‘Next’: Michael Mosley Previews the ‘Incredibly Dangerous’ Blob-like A.I. (VIDEO)
Exclusive
Michael Mosley may have been working against the FBI in the final season of Criminal Minds, but in the new Fox thriller Next, he’s one of the good guys … now, at least.
The actor plays CM, an ex-con hacker and one of the members of the team led by Special Agent Shea Salazar (Fernanda Andrade) dealing with a deadly, rogue Artificial Intelligence, created by Silicon Valley pioneer Paul LeBlanc (John Slattery). And if that’s not enough to have you hooked, given our reliance on technology, the series itself will do that.
“[Creator] Manny Coto is really good at [cliffhangers],” Mosley tells TV Insider. “The thing always leaves you hanging at the end of every episode.”
Here, Mosley introduces us to CM and the deadly AI. Plus, scroll down to watch an exclusive sneak peek as the FBI runs into some serious trouble in the premiere.
Introduce CM. He’s a reformed bad guy, right? What drew you to the role?
Michael Mosley: Yeah, he’s got a questionable past, and I don’t think we know where to place him at the beginning of the series. As it goes on, we learn more about where his real loyalties lie and stuff like that. I read the script and I thought the script was cool, and I just wanted to be in the huddle, part of this group. I just wanted to be in the show because I thought it was really cool. And I read CM and I was like, “I think I could get a hook into this kind of character a little bit.”
How would you describe him at work? Kind of guy who keeps his head down, gets his work done, or is he willing to bend the rules?
As a hacker, the definition is bending the rules. He’s always looking for an angle — I think that’s what they do, what hackers and cybercrime is about. If you’re fighting cybercrime, you’re trying to think ahead of the hackers, so you’ve got to be always thinking about what bending the rules would look like. But I do think that CM is a man of few words when he can be. I don’t think he’s the most socially buoyant dude.
And he very much respects and likes Salazar, right? What does he think of her as both his boss and the team leader in general?
He’s got great respect for her. She threw him a life raft. As we’ll learn as the series progresses, he owes her.
But his relationships with the rest of the team, Gina (Eve Harlow) and Ben (Aaron Clifton Moten), are complicated. Can you talk about those? How might we see that change as the series progresses?
The three of them come from diametrically opposed backgrounds and are smashed into this place where they’re forced to work together. Whether they see eye-to-eye on their politics, as neXt starts to emerge and as the cybercrime unit has to Voltron together to fight this thing, all that politic and history goes out the window.
Let’s talk about this deadly, rogue A.I. that threatens humankind. How does Salazar’s team become aware of it, and how dangerous is it, for the world and for the team and their work?
Under the canopy of the show, it’s incredibly dangerous. It learns faster than anything in the world. It can reprogram itself. It’s constantly evolving and snowballing and it’s growing so quickly. It’s very dangerous to everybody. It doesn’t think like humans. It doesn’t have empathy. It just knows to self-preserve, and if anything is in its way, then it’s going to go against its goals. In our show, it’s very dangerous. It’s kind of like the Blob, this lifeless, faceless thing that’s everywhere, and it’s coming at you and it’s getting bigger and it’s just growing.
And then there’s Paul LeBlanc. What does CM think of the guy who created neXt?
John Slattery’s awesome. We’re so lucky to have him as our quarterback on this thing. But as far as CM goes, I don’t think CM likes the guy at all. He’s kind of like the one percent. CM just looks at the guy as an entitled a**hole and everything that’s wrong with the world probably.
For any character with a complicated past, it’s bound to come back to bite him at the worst time. What can you tease about when that’ll happen for CM?
It happens in Episode 3 or 4. CM was loosely affiliated with an alt-right movement, with really questionable goals, and he was working for those guys, and they’re jerks.
For the most part, we see these characters at work and not much of their home lives. Will we go home with CM? What’s his life like away from work? Who matters to him?
You do get to go home with him as the season progresses, you do meet his history, his past, the people in his past, the good people and the bad people.
Next, Series Premiere, Tuesday, October 6, 9/8c, Fox
