Peacock's Brave New World Cast on Making a Dystopian Story in Troubling Times
Tomorrow, Peacock will launch and one of its biggest new projects is an original TV series based [...]
Hannah John-Kamen
"I've done a lot of dystopian. I've done a lot of sci-fi myself. It is always, always mirroring the real world and kind of quite scarily now. And I think, it was just amazing because I already read the book such a long time ago and to be part of this new London world where everything's perfect, everything's pharmaceutical now, everything, there's no such thing as privacy. There's no such thing as currency and money and it's scary. It's appealing. It's the world we live in. It's mad. It's kind of traumatic to think about, but when you're actually playing it, you have to play it like it ain't no thing but a chicken wing.
"It's great. It's fun, like this is the life, like this is who we are and where we are. And to actually kind of play that role for such a long time, and then as this story goes on, it's interesting when you kind of go home and go, 'Oh yeah, that isn't the world we live in,' and to be on such an even kilter all the time, you can't operate like that. You need the imperfections in order... I mean, the imperfections are the perfections of the world and yeah, it was interesting."
prevnextHarry Lloyd
"In a way, as soon as we finished filming, the world fell apart. So the conditions in which it's being released, are very different to the conditions it was been made in. But in some ways, yeah, you need to have a glimpse of a society that's, at least, outwardly, super happy. Would that be very annoying in this time? Or actually would have been a nice distraction? The fact is that it is a society that is not happy ultimately, because it's not free. And the relationship between those two concepts is definitely, I think, one of the central themes for our show.
"At a time when our freedoms were definitely curtailed, to a certain extent, for all sorts of different reasons this year, it's an interesting question to ask. And there have been times, I'm sure, when you'd happily take a summer and snap out and just look the other way. I think it's an interesting story to be part of last year, actually, in talking still about the things that were happening then, and finding relevant aspects of it. Because when Huxley wrote it in 1932, he had no idea what would be happening in the rest of the 20th century. And yet, he predicted this society that would be in constant need of distraction and wouldn't be able to handle anxiety and to avoid conflict. And I don't quite know how he did that."
prevnextKylie Bunbury
"Yeah. It's a little on the nose, isn't it? Yeah, it was really interesting because there's so many parallels. I guess in some ways it was nice to escape our version and go into a different version, if that makes any sense. Because it's not like this other version in New London is any better, but at least there were cool outfits and cool parties and some Somas and stuff."
prevnextAlden Ehrenreich
"What I hope for the series is that it's able to hold a mirror up to some of the events or rising tides or currents that have been moving through our world in these intense ways, and give us a chance to think about them differently, have more perspective on them. The show really tackles these huge, broad, conceptual, philosophical questions, and yet at the same time, it's all rooted in the messiness and the complication and the human emotional fear and angst and pain and love and joy. I think it's hopefully a lens through which we can look through what's going on in a very human way."
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