Interview: Nicholas Podany On His ‘Hello Tomorrow!’ Character’s Moral Compass

If while watching Apple TV+’s Hello Tomorrow! you did not recognize the young actor playing the conflicted dreamer Joey Porter, I don’t think he would be too offended. That is because Nicholas Podany landed his first major role on the series as a relative unknown. Not only did he get to play a central character in the ambitious comedy drama with a retro-futuristic spin, he had the opportunity to do so alongside some of Hollywood’s most respected actors like Billy Crudup, Jackie Weaver and Hank Azaria.

Podany takes full advantage of his incredible opportunity delivering an impressive and challenging performance where he more than holds his own with his prestigious company. The actor gives the somewhat aimless Joey agency as he takes steps to better provide for his hospitalized mother. His big move is leaving his shelf-stocking job to take a promising sales position with Brightside, a company which sells timeshares on the moon. While there he ends up under the wing of the smooth-talking Jack Billings (Crudup), a man who, like much of the series, is not always exactly what he seems to be.

I spoke with Podany with Awards Radar about his breakthrough role in a conversation that covered him joining the series, working with Crudup, rating Jack as a dad, his favorite invention on the series a much in-between. Hello Tomorrow! is not an easy series to describe, but well worth your while. Below are some moments from my time with Podany, starting with how he perfectly explains the series.

Be warned there are some spoilers ahead. This is just a small portion of our conversation. You can watch it in its entirety at the bottom of the page.

How Nicholas explains Hello Tomorrow! to a potential viewer:

“It’s as though the lying schemes of Breaking Bad and kind of watching the unraveling of a person kind of like in Madmen were to meet the Jetsons… and the whimsicality of that tone and that genre are brought to mediate those complex themes of a man going through an existential crisis, a team realizing that they’re lying not only to the customers but to themselves.”

On what made him want to take on this role:

“It’s a human story about a father and a son. All that the retro future 50s stuff provides really interesting material to kind of embroider that story upon. And I adore that. That’s how the story was approached. I adore that they gave me so much room to put myself and grow inside of Joey instead of being so prescriptive with ‘no, it has to sound this way.’ It was really open to interpretation, and I was really grateful for that.”

On what made him want to take on this role:

Joey knows what his morals are. He knows that the thing he cares about more than anything else is the lives of those he loves. So whether that be his mother, whether that be Jack, whether that be the people he’s selling the moon to. He feels very responsible for those around him. The question is, what is the right action to do in order to take care of the people that you love. For Joey, for the entire first season, it’s telling the truth telling the truth is always the best thing.

On working with Billy Crudup to develop the complex relationship between Joey and Jack:

Joey feels an immense sense of that Jack is his role model, that Jack is the guy, Jack is the dad, he’s always wanted it and that was pretty immediate. That didn’t take a lot of acting, especially with someone like Billy (Crudup) to be able to pretend to want to emulate him and say, ‘I’m watching this guy act and he’s so obviously brilliant.’ When you act opposite someone like that, and you won’t you’re immediately magnetically drawn to them. And so I think it was a wasn’t a far leap from Joey to Nick there.

Season one of Hello Tomorrow! is streaming in its entirety exclusively on Apple TV+.