Constellation: Noomi Rapace, Jonathan Banks Reveal What They Would Be Doing if Not Acting

Noomi Rapace (Prometheus) and Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) both star in the new Apple TV+ series Constellation. In the show, which debuted last week, the world has changed around Rapace’s character, and she has to make sense of it. In the spirit of that, during the press junket to support the show, ComicBook.com asked the pair who they might be if the world had played out differently, and they weren’t currently actors on a press junket. Their answers likely reveal something about their overall mindsets, because neither one just went with “I’d be a plumber” and moved on. Instead, they got a bit philosophical.

Rapace embraced the idea that life is the sum of the choices you make, and she could have ended up kind of…anywhere, depending on who she was in that hypothetical other timeline. Banks was a little more grounded.

“This is really fascinating because we were actually talking about this at dinner last night,” Rapace said. “Where would the other Noomi be now? Would she be happier? Would she be a nicer person? But it brings me back — I’ve been lately thinking a lot about choices, and that we are our decisions, we are our choices, and I have the ability to change my course in life any day, any given moment, if I decide to. So I can become that other version of me if I want to.”

Banks had a different instinct.

“My knee-jerk reaction…is not a good one, because I know from whence I came, and there was trouble back there,” Banks told ComicBook.com. “I grew up in a place that there could have been real trouble.” 

He contrasted his viewpoint with Rapace’s, saying that while she instinctively wonders whether another version of her would have been happier, he thinks things would have gone badly, pointing out that he has always had a hard time focusing. 

“I’ve never been able to sit still,” Banks said. “My apprecation — doing these interviews in this chair over a period of time — for people who have to sit still all day long…one of my daughters does! I think, ‘I don’t know how you do this. I’ve got to be moving.’ When I was a kid, I’d look out the window, I could tell you the squirrels and what was out there and what kind of bird was flying by, but I couldn’t pay attention. I want to subscribe to Noomi’s way of thinking about, let there be something good. In that case, what would I have done? I would have loved to work with kids, with animals. Something where you can help people.”

Constellation premiered globally on Wednesday, February 21st with the first three episodes, followed by one episode weekly, every Wednesday through March 27th on Apple TV+.