CusickGallery.net: Henry Ian Cusick

Henry Ian Cusick on The 100’s Dark Path and Kane’s Ambitions – IGN.

 Henry Ian Cusick on The 100’s Dark Path and Kane’s Ambitions

Debuting last week, the CW’s new post-apocalyptic sci-fi series, The 100, is set both on Earth, where the title characters have been sent — to discover if our planet is once more livable — and in space, as we follow the power struggle onboard the space station called the Ark, with the remnants of humanity. A key figure on the Ark is Councilman Kane, played by Henry Ian Cusick. The pilot established Kane as a man who is determined to save mankind by any means necessary; even if it involves the death of many, as the Ark’s capacity to maintain life dips dangerously low. This puts him into conflict both with the current leader, Chancellor Jaha (Isaiah Washington) and with Abby (Paige Turco), a fellow council member who has a very different viewpoint on what is right.

The 100 has now wrapped production on its 13-episode season, but a few weeks before they finished, I sat down with Cusick to discuss his character and where Kane is coming from. We also talked about the surprisingly dark places The 100 goes and the echoes the series has of Cusick’s previous series Lost, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

IGN TV: Your character obviously has his ambitions, but do you think he’s sort of single-minded in that? From his point of view, he wants to help save humanity, and he just thinks he knows a better, albeit more ruthless, way to do it.

Henry Ian Cusick: That’s absolutely right. You hit it on the head. His ambitions… You would think he just wants Jaha’s job, for no other reason than he just wants the job. But I think, if he is ambitious in any way, he just thinks he can do it better and that his way is the right way. That’s why he’s prepared to kill quite a few people, as opposed to Abby, who’s not playing with that one at all.

IGN: Is it interesting to put your mindset into that of a guy who is so honed in what he believes is the greater good?

Cusick: Yes, yeah, because that goes against what I’d do, how I think personally. But to think that way and to convince yourself, “You know what? Yes, there is a valid point…” Would you chop your arm off to save your life? Yes, if you could. So it is a very valid point, and to get into that mindset… I hope that some people can understand as well.

IGN: What does he think of “The 100” experiment? What does he think the chances are of that having any fruition?

Cusick: I don’t think he was ever on-board with it. When the spaceship went down, I think — and this is me filling in the blanks — I think he would have thought, with communications working, we could have gotten a lot of information about the Earth, about what the radiation levels are. Unfortunately, the spaceship crashed, and all of us lost contact. So from that fact-finding point of view, I think he thought it was worthwhile, but to send those people, I think he was always of the opinion that they would die quite quickly; the Earth was too radioactive.

IGN: You’ve got these characters up on the space station who have a history together, and we’re starting to get pieces of it, but as we progress, are we going to find out more about their backstory?

Cusick: You do with Jaha and Abby, you find out their backstory. With Kane you don’t find out a backstory, but you do find out more about his personal life. You find out who he has a relationship with on the spaceship. But mainly the spaceship stuff is between Isaiah, Paige and myself, and it’s mainly about trying to save the human race. The relationships between us develop — between me and Jaha, there’s a little bit of edginess between us. Am I good guy? Am I trying to kill him? What is my agenda with him? With Paige it’s very obvious. You know, she’s liberal, I’m right-winged. But with Isaiah, it’s a bit more of a dance. Am I going to stab him in the back or not? Am I loyal? That for me was an interesting arc.

IGN: I was going to ask if that was fun for you and Isaiah to play, because obviously there’s so much tension there.

Cusick: It is an interesting thing to play. Isaiah, you know, is a terrific actor. So it has been interesting to play, because he’s strong, physically. How do I get in and mess with his head? It’s been a cool little thing to do.

IGN: I marathoned the first four episodes with my wife, and she was saying, “Wow, this show gets dark!”

Cusick: Doesn’t it? Not only visually dark, but storyline dark. The camera’s a bit in-you-face and a bit shakier. It’s just shot so differently and lit differently. But the body count — when you find out later on — the body count is insane. It’s comparable to The Walking Dead. There’s a huge amount of death!

IGN: The show is on CW, and people have a certain preconceived notion of what a specific network is. So is intriguing for you to see that they’re willing to push the boundaries and maybe delve into places people aren’t going to expect of this show?

Cusick: I am very proud of the fact that The CW is doing this and that I’m part of pushing that boundary and making this. It’s a CW show, but it’s unlike anything else I think I’ve seen on The CW. I’m very proud to be part of that.

IGN: You have this large cast, but you are so physically removed from half of them. Is it almost like, “Oh, yeah! You’re also doing this show”?

Cusick: We only ever meet at functions like this. [Laughs] You know, because we work on the set, they work in the forest. We meet in passing or at these kinds of functions, and we go, “Hey!” Yeah, it’s exactly that. We don’t really know each other than well.

