Echo 3 Creator Mark Boal on Bringing More Awareness to Therapeutic Psychedelics in the Apple TV+ Series

For the past few weeks, Apple TV+ subscribers have been treated to Echo 3, a new series based on the novel When Heroes Fly by Amir Gutfreund. The thriller has already made headlines for a lot of different reasons, both for the unique circumstances during which it was filmed, as well as the high-octane plot of the series itself. That includes the very profession of one of the series' protagonists, Amber Chesborough (Jessica Ann Collins), who is researching the medical benefits of psychedelics when she is kidnapped in the series' inciting incident. While speaking to ComicBook.com about his work on Echo 3, series creator and director Mark Boal spoke about that throughline, and the hope that the series can help destygmatize the subject.

"Psychedelics are now kind of coming back — I don't know if into fashion is the right word, but they're sort of trickling back into the public in a way that I haven't seen in a long time," Boal explained in our interview, which you can check out above. "And it's certainly different from how they were introduced to America in the 60's. I agree with you, I think there's a lot of interesting work to be done, in terms of the neurobiology and what they do to your mind, and what the implications for them are. So I decided to take all that and put it inside of a character, as a way of bringing some of those topics to light. It also plays into South America and Latin America and the jungle where, I'm sure you know this, but the Amazon is one of the few places left on the planet where there are bioactive plants and so forth, that have not been fully explored by science. So it's kind of amazing to think that there's still stuff out there that we don't fully understand."

What is Echo 3 about?

Set in South America, the action-packed thriller follows Amber Chesborough, a brilliant young scientist who is the emotional heart of a small American family. When Amber goes missing along the Colombia-Venezuela border her brother, Bambi, and her husband, Prince — two men with deep military experience and complicated pasts — struggle to find her in a layered personal drama, set against the explosive backdrop of a secret war.

The series stars Collins, Michiel Huisman, Luke Evans, Elizabeth Anweis, Fahim Fazli, James Udom, Maria Del Rossario, Alejandro Furth, Juan Pablo Raba, Brandley Whitford, and Martina Gusman.

New episodes of Echo 3 debut weekly exclusively on Apple TV+.

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