Prime-Video - The Peripheral – Let’s talk with Gary Carr & Charlotte Riley

By Mulder, Los Angeles, 19 october 2022

The Peripheral is a 2022 American science fiction streaming television series executive produced and created by Scott Smith. Produced by Amazon, it is based on the 2014 book of the same name written by William Gibson. Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy serve as executive producers, along with Athena Wickham, Steve Hoban, and Vincenzo Natali. The series had its world premiere on October 11, 2022, at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, before its debut on October 21, 2022, on Amazon Prime Video.

Q : hi Charlotte, hi Gary,  if you could be the voice in somebody's head who would you pick and also for Gary what was the best part about starring in this series ?

Charlotte Riley : oh my God what a brilliant question, what I could be the voice you go first while I think about it ?

Gary Carr :  okay what else is like.  I loved everything about being part of the series. It's a career highlight for me. I was really looking at this like to elevate you know the products that I do and like wanted to actively become a better actor and I feel like this project allowed me to do that and I thought if I did but I definitely felt challenged and because the character is so still and there's so much stuff going on internally and I thought it was a really beautiful challenge to play a character like that and I love the team I love the like the execution the production value is so high the quality the attention to detail the script is Great Scott Smith did a brilliant job. William Gibbs is a brilliant writer and generally so the best to do science fiction and so I love everything.

Charlotte Riley : I think I choose like so many people to choose from but maybe William Gibson because then obviously he's very good at predicting what's going to happen in the future I mean he coined the phrase cyberspace and predicted the internet so maybe his not so that I could influence him but more that I could like pick his bread and ask him about what was going to happen and then just report back to the rest of the world or not maybe I was going to say Liz trust and I thought no that's way too dark

Q : What can you tell us about your characters Wilf Netherton and Aelita ?

Gary Carr : Wilf Netherton is a fixer. He's the audience who's introduction to Future London. I think a fixer it's like when someone does something really messed up and then they call you they're like listen can you cover this up for us. Well in a novel he's a publicist but I think it's a polite way of saying like he's a fixer because the people he does are for they need things to be fixed and he is joined by Flynn by a significant event that happens and it's his whole Quest throughout the whole series actually is to is to find Alito and to figure out what the frick is going on and that's pretty much what I can say about wolf

Charlotte Riley : AElita West is probably the best way to describe her if she's a disrupter. We're introduced to her when she's on a bit of a mission to take information from the RI that she's not meant to have access to and she on boards Flynn well she thinks she's on boarding person but she ends up with Flynn to sort of help her with her Mission and you get the impression that she's trying to take down the RI and you know we're not entirely sure exactly what she's trying to do but you do know that Wolf and a leader in are intrinsically linked by their history and obviously Wolf is charged with trying to find her because he's the one as Lev says he's the only one he'll be able to find her but yet I can't really give too much away about who a leader is because it sort of ruins the plot

Q :  I'm really impressed with how the show uses London as a location. I think future London is so cool I was just wondering what the experience of filming at some kind of iconic London locations was like especially as they seem to have emptied out the city so well for those scenes and also if you can tease any surprises that the future version of the city has in store for viewers.

Charlotte Riley : it's funny we were just saying weren't we that it was quite weird because of I know that it obviously they emptied out London but we shot it during Covid so it wasn't that weird because as a Londoner if you'd been into London at the time that's kind of what it was like it was really desolate and weird and devoid of Soul because obviously the people are the soul of the city so we shot through corvid so that and obviously the Fab bit for us was that they don't use a huge amount of green screen ever a lot of it is you know they use the camera to create the effects so it was quite exciting to be able to work like that really rather than having to imagine everything of course you know we finished the project as actors a year ago and then everybody else has been doing you know their part of the project so we get to watch it and you see all those incredible huge statuesque buildings in the middle of London that we had no idea were going to be part of the visual so it's like opening your presents on Christmas Day when you get to actually watch it and like waouh seeing it all come to life because I mean even some of that wasn't even in the script so that was kind of cool wasn't it yeah agreed

Q :   if we could give ourselves a power like if you've got a game which one would you pick and why ?

Gary Carr : if you choose the games I don't know too many but I mean I'm obsessed with Tekken I love that game if I probably try to jump into the character of June or someone like that and like just beat some people up or if I could jump into another film it'd probably be a Jonah Nolan or a Christopher Nolan project because I love their work I love the way they approach sci-fi.

Charlotte Riley : the only computer game I have any reference for was when I used to play Street Fighter in the 90s so I'm gonna go with Street Fighter 

Gary Carr :  nice taking a street fighter I mean those are strong horses.

Q : which scene was the most difficult to play and why ?

Gary Carr :  it all felt a bit difficult for me only because like I explained before the character was a challenge because he's so still and so like the whole time you can't really show much emotion when my instincts would be to do that but it's not just standing still being a robot or a statue there is so much stuff happening internally so it's about playing that whilst being still but still making sure that information like was conveyed to the audience I found that super challenging and I thought I spent a lot of this series feeling like I didn't know what I was doing but I decided that I'd use that for the character because I feel like wolf is a very unsure place highly like super paranoid very insecure so I found it all the challenging quite difficult but great fun at the same time.