GN: These are the early stages of the series. You’ve been on other shows in the past where it’s all about reveals and finding out things. With Jason [Rothenberg] and the writers on this show, do you ask a lot about the backstory, or do you prefer to just get the scripts as they come?

Cusick: We did at the beginning. Now I don’t. At the beginning, we were asking a lot of questions, and we were really bugging Jason I think. We were on the phone a lot trying to figure stuff out. Now, we’re on episode 12 or 13, but even by six, I’d stopped. I was just like, “Give me the script.” It takes awhile to understand your character, to get who he is and what he’s about, but now I think I do. I can sort of see where I think it’s going — though it may not go that way. With television, I worked on Lost, where you’d just put your faith in the writers and go with what they’re writing.

IGN: You mentioned Lost, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. You joined at the beginning of Season 2, but is it still kind of strange to be think, “Wow, that’s now been a decade of Lost,” and to see that people talk about it all the time and that it made such an impact?

Cusick: Yeah, I’m very proud of that. I’m very proud that I’m involved with that. I’m still friendly with a whole bunch of them, and I’m going to be working with Jorge [Garcia] and Harold [Perrineau] on a little film down in Trinidad, hopefully. I’m so proud of that and so honored to be part of that.

IGN: Why do you think it continues to resonate with people?

Cusick: That show was — and our show is not dissimilar to that; you notice the similarities, right? — but that show, you can get so much out of it, not just from the action or the romance or the drama or the international cast, but the spiritual aspects. It was such a rich, rich show. I think people will watch that again and go, “Oh…” I don’t know. It was just a bit of magic.

“The 100″ TV Review on CW | Variety.

March 18, 2014 | 08:30AM PT

Saying that a show plays on two levels can seldom be taken quite so literally as in “The 100,” a better-than-average CW sci-fi drama that splits its story into two halves: The 100 young people of the title, who’ve been jettisoned down to see if they can re-inhabit a nuclear-ravaged Earth and establish a society, “Lord of the Flies” style; and the adults above on a floating space station, wondering how long their resources will hold out, in what amounts to a poor man’s “Battlestar Galactica.” Parts of the plot and casting fall short, but there are enough elements in this ambitious serial to hope the show doesn’t run out of ideas — or air.

TV PILOTS/DEVELOPMENT SCORECARD: Follow all of the development action during upfront season

The premiere of the series, based on a book by Kass Morgan, moves a little too fast in establishing the rules, introducing a space-bound society 97 years after nuclear annihilation, where any crime is a capital offense — unless the perpetrator happens to be under the age of 18.

So the equivalent of a juvenile-hall facility (played by actors who generally look considerably older) are shipped down to the planet. It’s an act of necessity, unbeknownst to the inhabitants, because the Ark — the collection of space stations where three generations have lived — is running short of air and will soon have to start “floating” people.

Think of the colonists as the expendables, only with acne instead of an AARP plan.

Among the kid contingent is Clarke (Eliza Taylor), the daughter of the station’s doctor, Abby (Paige Turco), whose husband was turned into space debris for wanting to go public with the bad news. This has put Abby at odds with the group’s leader, Chancellor Jaha (Isaiah Washington, rebounding from his “Grey’s Anatomy” floating), and his No. 2 (“Lost’s” Henry Ian Cusick), the latter appearing a bit too eager to impose a mass death sentence to help preserve precious resources.

Clarke’s version of Eve, meanwhile, immediately finds a potential Adam in Finn (Thomas McDonell), though like any apocalyptic romance, it’s not without complications. She also butts heads with the colonists’ de facto leader (Bob Morley), whose resentment against those in power comes with its own detailed backstory.

Developed by Jason Rothenberg, “The 100” plays best up in space, and at times feels a little too much like “Futuristic Earth, 90210” down on the planet, where — heady over their exposure to fresh air — the youthful pioneers begin to feud and squabble, as well as discover all is not paradise. That includes the realization there might be more than just two-headed deer to endanger them. (The threats are generally teased out in a manner meant to build suspense, but that also suggests there wasn’t a budget to do a whole lot more.)

Nitpickers will complain about how being marooned on an annihilated Earth clearly hasn’t interrupted the flow of hair and makeup products, or the fact the kids occasionally behave like they’re in Daytona Beach for spring break. Yet even with some shaky performances, there’s enough happening — including a few genuine surprises in the first half-dozen episodes — to sustain interest.

In success, of course, “The 100” isn’t just a reference to those trying to re-inhabit Earth, but also a syndication-friendly wish as to how many episodes CW would like the show to run. And there’s certainly no shortage of narrative possibilities.

Helped by its “Arrow” lead-in, the series might have a shot at survival. Still, as they say both in TV and around the Ark, just don’t hold your breath.