Earlier this month, during New York Comic Con, Freeform debuted the first episode (in its entirety) of Beyond — their new original drama series about a young man named Holden Matthews who awakens from a coma after dozen years and soon discovers he has super-powers — and following that, the cast and executive producers (Heroes‘ Tim Kring and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland‘s Adam Nussdorf) took part in a Q&A and gave interviews to members of the press.
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Our own Dallas Jackson spoke with the show’s star, Burkely Duffield, and asked the 24-year-old Canadian actor to comment on the very well-received sizzle reel (view below) that was shown during the event.
“It really showcases what the show is sort of alluding to, and it shows some of the action sequences,” Duffield told ComicBook.com. “It shows a bit of the emotional stress put upon Holden, as well as all of these characters around him. It sort of gives a little taste of what you expect from our season.”
Jackson pointed out that the footage reminded him of X-Men and Strange Things, so he asked Duffield if that was fair to say. “Yeah, there’s a lot of interesting combinations of things you sort of seen,” he offered. “It’s something new, I think. And what Adam [Nussdorf], our writer and creator of the show, really loves about his creation is that it’s something different; it creates a show that’s about powers but really grounded in this reality of a teenager trapped in a body, growing up, really becoming a man and really seeing what that means.”
Before departing, Duffield teased that Holden’s powers will “grow as the season continues.”
Beyond is a one-hour drama about Holden, a young man who wakes up from a coma after 12 years and discovers new abilities that propel him into the middle of a dangerous conspiracy. Now Holden must try and figure out what happened to him during those 12 years; how to survive a world that changed while he was gone; and answer the question, why did this happen to him?
Beyond stars Burkely Duffield (House of Anubis) as Holden Matthews, Romy Rosemont (Glee) as Diane Matthews, Michael McGrady (American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson) as Tom Matthews, Jonathan Whitesell (Once Upon a Time) as Luke Matthews, Dilan Gwyn (Da Vinci’s Demons) as Willa and Jeff Pierre (Shameless) as Jeff McArdle.
From Imperative Entertainment and Automatik, Beyond is created, written and executive produced by Adam Nussdorf. Tim Kring, David Eick, Steven Adelson, Zak Kadison, Justin Levy and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones will serve as executive producers.
Don’t miss the series premiere of Beyond on Monday, January 2 at 9pm/8c on Freeform!
