STACK #189 Jul 2020

TV FEATURE

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STACK met with the cast and filmmakers of The Outsider to discuss bringing Stephen King’s grim and gripping best-seller to life as a HBO miniseries. Words Gill Pringle B ased on Stephen King’s best-selling novel of the same name, The Outsider explores the investigation into the PRIMAL FEAR R

Julianne Nicholson describes The Outsider as "every parent’s worst nightmare" and admits the shoot wasn’t easy, given the dark subject matter. “The circumstances of this story are pretty terrible,” says the real-life mum. “Anything bad happening to my kids is what scares me the most.” Co-star Paddy Considine agrees. “As a parent, its the biggest fear that this could happen to any of our children. It’s a primal fear that these dramas play on; a terrifying proposition,” says the Brit actor cast as strip club manager Claude Bolton. “I’ve been a big fan of King since I was a kid and one of my secret ambitions was to one day be in an adaptation of a Stephen King book,” he continues. “But you can’t go on set thinking ‘I’m in a Stephen King adaptation’; you have to play the character with real feelings.” For Erivo, The Outsider was an opportunity to play a woman she believes we don’t often see on screen – Holly Gibney’s extraordinary talents being on the Asperger’s scale. “I knew there was an oddity about her, and I was intrigued by the fact that, as a woman of colour, you never really get to see these kind of women onscreen. So I wanted to

have to convert all that interior monologue into visuals,” he tells STACK . “What really appealed to me was that it started out like a police procedural, which is probably why they came to me, but then it starts to glide into the supernatural, and I’ve always wanted to write something scary since I was a kid.” With King’s film and TV

gruesome murder of a local boy and the mysterious forces surrounding the case. The HBO mini-series follows Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) as he investigates what seems to be an ironclad case. However, contradictory evidence places his suspect, Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman), in a different city at the time of the murder. The circumstances surrounding the horrifying crime leads Ralph – still grieving the recent death of his own son – to join forces with unorthodox private investigator Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo), whose uncanny abilities, he hopes, will explain the unexplainable. In adapting a Stephen King book for the first time, veteran screenwriter Richard Price (TV’s The Wire ) rose to the challenge. “Stephen King gives you a good story and characters but a book is not a teleplay, so you

make sure that she was fully human, very much in charge, and that you got to know her as you met her in each episode. I was given a gift of the character, to be honest, and it was written really beautifully for me,” says the Oscar and Golden Globe nominated Brit singer/actress. Director Andrew Bernstein had countless discussions with Jason Bateman – who pulls triple duty here, producing, acting and directing the first two episodes – about style and tone from the outset. “We

adaptations – including The Shining , Misery , Salem’s Lot , and IT – having created such a huge legacy, Price admits it was daunting territory. “He’s not an author, he’s an army! He’s a brand name like Jell-O. He transcends authors. He’s an institution. He’s like a boulder rolling downhill, and has been for decades for Hollywood.” Portraying Glory Maitland, the prime suspect’s wife,

It’s a primal fear that these dramas play on; a terrifying proposition

were always very cognisant that this is a Stephen King book and his fans would be watching it. I know he cares deeply about his audience. “Stephen was never on set and I’ve never met him but certainly when we finished episodes, we sent them to him – and that was a very big moment for all of us. We would wait for his response to see if he liked it. He doesn’t have any approval but he’s Stephen King, so if he calls up and says ‘I don’t like it’, you’ve got to listen. You want him to like it!” says Bernstein, who previously worked on the King-inspired series Castle Rock.

• The Outsider is out on July 29

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“ The Outsider is very different from [ Castle Rock ] where there were Easter eggs everywhere and it was really playing to the Stephen King canon.” Thrilled at The Outsider ’s

stellar cast, he’s not afraid to boast; “I think it’s one of the best casts I’ve ever seen on TV, just an incredible group of actors.”

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Ben Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo

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Image ©HBO

58 JULY 2020

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