Maxance Vincent
In brightest day, in blackest night, Lanterns has finally arrived on HBO, marking the fifth installment in the still-developing DC Universe and the third television series in this new take on iconic superheroes from the world of DC. To celebrate the show’s launch, a press conference featuring its key players was held, which Awards Radar attended virtually.
Hosted by The Ringer’s Mallory Rubin, the show is a more grounded take on a celestial-based IP, as Green Lanterns Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) investigate a murder in Rushville, Nebraska, which has deep ties to the larger DC Universe.
The pilot episode, which premiered a few days ago, establishes the dynamic that both Hal and John will have for the rest of the show. John is being mentored by Hal to take over the mantle of Green Lantern if the latter passes away, and, for Chandler, it was important to get to know the actor he would spend the most time with to form a genuine connection with the character on set:
“To break it down, at the very beginning, the first thing we did was get to know each other and the other people on the set. And because it all takes on a certain tone, there are things beyond what the actor wants to do that guide the performance and everything else. Obviously, once Aaron and I got to work together, it was very quick. Along with [director] James Hawes and [creator] Chris Mundy behind the monitor and working the cameras and sharing with us what they wanted, not what they were thinking, it became obvious really quickly that there was going to be a very cool collaborative process, which freed us up. They were more than willing, I think, to let us make mistakes and to find our way so everyone could find something. Because of that, it didn’t take long for Aaron to find a spot where, “Oh, okay, that’s you, that’s me, that’s my character, that’s your character.” Then we started playing back and forth, and the rest fell into place. It’s all in the writing. I mean, it’s not too hard to figure out that Hal has a competitor here and he doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s getting a little older and things are happening. Then you start thinking deeper into the character, and he’s got a pretty dark pathology, this dude. All those things start falling in place, but they fell in place because of a lot of the help and a lot of the work we all did together and that freedom of just doing what we’re doing and enjoying what we’re doing.”
For Aaron Pierre, whose portrayal of John Stewart is the first in any live-action DC title to date, one of the best things he got to learn about the character was “how he’s detailed, and how he is written and shared with audiences, is the truth and the honesty that is present within him, and how he is just so immensely complex. But just like we all are, I think John has an abundance of ways to reach audience members. I think he is somebody who allows us to feel seen. He is somebody who allows us to feel heard, understood, comprehended, respected, and it’s an immense privilege and joy to have been given the opportunity to portray him in the first live-action version. The enormity of that gift is not lost on me. It’s not lost on me. I’m filled with gratitude. And from the very moment I knew I had the opportunity, I poured myself into it and continued to do so through pre-production, production, and even post-production, beyond the point of filming. I’m still ruminating on, “Should we be gifted the opportunity to continue this journey? How can I excavate further? How can I go even deeper?”
I did an immense amount of personal research, before portraying John Stewart, but there is a point with every character that you portray, as is the case with every character I have portrayed, that you have to then bring a level of yourself and your truth to the portrayal, because otherwise it’s not authentic, and otherwise there is no opportunity for audiences to resonate with you because you are simply copying and pasting. So it was a joy to also allow myself to be vulnerable enough, with the support of everybody here, to bring my heart, my soul, and my experiences to this. I feel very seen when I read John. To me, John is a raging sea inside. Externally, he’s a gentleman; he’s precise, he’s accurate, he’s intentional, he’s clean. But internally, he’s a raging sea; he’s a tornado, he’s a volcano, and I give the analogy of going to someone’s house, and it’s spotless, but you find that one room that they shoved everything in, and it’s hell in there. This is not therapy, so I won’t get into myself, but I’ve had my fair share of learning to master my sober mind and learning to navigate my experiences as somebody who does feel things very heavily and deeply. So I feel very seen by John, and I’m ready to do this till the wheels fall off, to be honest with you.”
Both Hal and John interact with Rushville’s Sheriff Kerry, who can see right through both characters. The character is played by Kelly Macdonald, who explains that, between the three, “there’s this sort of magic from the get-go almost. He’s looking at her entirely, and she’s sort of looking at the football field. Before you even see her, you hear her on the walkie-talkie, and she’s aware of their presence. I don’t know, I just kind of loved that about her when I was sent the script: that she’s very bolshie and no-nonsense and swears a bit, from what I remember. That’s really fun stuff. Plus, I also want to say, I’ve got this real thing for Americana and anything vaguely cowboy. I’ve got far too many pairs of cowboy boots in my wardrobe in Glasgow. It makes no sense. So playing her was, like, completely thrilling. I’m so okay with not being a superhero myself, ’cause I was the one who had the costume. I had a badge. I had a massive hat, Yosemite Sam style, and bespoke cowboy boots. I mean, it couldn’t have been better for me.”
Two mysterious characters also have intriguing dynamics with both Hal and John, one of which is William Mason, portrayed by Garret Dillahunt. While not much is currently known about his motivations, the actor expressed that “There’s a lot of stereotypes that could have been applied, certainly to my character, and he seems open to all kinds of things that you wouldn’t suspect he would be, a guy who lives in this area and does what he does and seems to be pretty powerful in this small pond. I love that their relationship seems kind of free and easy. I guess I can’t talk about much past one, but it is a pleasure to play, and I’m sure grateful to be here.
