written by Emily St. John Mandel, the show offers a grim portrait of survivors entering an uncertain future 20 years later. It was accepted as a balm for a pandemic-laden viewer, offering us forms of hope and collective connection as the characters emerged from a terrible time.
At the center of the show’s ensemble were Giovanni (Himesh Patel), a wily young man, and Kirsten (played by Matilda Lawler as an adult and Mackenzie Davis as an adult), a child actress he meets onstage during a plague night. Jeevan’s gunfire finds a target in the early days of the pandemic through Kirsten’s ears; Events tear them apart, albeit after two decades, as they have affected each other’s lives.
Patel and Davis teamed up THR Ambitious and challenging narrative navigation to be reckoned with, especially at a time when a non-fiction pandemic halted production for several months after only two episodes were filmed.
However, the show has seemed a little blurry in recent episodes; How did that come to you, emotionally, when you first saw him?
Mackenzie Davis I couldn’t fully understand what was going on, even when we were understanding, but there was one thing that I had from my first date with Patrick and [director Hiro Murai] Which looked so beautiful at the time, in September 2019. They described Kirsten’s story and then spent a lot of time reuniting him with this man, who helped him survive a pandemic. I cried on our reunion and then I cried throughout the show.
HIMESH PATEL I didn’t know you were crying.
Davis It was a good idea. I mean our union and also this girl you met on stage and met on stage 20 years later. This really turned me on.
patella I fell in love with the character. I immediately contacted Jivan. I immediately had an idea of what he was thinking. I hadn’t read the book at the time, so I didn’t know the source material, but I loved the pilot. I read the pilot before the audition, then I read the book and I liked it too. It was all just an ideal duck-in-line situation.
Mackenzie shares her role as Matilda Lawler as Kirsten Jr. How did you all work together to make everything work out for so long that you were away from Jivan? Was it an unusual acting situation?
patella It was in an unusual sense [that] I worked with two different actors who played the same role and, in a way, I established a relationship with Mackenzie’s character before I met him, as we filmed the pilot episode of the series in January 2020, and my ways don’t cross. With him until November of the same year we met in London. In that moment I made a very strong connection with Matilda and Matilda’s attitude towards Kirsten.
Davis You meet someone as a child and then you realize it again as an adult: they are different people. It’s been 20 years since Giovanni hasn’t been in Kirsten’s life. He became another human being and is the thread of likeness. So that was understandable to me; This is not uncommon. I witnessed his relationship with my son in the seventh episode; this was the first episode I recorded after the pandemic hiatus. I saw the place of my memories and they were organically formed by you, ears of Matilda and Nabhan. [Rizwan, as Frank Chaudhary] Interact and create a family together.
[Matilda and I] Spend time together on Zoom to get to know each other. I watched Matilda work on set for three weeks after filming the seventh episode, where I lurked in the shadows. I wanted to answer some [mannerisms] – brows furrowed as he thinks – tries to turn on such nonsense, but this was mostly just done by osmosis and not according to plan.
Mackenzie Davis joined Station Eleven.
Courtesy of HBO MAX
Was there a sense that you didn’t get the material right, as Mackenzie pointed out, maybe it was a good thing for your performances to be a little bit overboard in a difficult story that has a place of interpretation?
patella There is always some chaos when doing something. It was such a rich tapestry, a complex web of characters and their interactions and the timing and sophistication of it all. And the man with the Bible was Patrick, our showman. I’m worried that this might be a little offensive to Patrick, but I want to say this as a compliment: he has the ability to see history in an omnipotent way. It’s about things we just can’t imagine.
Davis And very three-dimensional. In this multiverse way, where you’re like, “Okay, what happened?”
patella Four dimensions, actually. You would say, “Patrick, I lost my place here. I’m not sure how everything goes [fits]. I am fine? Is this piece of the puzzle I offer any good? And I would often get this very philosophical response and realize that he is a very emotional person. He just won’t give you a cold answer like, “Yeah, this part A fits in with part B, and that’s fine.” Think of it in a very emotional and dynamic way… which is why it ended up being something special. But for me, sometimes it was like, “Okay, I’m going to have to take this off for a few days and think about what he said.”
I imagine you have a white-collar expectation on how the show would be received, as the world has just gone through a real-life version of the pandemic from the first few episodes.
patella The pilot was my only concern. The rest of the show focuses on hope, community and recovery, with all the main themes. The first episode is the closest we’ve ever lived. I was nervous [it would be] For many people. This is the first hurdle, so what does it mean for the rest of the show? It was a huge relief when I realized that it was generally very well received and people thought more about it.
Davis The moment was difficult, the concept was difficult. And so, this is not a movie star-studded show with a built-in audience. We feel we don’t have a covered base. It was a really, really cool experience because I think it’s a tough TV show. It’s not super traumatic in every episode, but it’s really thoughtful, beautiful, meditative television. Oddly, he argued that people dive into a weird bum, along with sign actors. Very cool.
Himesh Patel (left) inside Station Eleven.
Courtesy of HBO MAX
Do you think you changed in any important way at the end of the trip?
patella It still feels a bit mysterious to me, but it’s clear it has left its mark on many aspects of my life. It was very difficult at times and it was part of my life with some monumental changes, personally. It will be a chapter that always means more to me than just a job.
Davis The first four months of your daughter’s life when you are a father were spent in a home in Toronto. It’s really an amazing intersection of personal experiences and, for example, time.
patella Filming the ninth episode, the entire birth sequence, I would literally do this in real life, hopefully with just one person, but I would have done it three months before filming this scene. It was a study I hadn’t planned on, but it really happened like this. But then, obviously, I learned about parenting, for real, and I was trying to do a TV show.
Davis The two most important things in the world. (laughs.) Actor and father.
The interview is edited for length and clarity.
The story first appeared in a separate June issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
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