Send to KindleJASON ISAACS INTERVIEW
By Abbie Bernstein
On NBC’s new series AWAKE, which premieres Thursday March 1 at 10 PM, Jason Isaacs stars as LAPD homicide detective Mike Britten. When we meet Mike, he’s with his wife Hannah (Laura Allen) and son Rex (Dylan Minette), they are all involved in a cataclysmic automobile accident. When Mike wakes up, Hannah is alive, but Rex is dead. Then Mike goes to sleep and wakes up to a reality where Rex has survived, but Hannah was killed. It seems that every time Mike sleeps, he wakes up into the “other” world. Because this gives him a way to hold on to both wife and son, Mike has no desire to disprove either existence, even though his therapists in both realms (Cherry Jones in the one where Rex is alive, B.D. Wong in the one with Hannah) hope to cure him of his delusion. Adding to the mix: clues for cases Mike is working on in one reality show up in the other, perplexing his different partners.
Isaacs is fortuitously standing by himself at a party that NBC is throwing for the Television Critics Association at a many-roomed mansion. He is happy to take time to talk about his overall career, and AWAKE in particular.
A native of Liverpool, England, Isaacs is probably most famous throughout the world for playing the malevolent Lucius Malfoy in the HARRY POTTER films. He was also a significant bad guy as the sadistic British Col. Tavington in THE PATRIOT, as Captain Hook in the 2004 film version of PETER PAN and was the somewhat sympathetic but brutal Providence, RI gangster Michael Caffee in three seasons of Showtime’s BROTHERHOOD.
However, when asked if taking on a kinder, gentler character was one of the reasons he wanted to play AWAKE’s soulful and upright Mike, Isaacs points out, “There’s a ton of stuff I’ve done Americans haven’t seen, although one of the series that I did, CASE HISTORIES, was just on PBS, where I played a very heroic guy. In fact, I wasn’t looking to do anything [as an actor for hire]. I had developed my own show and I’d sold it to [FX] network and I was already working with a writer and I was offered [AWAKE] and I didn’t want to read it, even. And I read it and I couldn’t put it down, and then they asked me to do it and I tried to say no, and every reason I gave for saying no, they took away from me. I said I was producing my own show - they said, “Well, be a producer on this.” And I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t bear the idea that anyone else did it, because I wanted to be the first person to read Episode Two, and so that’s why I did it.”
As for his producing duties on AWAKE, Isaacs says he is very involved in the storytelling. “I was there at all the auditions, I was there for the casting, we put it together, and I have ideas for it and have input on the scripts and I’m one of the first people there and the last to leave. I try and be the captain of the ship in a way that makes every person [want to do their best]. I want to try to make sure it’s a story I’m happy to put my name to, because I’m not particularly interested in being in a successful television series [that is formulaic]. I really like to tell stories that engage people and move them and entertain them and mystify them and give them something to talk about, and I get the chance to stick my oar into the writers’ room and try to make that happen.”
The metaphorical oar tends to visit the writers’ room more than the actor/producer does in the flesh, due to the fact that production usually requires him to be on set, Isaacs adds. “A lot of the time, I have to [communicate with the writers] by email or when I grab people, because I get out of my bed at close to five in the morning and roll back up to my house at sometimes eleven o’clock. So I don’t have a lot of spare time, but we are on the same studio lot, so we run into each other.”
AWAKE halted production for about three weeks last year. There were a lot of rumors swirling around about the reasons for this. Isaacs takes the opportunity to set the record straight. “Actually, I’d never encountered it before. We shut ourselves down. We went to the network, and we said, ‘Look, we’ve run out of scripts of the quality that we would like to film. We need a little bit more time.’ Because once you start, there’s a machine that eats story and you script and film it, script and film it, script and film it, and we were going, ‘This is a really unique and interesting way of telling a story and all of these writers, who are vastly experienced, are finding it the hardest thing they’ve ever written. So we want to make sure it’s universal and accessible and thrilling and fun and makes sense. We just need more time to make sure that the whole season is of as good quality as the first three or four.’ And the network went, ‘Well, that’s okay.’ They looked at it and they agreed and they said, ‘We’re not on the air yet, so there’s no delivery pressures, so you can have the time off.’ It was a real luxury and a real sign of faith, I think, on their part.”
Knowing that NBC is currently under the stewardship of Chairman of Entertainment Bob Greenblatt was one of AWAKE’s draws for Isaacs; the two had worked together when Greenblatt was running Showtime while Isaacs was in BROTHERHOOD. “One of the reasons I did the show is that Bob Greenblatt wrote to me and asked me to take a look at it, and I admire his creative decisions and his boldness. When he was at Showtime, he really put it on the map as a pay cable station. I saw how he gave the artists their heads, he allowed people to create and tell stories the way they wanted to, and I think he’s going to be provocative and controversial at NBC, too, and maybe part of that is allowing us to tell stories that are not normally told.”
