Exclusive: Chiwetel Ejiofor On Playing ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’
Currently airing on Showtime is the sci-fi series The Man Who Fell To Earth, starring Oscar nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Naomie Harris, along with Jimmi Simpson, Rob Delaney, Sonya Cassidy, Joana Ribeiro, Annelle Olaleye, Kate Mulgrew, Clarke Peters and Bill Nighy.
Inspired by the Walter Tevis novel of the same name and the iconic David Bowie film, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH will follow a new alien character (Ejiofor) who arrives on Earth at a turning point in human evolution and must confront his own past to determine our future. Harris plays Justin Falls, a brilliant scientist and engineer who must conquer her own demons in the race to save two worlds.
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH is executive produced by Alex Kurtzman, Jenny Lumet, John Hlavin, Sarah Timberman, Carl Beverly, Heather Kadin, Aaron Baiers, Chiwetel Ejiofor and STUDIOCANAL’s Rola Bauer and Françoise Guyonnet. The series is produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Timberman/Beverly. STUDIOCANAL owns the rights for both Walter Tevis’ book as well as the Nicolas Roeg film with David Bowie.
For Ejiofor, who received numerous accolades including an Oscar nomination for his performance in 12 Years a Slave, this is his first series since he did BBC’s Dancing On The Edge nearly a decade ago. His other notables roles on film include Dirty Pretty Things, Love Actually, Four Brothers, Kinky Boots, Inside Man, 2012, Salt, The Martian, Doctor Strange, and The Old Guard. Blackfilmandtv.com caught up with Ejiofor as he talked about entering the world of sci-fi and working with the producers on fleshing out the character.
Where are we now in terms of episodes?
Chiwetel Ejiofor: Well, I think we are coming up to episode eight, It's really heating up. Everything is heating up, which is, which is great. It's very exciting.
It’s the first series you’ve done since Dancing on the Edge. What went into saying to the project?
Chiwetel Ejiofor: It was a lot of things.I thought the scripts were amazing. Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet just created something really special, really powerful, really deep and very unique. And that was something that I was just really drawn to. There was just no doubt that I was I thought this character was amazing. And I think to do it in this way, coming in 40 years after the events of the film, The Man Who Fell To Earth with David Bowie and just picking up this story with these really distinct and different dynamics that are occurring, I thought was really rich, and just really innovative. I found it funny. I found those scripts funny, and as well as moving and so I wasmreally excited about it. Ten hours is such an extraordinary amount of time to be able to tell a story, just to really understand this character and get underneath the skin of this alien. It was amazing.
You've played other characters before, but as you just mentioned, this is 10 hours and in doing a series, is it a different set of acting muscles?
Chiwetel Ejiofor: It is in a way because you're trying to take this story over such a long period of time, and in this specific character as well. He goes on a huge journey. He starts, as you see in episode one, in one place, arriving on Earth and, and everything is brand new, and trying to assimilate. By the end of this journey, he's got a completely different relationship to planet earth. You completely understand how he's been able to assimilate, how he's understood the social dynamics, psychological dynamics, all of the different elements that go into being a human being and understanding the positive and negative. He’s seen the big corporate world and understood how featured money is, and avarice and power, but he's also been with this family, and he's understood love, dedication, honesty, all of those really powerful, beautiful human emotions and characteristics. He's run the gamut. That's something you can only do over that period of time. You can only really explore it over a long period of time. It's possible to do it in a film, obviously. It's been achieved in some films to to tell the story of an alien but I think in this way to go into all the avenues, to go into all the rooms that this character goes into, I think it really needed the time that it has.
How was working with the cast?
Chiwetel Ejiofor: Naomie's a fantastic and brilliant actor. I was really excited to work with her and Clark Peters is just legendary at this point. I was thrilled about working with him too. They create this family unit and this dynamic that is so rich. It’s got so much love. It’s got so much that is recognizable in a black context, as a family. Family dynamics is this kind of family engagement, this humor, the charisma, the elevated feelings that everybody has, and for Faraday to sit within the context of that, within the context of this specific family and with this richness and to interspersed with the struggles that they go through, the difficulties that they're trying to overcome, it really moves him. He really engages with this family. That element of the story with Clark and Naomie was absolutely fascinating, beautiful to play and to engage with.
With sci-fi you never know what you're going to get. There is no answer towards the end, because that's what leads to other possibilities. There's a whole different audience watching this to get a whole different interpretation as to where this is going to go. Where do you want to go as opposed to what was already on the page? Are you in a position to add in your own elements to the story?
Chiwetel Ejiofor: I did a lot of rehearsals, a lot of work with Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet. We did rehearsals before we started shooting. We discussed everything that we would be shooting, on the weekends. We were shooting five, six days a week sometimes. So, we were just rattling through the whole time and all of these opinions come up; all of these ideas and concepts of where we take the show, and where we take this character, and what’s working, what can be moved around or adjusted and all of that stuff. And so yeah, you end up investing a lot of what you feel the character and where these relationships really where they go and what they mean. You end up with a lot of ownership, I suppose, of a character and you can become quite protective of it as well.
How do you find the time to balance between doing a series and filming a movie, because at any given time you can be seen on the big or small. We’re left wondering if you ever take a break?
Chiwetel Ejiofor: I try to, at least a little bit. When things are exciting, it's very difficult to not just want to dive in, and it feels like there's so much that is going on right now, between film and television, and that there's a richness of storytelling that's out there. Really different ideas and concepts and ways to look at the world. And so, when confronted with that, it's always been my dream to work in this way to work in on a different material and different ways of telling stories that are rich and that are complicated, and that I think are exciting. So I'm just gonna keep on truckin' for as long as they let me.