‘Beacon 23’ EP Talks Watching Lena Headey & Stephan James, Mystery, and Trust Issues
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“They’re stuck with each other, but what can they do about it?” That’s what Beacon 23, for Lena Headey and Stephan James‘ characters, boils down to, says executive producer Glen Mazzara.
Based on the best-selling book by Hugh Howey, the sci-fi mystery thriller (premiering November 12 on MGM+) takes place in the farthest reaches of the Milky Way. Aster (Headey) is a government agent and Halan (James) a stoic ex-military man, who find themselves trapped inside one oof the Beacons serving as a lighthouse for intergalactic travelers. (Each is run by a highly-trained human and a specialized Artificial Intelligence.) After Aster mysteriously finds her way to the lonely Beacon-keeper Halan, a tense battle of wills unfolds, and he questions if she’s friend or foe.
Because “Halan and Aster are broken people and they have trusted people in the past and been burned, when they meet, they don’t trust each other,” Mazzara tells TV Insider. “It’s the damage that they’ve suffered, the pain that they’ve suffered in the past that keeps them from trusting each other. They’re their own worst enemies. I think it’s interesting to, on a sci-fi show, examine questions of trauma, mental health, PTSD. As the story develops, we’ll learn more about their situations.”
That being said, they are in situation where they do need to trust one another at least a bit. That doesn’t mean they will. “They’re in such a precarious place, living in this lighthouse on the very edge of the galaxy with no one around them,” Mazzara explains. “But because of the pain they’re carrying because of past events, they keep getting in their own way.”
Courtesy of MGM+
What would it take for that to change, or for them to at least accept they need to rely on each other? “They both recognize that the other person is in pain, and I think that it’s the compassion and the need for connection that keeps them together,” says the EP.
He notes that they filmed the season during the pandemic, a time when people were feeling “both isolated and maybe stuck with people who we loved [and] also drove us crazy.” There’s some of that in Aster and Halan’s situation. “They’re trying to make it work, but they both need their individual space. But I think given their precarious situation of where they are on the edge of space, they realize they need each other to survive.”
That’s not all they have in common. “They both come to the Beacon for reasons that they don’t understand, and they struggle with that,” teases Mazzara. “They wonder, what is their role in the story? Is there a purpose? The audience will eventually have all the answers, but our characters right now are struggling with really feeling like little specks of dust in a very vast universe.”
Zak Penn created the series, and he was the one to bring in Mazzara after production had already started on the first season. “That gave me the opportunity to kind of look at the story and look at the entire story we were telling, move puzzle pieces around and all of that,” Mazzara shares.
“A lot of my experience on the show and of the creative path that I took was responding to the choices [Lena and Stephan] made. I just thought they were both terrific, and I wanted to know more about, why are they doing that? Why are they saying that? Who are they? Who are these characters? Can we find more layers?” he details. “That really led me down my creative path where I was responding. There are things that come together because — without giving anything away — at one point Lena plays a scene a certain way. And as I was just saying, ‘Wow, that was interesting. What was the character thinking?’ That generated a whole story. It was a gift to be able to watch their material and then build upon it.”
Beacon 23, Series Premiere (two episodes), Sunday, November 12, 9/8c, MGM+