I just want to take this opportunity to say that, walking onto this set you all put together, the script was something. I’d never met Kyle before. I feel like I’ve known him for about 30 years now; we just got along great. And this young man here, Aaron, I don’t know, I hope you’ve seen some of his other work, but I know we’re just scratching the surface. You should know I was on with Alexa Fogel the other day, who put this thing together. She also went to see Aaron on stage in London playing in Cuckoo’s Nest, and she was so floored. She was like, “I’ve never seen him like that; I didn’t know he could do that.” He was completely different from what you see here. I think you’re going to see this face for John Stewart for years to come. I think Green Lantern was waiting for him. It’s just a great group, and I’m so thankful to you all for welcoming us so completely and giving us these great characters to play.”
William is married to Zoe Macon, who makes quite an impact in the show’s first episode, though it’s not clear where this arc will go. However, actress Poorna Jagannathan states that there is an interesting power dynamic between William, Zoe, and Sheriff Kane:
“[The show is] a bit of a murder mystery, but actually it’s a very profound dissertation on power. And that is also the case with Zoe and William Macon. It becomes very clear pretty early on that both of us, with Sheriff Kane, want to maintain the town’s power, and we become a foil for the Green Lanterns in a certain way, you know? So, the exploration of this character is, first of all, she sees John, and there’s an instant affinity. We’re probably the two people of color in a very, very white town, right? So, there’s an instant connection, instant curiosity that happens. As it unfolds, it’s really exploring different power dynamics of different people, and it’s very mysterious indeed.”
Lanterns was created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, and is very grounded in reality, perhaps more grounded than any iteration of the Green Lanterns we have seen in comic books, film, and television. According to Mundy, this was very important and intentional to do so, to make the show feel tactile and textured while progressively introducing the ring’s constructs from episode to episode.
“I think with anything, you introduce something, you get people to understand it, and then you add. For us, it was emotionally grounding in John, then immediately in Hal and John’s relationship, and then in that sense of place. Even the way we used the constructs. The first time there’s a construct used, it’s Hal doing a 20-dollar bill to play a song over and over again. And then John is lighting a cigarette with it, and then it’s a bottle opener, cause we’re just like, oh, this is part of our world. But we’re also in this small town where hopefully it feels dusty and real. By the end of the episode, there’s a bigger construct. And then by the next episode, there’s more. It’s just like, “Are you accepting this reality? Are you accepting these people as real people with this weird job of being a space cop, but they also still have to wake up as themselves?” Then you layer. That’s the way I thought it, and we’ve all sort of thought about it together. But the good thing about Damon and me and Tom from the beginning, we all come from a slightly different angle, so hopefully where we hit in the middle, it touches a lot of different ideas.”
For Lindelof, conceiving the show felt quite personal, as he found great connection with Hal Jordan’s internal push-pull as an older Green Lantern not wanting to pass the baton to the next generation, but doesn’t have a choice to mentor it anyways:
“I’m now at a point in my career where I’m in my 50s, and I’m still showrunning but starting to feel like it’s time for me to give up the ring, but I don’t want to let it go, and that idea really captivated me. There’s always like some sort of fundamental question of why do we keep telling stories about superheroes? Why should I care about space cops? And the answer is kind of embedded in what Kyle and Aaron were just talking about, which is this idea that they’re human beings first before they even put on the rings. How do you use this as a vessel of relatability, because we’re going to be inviting these characters into our homes on a Sunday night? Although we’re experiencing this through a screen, why should we care about them?
When I heard that Chris was going to be running the show, I was just a huge fan of Ozark. I had heard that he had just done True Detective: Night Country, which I hadn’t seen yet. We went out for breakfast, and he was just approaching it from a point of view of like, “Yeah, I’m interested in Green Lanterns, I don’t know much about that, I’m not really a sci-fi guy.” I was wondering, “Why is this guy interested?” because I want to get on the train. Hopefully he’s still not asking that question. But I feel like it was just such a relief to not have to be running the show, to be in service of this larger thing that at first was Green Lanterns and then was secondarily Chris’s vision and then getting to work with Tom and this amazing group of writers. Then I segued off onto another project right around the time that they were going into production, so I have huge FOMO about not getting to have been on the set and all that, but now here it is, we’re launching it, and I am just immensely proud of the result.”
For King, the location of Rushville is quite personal to his own life as a city kid:
“I grew up in Los Angeles and now live in Washington, DC. But as a little kid, my grandmother was from a small town, Rushville, Nebraska, in the panhandle, closer to South Dakota than to the rest of the world. I was raised by a single mother and, like a lot of people, I was half-raised by my grandmother. She would just tell me stories of this little town. I’m from Los Angeles; it is just endless. And here was a town that, like, she rode a horse to school, and there were three people in the schoolhouse, and they all knew each other. To me, that was an alien planet, thinking of it that way. When we first started thinking about this show and people going to an alien planet, that, I don’t know, it appealed to me on that level. My grandmother was just a wonderful person; just putting a little bit of her magic into the show is where Rushville came from.”
Lanterns is currently airing on HBO, with new episodes premiering every Sunday at 6pm PT/9pm ET until October 4.
[Some of the quotes in this article were edited for length and clarity]
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