In CBS All Access‘ The Stand Nat Wolff plays Lloyd Henreid, a criminal who goes from being forgotten in jail as the Captain Trips pandemic decimates the population to Randall Flagg’s right hand man. Like many of the characters in the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s iconic novel, Lloyd is a complex and not entirely black and white character and for Wolff, that was part of the allure of getting to play him.
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Speaking with ComicBook.com, Wolff explained that he felt lucky to play Lloyd who was not only his favorite character in the book, but one that he described as a “lost soul”.
“I think for me it was playing somebody who was not just an evil henchman, but he was a lost soul whose weakness was capitalized on by Randall Flagg,” Wolff said. “And he reminded me of one of those people you see in a documentary about a cult leader who follows the cult leader, who you see them and they seem like this totally normal person or maybe a damaged person but not evil and then they end up doing these atrocious things and you can’t believe it. It was my favorite character in the book by far. I felt so lucky to get to play it.”
For Wolff, Lloyd wasn’t the character he was originally intended to play. The actor explained that Josh Boone had attached him to project when he was younger and due to the development time, ended up aging into Lloyd.
“I was a huge fan of Stephen King’s. I mean, I read this book when I was a high schooler,” Wolff said. “But then Josh Boone attached me to this project when I was 18 and a different character and then as the projects take a bunch of years to get made, aged right into my favorite character in the whole book so I was lucky it happened when it did.”
Wolff isn’t the only actor in The Stand getting to play a character they consider a favorite. Amber Heard had similar praise for her character, Nadine Cross.
“What I think is so interesting about Nadine is you don’t know how to define her. No one knows how to define her, probably least of all herself,” Heard said. “She is struggling with a dark past, a lot of secrets, and a very very complicated dynamic with a supernatural force. And while she is presented with for the first time perhaps love and humanity in the form of the relationship she’s been able to form since meeting Larry and coming into the Boulder Free Zone, she’s ultimately a tragic character in that you realize she’s being presented with this reality almost too late. She’s almost discovering this on the last step of a very long path and there’s something tragic and I don’t know, heartbreaking about that because we see that, despite her complications, she ultimately is a lonely person who is reaching out for connections and love and for a character that’s only motivated by that love.’
Heard continued, “And it’s kind of heartbreaking when she meets the end she does and I don’t want to give anything away, but Nadine is my favorite character in this, certainly one of the best female roles I have read or met and that I know of in that she is not easy to define as a bad guy or a good guy. She’s complicated and she’s ultimately a tragic character.”
The first episode of The Stand, “The End”, is now streaming on CBS All Access. New episodes arrive every Thursday. The second episode, “Pocket Savior”, debuts December 24th.
