‘Below’: Josh Hartnett, Charlie Heaton & Mackenzie Davis Preview Netflix’s Creature Thriller
Yes, Below is a series about something in the water and how those of a small Newfoundland town deal with that, but at its heart is the relationship between the characters.
“What I love about this script is that it’s not only a monster story or a sci-fi story or whatever, it’s also very much family drama. And so all of these kind of tendrils of these different relationships get bound together and they become something, I think, exciting by the end of it,” Josh Hartnett, who plays fisherman Calvin Penny, tells TV Insider in the video above.
Below follows Calvin, who’s haunted by his father’s mysterious death decades ago, as he must fight to hold his close-knit community together when an unidentified sea creature begins terrorizing the town. He wants to keep his son Wade (Charlie Heaton) and the rest of his family — Wade’s siblings are visiting — safe, and he teams up with marine researcher Fonda (Mackenzie Davis) to confront the creature and reveal the island’s secrets. The six episodes drop on October 8.
Courtesy of Netflix
Before all this happens, Calvin and Wade are “not communicating very well,” says Hartnett. “I think that the pressure of their home life being kind of never changing has contributed to some real fault lines in their relationship. And they’ve got to mend that somehow.”
Wade will experience something as a result of his creature, as already glimpsed in the trailer, and that leads to what Heaton calls “a bit of a spiritual journey” for him.
“Wade’s very much affected by the events that take place in his town and the community,” he teases. “And he is someone who, he’s very isolated in his age group and in the town. His siblings have gone and he is a bit lost.”
As the marine researcher, is everything Fonda knows challenged by this sea creature? Does it flip things on their head for her?
“I don’t know if it does,” Davis admits. “I think science is logic and she’s using logic to try and figure out what’s going on and you have hypotheses and then eliminate them and come across something that might’ve felt impossible.”
Watch the full video interview above for more from Josh Hartnett, Mackenzie Davis, and Charlie Heaton.
Below, Series Premiere, Thursday, October 8, Netflix
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