Q : Charlotte, because your character in the early episodes is present for two scenes which were surprisingly gory at least to me I'm thinking of the eye surgery and the fight scene with like the sonic gun where the hand comes off and all sorts of craziness is going on I was just wondering how it was filming those scenes and whether at all you found yourself affected by kind of the gore on set.

Charlotte Riley : great question, because of it sort of relates back to what you were saying before that so much of it is not visual effects like they create so much of it there as we're shooting so You Know Jack Arena had to have that instrument put into his eye so obviously it was brilliant technical advisors around to make sure he was harmed in the making of This TV series and the Prosthetics were fantastic so it was pretty gory and  fight scenes are really great fun. I mean I just enjoy all that stuff it's not something you get to do every day and you know you have to be able to tell your brain that this isn't really happening otherwise you know as an actor you'll go slightly nuts I mean some of the stuff I've had to act over the years if I actually took on board what was happening to me I think it would be but you know the decuffing of the hand that we didn't actually get to see that was visual effects but you know me being choked out that was quite good fun to play actually I'm just trying to find a little bit of humor in those moments it's always quite good fun as well which um we did a little bit of improvising around that's that was quite fun tough

Q :  how do you see this series continuing possibly you know we've only got 6 episodes ?

Gary Carr :  you know to be honest with you I really don't know because the thing about Joan and Lisa is that they take you, they set things up right and they take you on a journey for one season and then you come to it the second season and then they just go completely left or like somewhere so far removed from what you had originally were so they really which I said I freaked some people out some people don't like that but I actually love that when I watch a series I love that it feels like there's no limits and there's so many other worlds to explore and it's like you're not bounded to one story or one structure and you just like you just like let your imagination go and I think you like with this genre and this like this subject you can do that just like see how far you can go and where you can go with it it's and they're really ballsy with that aren't they 

Charlotte Riley : because they're just they're really good at going they're really good at going you love all those characters great well they don't exist anymore there's a whole new bunch of other characters like I'm not saying that that's what's gonna happen but I love that they just pull the rug on you like that and they don't they're not scared to kill their Darlings in terms of what the audience wants they're like you think you want this  but actually we're going to give you this I'm going to tell you so the absolute question is we have no idea.

Q  : What memories do you have of the shoot and of your collaboration with Chloë Grace Moretz ?

Gary Carr :  I just have really fond memories I just remember thinking that she's so young and I mean that like in not patronizing way at all I mean that's a compliment that she's so young she has a body of work behind her that's so impressive actually so grounded and humble and down to earth and relatable and you can like connect with her and she's about the work she's very hard working. I love the majority of my scenes are with Chloe you know I loved working with her it's uh she's a sweetheart

Charlotte Riley : I didn't get to do any scenes with Chloe because our characters don't meet I mean they sort of do but we didn't actually have any physical scenes I got to meet her just as Chloe but we didn't meet his actors on set but I really enjoyed meeting her just as Chloe she's gorgeous and lovely. 

Q :  so this one's for both of you. I've just taken aback by how kind of complex this series is there's some really complex ideas and it's the same obviously with Westworld and I was wondering what do you think it is about Lisa and Jonah's approach to sci-fi where they can take these like really complicated ideas and sort of make them accessible to viewers ?

Charlotte Riley : I think it's because they've always ground everything in the in storytelling there's no point having interesting beautiful visuals if there's no storytelling if you don't care about the characters why do you care about the visuals so I love that they have place as much importance on the heart of the story as they do on the visuals and I think that's where the magic happens is that you are totally invested in the story and the characters and that's what happens in the peripheral that you care about how these people are going to survive and that's the magic of what they do and they don't make any of the supporting so it was the same in Westworld and I think it's the same in essence there's no bum notes in terms of characters there's no characters that you're like I could do without God it's that can sometimes you watch drama or sci-fi or it's that character again and often those characters are just there to merely serve the lead character and it just they're just a bit 2D whereas every single character in this is just like brilliant and a dream I don't I think it probably if you ask every actor on this they enjoyed playing their character because there isn't a boring character in it they're all you know fully realized

Gary Carr :   I mean I just like would reiterate what Charlotte said I don't have anything else.

Synopsis:
In the near future, technology has begun to subtly alter society. Flynne Fisher discovers a connection to a very different reality, and the very dark fate that awaits him...

The Peripheral
Created by Scott Smith
Based on The Peripheral by William Gibson
Starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Gary Carr, Jack Reynor, Eli Goree, Charlotte Riley, JJ Field, Adelind Horan, T'Nia Miller, Alex Hernandez
Composer : Mark Korven
Executive Producers: Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, Scott Smith, Athena Wickham, Steve Hoban, Vincenzo Natali, Greg Plageman
Production companies : Amazon Studios, Kilter Films, Warner Bros. Television
Distributor : Amazon Studios
Original Network : Amazon Prime Video

Photos : Copyright Prime Video

We would like to thanks Gary Carr and Charlotte Riley for answering to our questions