Noah Hawley Talks Casting Dan Stevens as a Unique Kind of Hero in FX's 'Legion'
Noah Hawley describes his approach to Legion in a way that's similar to his work on the groundbreaking Fargo anthology series. Chatting with IGN, he described the insistence on exploring its lead character first and foremost.
“My approach to the Legion material is similar (to Fargo), which is it’s about a respect for the world, but it’s not about telling stories in that world that the reader is familiar with. It’s about taking that character and really exploring, almost on an existential level, what it’s like…So, I would be remiss, I feel like, if I didn’t deconstruct this, if I didn’t really try to do something for the genre that feels personal and interesting to me and to really explore if you have a character who for his whole life has believed that he’s schizophrenic, and is now starting to think that he may have these powers, but he doesn’t know and he doesn’t know what’s real – well, that’s the experience the audience should have. To be put into his world is to enter something that’s by definition surreal, because he’s hearing things, he’s seeing things… Are these things real or not real? What can you trust that you’re seeing? And he’s stuck in this moment until he meets a girl and he falls in love and now he’s got something to hope for and that’s the catalyst that pushes everything forward.”
On casting Dan Stevens in the lead role, he says of the Downton Abbey alum that "what you need in a leading man is their real skill is that you're able to see what goes on behind their eyes.
"I’m not a big fan of having characters say their truths out loud, so you have to show them. But still, the audience has to know what’s going on in his head, and Dan is great for that. He’s also a great romantic lead, which I think we’ve seen, and he has a sense of humor, which is important to me.”
The series is set to premiere early next year.
Source: Comingsoon