Since Michael is awake in both of the realities he experiences, does he ever feel that he sleeps, or is he completely sleep-deprived? “Maybe he’s sleeping half the time and dreaming,” Isaacs suggests. “He’s not getting much rest. He’s absolutely worn ragged by it. It’s taking a toll on his psyche, there’s no question. One of the difficulties for him is, it’s probably the case that he’s dreaming half the time, but whereas most people’s dreams have them flying or they’ve got two heads or they’re suddenly speaking Bulgarian, it seems like his real life. It’s just each dream is a world where his wife or his son is alive. He’s solving cases, but it’s not true to say that he’s not asleep or getting any rest. By the time it gets to episode twelve, this is not a guy who’s been awake for nine months without any sleep.”
He adds an observation. “And by the way - when I’m in a dream, I have no idea I’m in a dream. Sometimes I test myself and I go, ‘Wait, am I in a dream? I must be in a dream, because I still have flippers for feet,’ and then I wake up and I realize how nonsensical it was. Mostly, I wake up in my dreams completely [unable to remember what they were]. The burden that he carries, and the benefit, is that he remembers everything that happens.”
There is no need to play Mike differently in the two separate realities, Isaacs notes. “He’s the same guy, but in one of the worlds, he’s lost his wife; in one of the worlds, he’s lost his son. There are different partners, a different dynamic with his different partners, different relationships to crimes. But he’s always got his eyes open and his heart open, trying to work out what the hell’s going on for him and how best to function in the world. What was very difficult is, is how to be a decent husband and how to be a decent father, but he’s clearly not having the same experiences with his wife [as he is with] his son.”
Will the situation ever reach a point where Hannah and/or Dylan put credence in Michael’s dreams? “It reaches all kinds of points,” Isaacs replies. “The writers have free rein to do all kinds of imaginative things they don’t normally do, and yet they’re trying to make sure that there are certain kind of ground rules, so that everybody understands what’s going on and can identify with it, so it doesn’t just turn into some serial nightmare. But I think it’s fair to say that they take the stories places that most procedurals obviously don’t go. ”
The unusual way AWAKE interweaves the personal and procedural elements is a big part of the show’s appeal for Isaacs. “One of the great things to me as an actor, and hopefully for the audience watching it, is that you get something very familiar, you get procedural drama, and there’s always emotional content. And as an actor, I’d do a runner - you’d find me running down the freeway in the night - if I had to turn up and [only] solve crimes every week. They’re human stories and there’s a crime narrative. So I like all of it.”
The daily life of an American police detective was the subject of Isaacs’ research for the role of Mike. “I’ve spent time alongside cops, I did my due diligence and research, because that is a real privilege of my job, that I get to do things. Do a ride-along. It’s amazing. You think, ‘Oh, I know about this.’ And then you spend twenty-four hours or so [with real police], and you go, ‘Actually, I don’t. I know what I’ve seen on TV - it’s not like that at all.’ They have a different way of thinking, they have a different way of being parents, they have a different way of being husbands, and they have a different attitude toward morality and crime. They see the world through a different prism, police, generally. [Mike is] ex-Navy, so he has that attitude, too. So is he different from other people? Yeah. He married Hannah when she was young, you can see that Laura [Allen] is younger than me. So he married a young girl and she got pregnant very quickly, and that’s been most of their life and [they are devoted to] their kid, so he is a composite of all these unique things that have happened to just him. And he’s from New Jersey - they moved here twenty-five years ago and went to a Naval base and stayed. I’ve got a whole history of him, some of which may end up on the screen, some of which may not.”
As the only way Michael can keep both his wife and his son alive is to treat both realities as though they are valid, the thrust of AWAKE overall is not about Michael trying to determine which world is real and which one is a dream. “It’s completely irrelevant. The pilot is sets up the story, it sets up the dynamic, but it isn’t true to say that every episode is about whether each world is real. That is very far from the case. Having established that he has these two worlds that he moves between, we then see what the consequences of that are. He’s not struggling to find out which one is real or to shut one down. So the essential question doesn’t become which one’s real, it becomes how is he moving through this existence and what is it doing to him as a man and what’s it doing to his family? [The dreams are] real to him. My dreams are completely real to me when I have them. There’s no part of me that thinks I’m in a dream. I wish I could lucid-dream. So it’s true for Michael Britten, as it’s true for all of us, that when he’s in a dream, it is completely compellingly real to him, and then he goes to sleep, and then he’s in another dream, or he’s in the other world. And none of it seems like fantasies to him.”
How does Mike juggle his two worlds? “Mike Britten is only beginning to try and process what’s going on,” Isaacs says. “He doesn’t really understand it. He’s trying to find out what the rules are and he doesn’t quite know where the ground is going to get shaky and where things are going to disappear for him. So as far he’s aware, whenever he goes to sleep, he switches worlds, but sometimes that may not happen. Sometimes he may need to switch worlds and try and get to the other world to go and sort something out or research something to come back in the first world. There are lots of different permutations and possibilities.”
