YouTube Red has been going all-in on its premium, original content as of late, with shows like Cobrai Kai and Step Up: High Water making quite a splash with fans.
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The studio’s latest original is Impulse, a sci-fi/drama series based on the novel by Stephen Gould. To get some insight on the new series, which is now available to stream on YouTube, ComicBook.com spent some time talking with one of it’s stars, Sarah Desjardins.
ComicBook: So, tell us what Impulse is all about.
Sarah Desjardins: Okay, yeah. So Impulse is about a girl named Henri who moves to the small town of Restin with her mom, Cleo. Maddie Hasson plays Henri and Missi Pyle plays Cleo. They move to this town so that Cleo can move in with her boyfriend, Thomas. I play Thomas’s daughter, Jenna. So we’re all kind of wrapped up in this small town in this small house together and Henry and Jenna don’t really get a long at first but the story’s truly about how Henry doesn’t really fit in anywhere in this town and she enlists the help of Clay, one of the students at the high school and he actually assaults her and that’s what prompts this [event]. The whole way throughout we believe that Henry has seizures. She has epilepsy but truly what happens is when this traumatic event takes place, it prompts a seizure but that involves into what… Henri isn’t sure what it is at first. But we find out that it’s teleportation.
What I like about the show is it could easily become a superhero show about teleporting but that’s definitely not something that we’re doing. There’s absolutely elements of that but truly what the show is about is Henri understanding what this is and we are in such a grounded space, also, that we’re not going to just assume that it’s a superpower. We don’t know what happened and we find out that her power is linked to this traumatic event that happened to her. So the whole season is really about overcoming her assault and she ends up having to face her attacker, Clay, who ends up being a paraplegic. So it’s a very grounded look at a heightened, other-worldly scenario.
Jenna is obviously that step-sister sort of role, how does that fit in to Henri’s story?
Yes. So when we meet them together as a pair, they’re polar opposites. Henri’s cool, she’s a stoner, an outsider and when we meet Jenna, we’re very much led to believe she’s kind of your stereotypical popular girl. She’s in the popular group. Her best friend, Patty, is the queen bee at the school. But honestly, once this traumatic event happens, it brings the two of them together and we get to see another side of Jenna, the true side of her which is really compassionate and Henri needs somebody when this happens and she’s one of the first people that Henri confides in and Jenna runs with that and she’s going to be there for her. She wants to help her in any way she can and she goes on this journey of discovery with Henry.
But something about Jenna specifically is she doesn’t really know who she is yet but she’s not focusing on herself ever. So something that we explore for Jenna specifically in this Season is maybe some self-discovery and figuring out herself and putting herself first which is something that she’s never really done. But in terms of Henry and Jenna, I almost say it’s like the “Will they or won’t they” of the series. We’re not a couple but it’s constant push and pull. We’ll get closer but then Henri is not used to accepting love or help from anyone. So it’s a defense mechanism for her to push Jenna away. So we get closer, we get further apart, we get closer, we get further apart and that takes place through the whole season.
We’re in an age when superhero properties and franchises are starting to become tiresome to a lot of people. What makes Impulse stand out amongst the rest of the genre?
Truthfully, what I think makes Impulse different from so much of that is how we tackle the show in terms of how real and grounded it is combined with just some of the subjects that we tackle. I know a lot of people have been doing it but we’re really delving into many different … I don’t want to say “minorities” but many communities that aren’t necessarily always addressed and it was so important for us to get that right and we did research, we talked to all these different communities and I don’t want to give too much away by saying specific ones but just that we really feel like we did the best we could in terms of we want to makes sure that all of these people feel like they’re represented accurately and with as much respect as possible. All we can hope is that they watch the show and feel that that’s true but I think that that’s something about a show that almost lends itself to superhero things and Marvel and DC. I think having that aspect in our show really grounds it in reality and makes it different.
You mentioned earlier that Impulse deals with the issue of sexual assault early on in the series. How did you all go about tackling such difficult subject matter?
Well here’s what I think is something so amazing is it was in the pilot originally. The assault always happened in our pilot but, when we got picked up and our showrunner, Lauren LeFranc came on, she watched it and she just kind of felt like if we’re going to tackle a subject like that, we really need to do it right. So actually, when we went to series, we ended up re-shooting it to actually make it more visceral because we really wanted to affect the viewer, make them understand the gravity of the situation. What I think we’re doing that is different in a way that shows the effects of this and how we’re tackling the subject is we’re showing both perspectives. So there’s Henri who was assaulted and the whole season is her journey to acknowledgement, acceptance of what happened to her and potentially forgiveness but in a way, she needs to forgive so she can move on herself and have a better life.
But also what we do is we go from the perspective of Clay, the assailant, and there’s some episodes that I love what we did where we have some flashbacks to the event and we see it from both of their perspectives which I think is something that you don’t always see in film and television when it comes to sexual assault. It’s not about drawing attention to what he did or anything like that but more so there’s so many blurred lines in a situation like that. So just to see the different views of what happened and how we address that, I’m really proud of. And Maddie and Tanner [Stine], who is Clay, did an amazing job.
With so many streaming services, there seems to be a stigma about YouTube Red being a “legitimate” network so-to-speak, but shows like Cobra Kai have started to change that narrative recently. What’s your experience been like working on a YouTube production?
It truly has been, [a situation of] “This is another high quality program and we’re treating it the same way” because also what’s great about our show is, YouTube is very determined to evolve their programming. Being on Impulse, we’ve kind of just joined the uprising of that.
They’re really putting their time and energy into that right now. Our show is also produced in association with NBC/Universal so we have a real, real television network also a part of our show and we have Doug Liman who directed our pilot and producing. No, it’s a real thing. It was great. I loved working on it and honestly, just everything, everyone a part of it is of the highest quality and I feel so lucky. I would say it’s been no different to working on the real shows that I’ve been a part of. If anything, I’d say it’s even more so which, of course, getting a job on a YouTube show, I wasn’t sure what to expect but no, it’s been great. I think that the few people who have seen the pilot, at least so far, they put it out as a little teaser for Google Assistant customers, have also been supportive. And the trailer, I think we’re showing people that it’s higher quality than they may think.
Finally, we know Impulse is based on the Jumper novel series, and Doug Liman, who produces the show, directed the Jumper movie. Are there any hints at a bigger universe for Impulse?
I guess I would say it’s more of a stand-alone. We don’t have any characters directly from the Jumper movie or Stephen’s novels. But what we’ve been saying which is completely true is that it’s in the Jumper universe. Who’s to say? We don’t know. If we keep going seasons two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Who knows, we may have some characters from other areas of Stephen’s world come in. But, for now, it’s definitely part of the Jumper universe. And also, I will say, from the pilot you’ll get this that there’s definitely not to say I’ve kind of been tossing the superhero portion aside but there’s definitely a whole other group of people in our show that are from this other world that will come closer and closer to our world as the season goes on.
So you’re saying that Season 1 won’t end with Hayden Christensen walking onto the screen?
It will not.
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The entire first season of Impulse is now streaming on YouTube Red, though episodes 1-3 are available to stream without a subscription.
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