PASADENA, Calif. _ Even the most competent of us sometimes feel lost. That happened to actor Jimmi Simpson, coming off the successful "Westworld."
"I tend to overthink things," he says. "And I think a lot of us do. And when that happens, you get lost, because you think about the reality, and where you are, and who you are. And so rarely do you find a Hollywood program that's going to say, 'That's this. That's THIS.'"
But he did find a program that answered his pursuit. It's the TV version of film noir, packaged over 10 hours: "Perpetual Grace, Ltd.," premiering Sunday on Epix.
"I got a script recently, and Steve (Conrad) wrote a line about love that floored me," says Simpson.
"And the show's so exciting, it's so funny, and yet, he paused and he said this thing ... it was something like: 'I thought love was mysterious, but now I know, wide awake, now I know: It's just about coming back every time.' That's it. And it resonated as just one of the most clearest articulations on what love is I've ever read. And it's in the middle of this ... thrilling experience," Simpson says.
This thrilling experience stars Sir Ben Kingsley as a soft-spoken pastor, Jacki Weaver as his wife, and the 43-year-old old Simpson as a grifter who encounters the couple, only to find he's in deeper than he thought.
Kingsley loves portraying what he calls "the heroic villain," which combines elements of surprise and invention, he says. "I had a conversation with my reps, not that long ago, and we were discussing the possibility of having a wonderful leading role in a great TV series. And lo and behold, it fell into our laps. And one must be careful what one wishes for, because it's grindingly hard work," he says.
"The hours that we do, the number of pages that a feature film can be quite content with, is two a day. We do seven a day. It's extraordinary. However, the quality of the writing sustains us. And the dignity and kindness and thoroughness of our director sustains us. The writing, beautiful writing, sustains us and pushes us forward," he says.
"It's a wonderful opportunity for me to explore the light and the dark, light and shade; poetically woven together in a beautiful, evolving, dramatic adventure," says Kingsley.
Conrad and Bruce Terris, who produced "Patriot," wrote the script and are executive producers on "Perpetual Grace."
"We start with our ambition to make a contribution to the genre of film noir," explains Conrad. "But we have a new obligation, which is to explore the possibilities of this new art form, which is serialized storytelling on TV," he says.
"That you will go 10 hours into one story and _ our show is not episodic. So, what we discovered on 'Patriot,' which had an obligation to the spy genre but then also had an obligation ... to explore the limits of what that genre is possible of sustaining. And, we do that here," he says.
"(Film critic) Roger Ebert had a beautiful quote about film noir, which is, 'Film noir is about people who are smart enough to hatch a plan but not smart enough to pull it off.' And, that's the DNA of 'Dog Day Afternoon' and 'A Simple Plan' and 'Double Indemnity' and 'The Killing.' And, what Bruce and I started to wonder ... was, if those filmmakers were making those films and the aggregate of the hours of that story would amount to 20, or 30, what would happen to noir?
It would require more elements than a movie, he says. "At some point, the characters must have these reservoirs of some other element besides being befuddled, in too deep. They must grasp some other strengths to get us to the finish line of the story," he says.
"So, 'Perpetual Grace, Ltd.' obeys the genre and has the chance then to explore the genre. And, what the result of it is, is there is a wider bandwidth of tone than might have been the case with 'Dog Day Afternoon' for the 98 minutes that it lives."
But there's more to the series than bungling evil-doers, says Terris. "We felt like what we wanted to do is examine the entirety of human existence so that all humans _ whether you at first glance might call them evil or simple-minded or whatever _ that they all are subject to the same frailty and grace and yearning for beauty, and meaning in this world.
"And, so the tone reflects that. That these are a group of people who ordinarily wouldn't ever be involved with each other. Who are all, in their own way, struggling to try to find grace in their own place in this universe ..."
The relationship between Kingsley's pastor and his wife is almost Shakespearean, says Kingsley.
"That part of my relationship with Jacki's character is the part that one should aspire to," he says. "When the great director Peter Brooks said to me during a Shakespeare rehearsal that the actor must always aspire to something in the character that's greater than that which is in you."
SONGWRITERS GET A VOICE
We've heard what they sound like on "The Voice," but rarely have we heard from the guys and gals who write the songs the whole world sings. Now NBC is giving them that chance with the new series "Songland," premiering Tuesday. The show will feature anonymous songwriters who will have their chance to pitch their works to top recording artists and music's big-time producers.
Each week four songwriters will demonstrate their creations in front of a guest artist and three music producers. One winner will be chosen per episode with the chance to have his song recorded and released worldwide by well-known artists. Featured guest recording artists include The Jonas Brothers, John Legend, Charlie Puth, Meghan Trainor, will.i.am, OneRepublic, Kelsea Ballerini, Macklemore, Aloe Blacc, Old Dominion and Leona Lewis.
MAKEUP DOESN'T MAKE THE ACTOR
Zachery Quinto, best known for his role as Spock in the reboots of "Star Trek," had to sit for four hours to endure the makeup he wears for AMC's thriller "NOS4A2," premiering Sunday.
Quinto plays the villain, Charlie Manx, who abducts children and whisks them away to his lair, "Christmasland." Manx's appearance changes as the series progresses. Quinto called on special effects makeup artist Joel Harlow, with whom he'd worked on the "Star Trek" movies, to do the honors.
"It's all about making sure that my choices are registering through the layers of glue and silicone and paint," says Quinto, 41.
"And what I cultivated most by watching what little (dailies) I saw _ I haven't seen any of the show yet except for the first, the teaser bit. And sometimes, when I would watch playback on set, it was always to make sure that things were translating and registering.
"It's the challenge of working through prosthetics to make sure that the character is still accessible, and that it doesn't get lost, and that the foundation that I've laid to build who this character is, is able to be communicated through the layers of makeup," he says.
But the aging of Charlie Manx bears little resemblance to his own expected transformations, insists Quinto.
"It's a character that I've created physically and vocally and emotionally based on the information and the back story of who this person is, which is entirely separate from who I am," he says.
"I don't think Charlie Manx does yoga. I don't think Charlie Manx ... brushes his teeth in the way that I do. No. It's the separation between reality and imagination which is something that I've worked on honing for the past 25 years as an actor."
GOOD VS. EVIL EARNS 'PRIME' TIME
It's great fun to see Michael Sheen play the good while David Tennant portrays the evil in "Good Omens," premiering on Amazon Prime Friday. The fantasy fable was written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Gaiman _ who's authored "American Gods," "Coraline" and "The Sandman" _ says, "I think part of the joy of 'Good Omens' is the idea that there is good and there is evil.
"But the weird thing is ... you don't find them in heaven and you don't find them in hell. You find them inside human beings. And the frustrating thing is that you can find both good and evil inside the same people, because we're all contradictory and frustrating."