Don’t count on Mike being able to easily fall asleep and switch, Isaacs warns. “I don’t think a power nap is going to be very useful in the middle of a case. But if he dropped off to sleep, that could be very tricky. There’s one story, for instance, where I desperately need to get to the other world to try to find out if something has already happened, and I come back and it’s happened, so I go rifle through the cupboards and I grab some of my wife’s sleeping pills and I knock myself out and I wake up in the other world so I can go back and save some people. So the mechanism lends itself to all kinds of really interesting plots and it takes a toll on me. Should I for instance go to sleep in one world and wake up in the same world again, it would put me into a terrible, terrible panic, because that might mean that the other world has disappeared for me, and that would be very disturbing.”
Mike views the situation somewhat as the audience does, Isaacs adds. “He’s not insane. He doesn’t think [the two realities really] both exist. He just knows he lives in a world where they’re both in his life at the moment. There’s always every possibility of everything. All of the possibilities that you can think of are the things that I run through my mind as Mike Britten all the time. I know they can’t [both be real]. But I keep feeling that I can’t dismiss either of them and it’s both frustrating and it’s energizing. It’s emotional for me, so every time I see [either wife Hannah or son Dylan], I’m half-experiencing, ‘This may be the last time I see you’ sometimes and the lack of loss. Hannah has lost her son - I haven’t lost my son. On the other hand, when I’m with him, then I’ve lost my wife. So there’s a whole bunch of complex things going on, and I try and make sure that I feel them simply and humanly, so the audience will come on the journey with me. That’s my job, to try to take them on the journey with me and not do anything that would harm the engagement.”
Being in AWAKE has actually changed the way Isaacs experiences his own dreams, he says. “It’s made me think much more carefully about what I’m dreaming and why I’m dreaming it and trying hard to remember what the elements were and see if it’s got anything to tell me about things that I either noticed subliminally or I’m worried about or hoping for, how much more important a signal they are to what’s going on in my subconscious.”
Inevitably, the HARRY POTTER films arise in the conversation. “I don’t think we’ll ever see a series of films as popular,” Isaacs says. “Things may make more money at the box office, but I don’t think we’ll ever see a series of films that succeed - I don’t mean commercially, I mean artistically and culturally, like those, and have the impact they’ve had, along with the books, which have been [sold and read] in Third World countries to the skyscrapers of First World countries. So no, I’m not sure that many pairs of eyes will ever look at me [at once again], but that’s not what I do. But selfishly - I just do the next character that comes along. I have no idea. I have been asked, ‘Has it helped your career?’ I have no idea. I don’t have a twin brother who didn’t do it and I can compare myself to him. I did that, and I’m really glad that I did that, it was fantastically good fun, so this is part of the work. Now I’m doing this and it’s just as engaging, and when this is over, I’ll do the next thing. I like telling stories. I think storytelling has a real place in our world. It gives us ways to look at our lives and think about who we are and how we want to be.”
What’s happening with the project that Isaacs was developing before AWAKE came along? “Oh, it’s ongoing,” Isaacs relates. “Obviously, I was hoping that I would be the lead actor in it, but it’s a good enough idea and good enough concept, and the network are bullish enough about it that it will go out without me, I’m sure at some point, but we’re still writing it.”
Isaacs is clearly very enthusiastic about AWAKE, but he allows that having to talk about it to people who’ve only seen the pilot is a little difficult for him. “I’m English, so I’m from a different culture and I’m deeply uncomfortable with telling people, ‘Our show is great and you should watch it.’ I’d like you all to see it and decide if you think it’s great. If you all thing it’s great, then you can write and tell other people to watch it, and you can ask me questions about the character specifically, or working with Wilmer [Valderrama] as my partner [in one reality] or Steven [Harris] as my partner [in the other reality], or how am I going to be with my wife - specific character journeys. But having to stand on rooftops and having to tell people how brilliant our show is and why you’d be crazy to miss it is such anathema to me culturally. I think the stories are really good. I think that when you see them - I hope that when you see them - you’ll like them enough that we won’t have to sell it to you.”
This is, of course, the usual way of publicizing new television shows in the U.S., Isaacs observes. “Generally, the process here, and the process generally, is that it’s a very crowded marketplace, there’s new shows all the time, there’s dozens of outlets on television, on cable, but other ways to view entertainment, so you have to make a big noise to make people watch you, and I wish that it was a world where the work stood in and of itself, for itself. When I was on Showtime, for instance, the ratings were less important than the impact you made on the media and people loved BROTHERHOOD. Particularly critically, it was very, very well-received, and when I was engaging with the media, it was about questions of morality and the character, was he dodgy or whatever, but here there’s a slightly different atmosphere and I feel I have to get a different hat on, I think, and personally, I am not drawn to things when the people who are in them tell me to watch them.”
Still, Isaacs does think people will be happy if they do watch AWAKE. “I just want people to give it a try. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it was worth watching, and I hope it finds a place when things are less noisy. I hope it sits on the schedule where people will give it a try. I have a feeling once they take a bite of it, they’ll want more. Really, it’s very selfish, because they’re a bunch of really talented people. I watched them write it, I watched them make it, I watched them shoot it, I watched them knock themselves out, every day, all night, trying to work out how to make this the best it can be. I think they’ve done extraordinary work, so I hope they get a chance to shine.”
By Abbie Bernstein
Entertainment Reporter - Buzzy Mag: Your Premiere Source For Everything Sci-Fi & Fantasy!
