Carnival Row – SDCC 2019

By starrymag | August 9, 2019

By: Brittany Dailey

 

 

Q: I went to the Amazon experience and it gave a really good insight into the themes of the show. I was curious for you, Orlando, how was having something so socially relevant affect how you approached the character?

Orlando Bloom: Great question. First of all, it was the great gift and opportunity of stepping into this show was because it was so timely and it did feel like it spoke to a lot of the issues and with relevance to what’s happening in the world today. Alongside that, because we’re in this fantastical world created this remarkable brainchild by Travis Beacham, we’re able to examine with real humanity, some of the really tragic and desperate situations that are happening in the world, but with an objective and empathetic view, because we are looking at forms and the Fae folk, as we call them. It enables us to step outside of ourselves and look at this situation and thinks around it. It was so beautifully handed by both Travis and Mac (Paul McGuian) that it was a gift for all of us. As actors, we feel a sense of responsibility to deliver.

 

David Gyasi: May I jump in on that question as well? I have two kids and I am of African origin. They’re showing signs of wanting to get into this business. There’s the African side of me that is like you have the option of being a lawyer, doctor or engineer. There’s the other side of me that when you want to get into this business, the best advice I give people is to go out and talk to people and to listen because that helps you to get a perspective on life and how humans work. As an actor, when you get an opportunity and a script that feels like its speaking about our world and a world we recognize, it’s a real gift. As Orlando said, an honor. I feel like that’s how we approached it.

 

Q: How do you think a show like this expands the world view that can be digested by the audience so that they can figure out what to do in the current situation and climate?

 

Marc Guggenheim: The thing that art has a chance to do is get people to look at issues and discuss those issues. I don’t know if it necessarily needs to be more than that. I think that alone is a pretty substantial lift. I think a lot of our problems that we have as a society stem from the fact that we don’t talk about things anymore. As a result, we’ve placed ourselves in these bubbles. The nice thing about art is it can maybe, hopefully, jumpstart those conversations. I think it’s ultimately healthy for our society.

 

Travis Beacham: I think in writing this and shooting it, one of the adjectives that comes up is “Dickensian.” And usual that is a superficial kind of way like it’s “Victorian,” there’s a lot of characters. I’ve always been a fan of Dickens. It got me thinking about him and what he’s really good at, and what I’ve tried to inspire in the writing of the show was wrestling with issues of the time, but in a way that’s very personal, very connected to character and doesn’t it become polemic but rather it tells the story of the struggles that people are going through the specific struggles of an individual character and it really takes that human perspective. I think that’s sort of like why we always try to write this. You know, storytelling in general I think it’s an act of empathy and definitely in social issues with the actual story of this it’s just finding what is the story. What is the story of the other, you know, whoever that is. Whether it’s by gender or by race or by place of birth or this whole series is about I think every potential way that you could subdivide a population, from the upper class and lower class and how all those interact.

 

Q: For each of you, the world of “Carnival Row” seems so richly imagined. What was your reaction to stepping on set, and do you have a favorite detail that fans should watch out for?

 

OB: Can I answer that first? I was so excited when I first walked down the road. We have a character of a horror specs in the show. First of all, I’m blessed. When I was on the set of Lord of the Rings it was a mind-blowing experience and the bar has been set so high. But I was so overjoyed to walk down Carnival Row and see the level of detail. When you walk into this shop, it’s like a witch oracle fairy. She’s got these potions and these creatures in jars. You couldn’t imagine that. I couldn’t imagine that. It was the thing that was so exciting about when first I read the script. I was like, “Wow! I don’t think I’ve seen this before,” and I love this fantasy world because I feel like you can explore and go places with it. But to see it physicalized and created, the card, the tarot cards that were created, with like snake skins on the back, it was just like, I geek out over stuff like that. I really geek out over details. The jars with creatures that you could never imagine, put together.

 

MG: One of my favorite tenants, it’s a small thing. I don’t know if you’ll see it on screen. When you walk down, at the very end, is a barber shop. It used to be a human barber shop. Part of the billboard on the wall illustrates all these different styles of haircuts that you can get there. Whatever fairish or fawnish immigrant had moved in, had painted over horns on the haircut. It’s such a little thing, but in a way, we are constantly doing that and thinking not the most direct route. But what is the most interesting and the root that feels the most authentic.

 

Tamzin Merchant: I’ve done a lot of period dramas. Lots of corsets and bustles. I haven’t done one where I’m having a full-blown tea party with a man with horns. That to me, it felt like this playground, fully formed playground, that came right out of Travis’ head that all us actors got to dive right into. This whole world that we all got to play in, with its own conventions and traditions. Its own mythology and history. You’re coming into this story at this point that we don’t usually come into this fantasy story at this point. You usually come in, like Travis was saying, a lot earlier in the timeline. But now we’re at this post-industrial Victorian age with all these social conventions that are quite refined and quite Byzantine, and quite complex. The audience is plunged into the middle of it and I think that’s really cool.

 

DG: I would just add, similar to what everyone said. For me, it’s the detail. Because like you had that immersive experience. How many of you have had that experience? We’ve had it as well for the first time. They put so much into these kind of big, vast and expansive. You could be walking down and you see a bit of graffiti. It’s those moments that are full on kind of hooves and leg muscles, which is amazing. But also, they put the fur on individually, these hairs, so then it breathes and moves like an animal.

 

Q: What is something you’re excited for the audience to see about your character?

 

TM: I’m actually really excited for people to see me being difficult. I think as myself, as most of my life, I’m English and quite polite, generally. I loved playing Imogen because she comes out with this stuff that maybe isn’t ok to say and that’s such a treat. I’m excited for people to see Imogen Spurnrose being kind of awkward in her own skin and not this conventional period drama like ice queen or anything like that. I think she’s so much more than one thing and, actually, I think that the female characters and actresses and the women we have in this show are amazing and complex characters, and performed beautifully. That is a massive treat for me as well, to be in a cast of wonderful actors and so many wonderful women. I’m really excited for people to see very complex and multifaceted female character.

 

OB: I kind of wear my heart on my sleeve quite a lot so sometimes I can be guilty of over communicating. It was really wonderful to have a character that is guarded, that holds secrets, that has an immense amount of empathy for his environment. Which we don’t explain away. Which is thrown away. To sort of embrace that kind of…there’s a sort of masculinity that is really well balanced with a short of feminine quality to it, in a way. Of openness I would say, of empathy. It was really special to have that shadow self-explored a little bit. The darker sides to the shadow self of a character and why is he behaving that way and then not explaining in a way, that was fun.

 

DG: Mine’s similar in a way. I’m quite interested in hierarchy and class and how that works and how that comes to be. In my country, if you speak a little bit like this (lowers voice) you already have a class. And it doesn’t matter how much money is in your bank account, you are of a certain class. Whereas, I think in different countries, it can be selected or money type and it’s very hard to move into that class. My character arrives in the row and he is a puck and there is a scene. My character arrives, buys the biggest house in the richest area, cash overflowing. One of my favorite scenes (I haven’t seen episode 1, so I don’t know if it made the cut)…There’s a scene where he’s just sucked at the end, on his own, in this house. To answer your question about what is the most interesting thing, I think it’s from there how does someone do that and survive in that place and make a success of them. I’m fascinating in exploring that as well.

 

Q: This question is for Mr. Beacham. You mentioned Charles Dickens. If you could chisel four writers into your personal Mount Rushmore, who would it be? 

 

TB: Four writers? Wow. That is really challenging. The first few that jump to mind would probably be Dickens and Shakespeare…and Mark (Guggenheim). That’s a really hard question. If you were to ask me on a different day, I think it would be totally different answers. I love Frank Herbet’s Dune. That’s been such an inspiration point in building worlds. For me, not only does it tell you a story but it takes you to a place. My way of thinking it’s like the place is a character, in of itself, because it affects the characters that live in it. Those are the sorts of writers that I really admire who can you read and you find yourself in a different place. I think my answer might change from day to day, you would find that commonality between all of them. Who are the sorts of writers that transport you?

 

Q: What do you think about this transition in film like what Amazon is doing where you are able to watch all at the same time on Prime, having a platform? What is your perspective on the future for this?

 

TB: I would say it’s crazy how the industry has changed. The first TV show I pitched we only went to broadcast network. When we were taking “Carnival Row” around, we didn’t even go to any key channels. We did a tour of screening places. Exactly what you’re talking about, you get those platforms that have those global brands. That have a global awareness. That’s really a good angle. Having a show like this, as in creating this, it lets you tell one global story and one global perspective. And I think that’s really valuable.

 

TM: It’s exciting to feel people can share it together and have a kind of community that’s a worldwide community of sharing the love of a particular show and going on that journey kind of together in some ways. And being able to discuss it and love it, at the same time. Also, spoiler alerts become a lot less dangerous because everyone watches it at once.

 

OB: Getting to explore a character over eight hours and go deep and then have it shared and talked about in their ways, it’s an exciting new way to tell story and tell a narrative.

 

DG: Exactly the same. Having done both film and TV, sometimes you are restricted in both genres because perhaps the budget isn’t there for tv and the time to let a character breathe in film. So, to mix the two is a real joy.

 

OB: People have talked as if TV is the little brother to film. That doesn’t feel like it is part of the conversation anymore. There was never one point when I was on set, it was so expansive and big it felt like it was an eight-hour movie and we were on a big movie set. It was my first time in the TV space. I think that idea is sort of gone now. As an actor it’s just fun to get to go deep into character like that.

 

Q: How many scenes are inspired by what’s going on with things such as refugees?

 

MG: We try not to hit anything too firmly on the head where you can pick out who represents who. We wanted to talk about the issues without becoming a parable, but creating a world that feels real in and of itself. It’s a show that lives in a lot of different worlds. It lives on the streets. It lives with the immigrants and what they’re going through. Equally, it lives in the drawing rooms and it lives in the upper-class households and the people in power. They’re stories are as much a part of it as anything else. The perspective of the show is that one affects the other and that everything affects everything. It’s finding the structure of that web and how everything works.

 

TM: I think as well there’s a kind of universality to the story, in a sense that there’s been different groups of people around the world that’ve been people persecuting other people, and tribes persecuting other tribes. When I read the script, I was very struck with how universal it felt, but also it feels very specific to our time. I think that that’s part of its magic. It’s of its own time, but it also reflects and mirrors strongly what we’re all going through now. That is a joy as an actor because there is a sense of relevance and feels quite captured in history as well, but it kind of has its own history that the whole kind of invention has its own history. It’s quite extraordinary.

 

OB: It’s so authentic. Our fae folk can represent, if you like, the migrant refugee crisis. Because they are fae folk and fairies, they’re so real, it’s so tangible. You can identify, without overly associating. That enables you to have perspective and observe from the outside, but relate in a clever way. That is how the fantasy aspect of it works really well. It doesn’t bang you over the head. It isn’t bashing your head up. It’s a sort of subtle weaving into the narrative and into the fabric of the whole piece, which I think works really well.