Based on Joe Hill’s bestselling novel of the same name, the supernatural horror series NOS4A2 chronicles Charlie Manx, a seductive immortal who feeds off the souls of children. Manx deposits what remains of them into Christmasland. Borne out of Manx’s imagination, his icy, twisted Christmas village celebrates Christmas every day and unhappiness is forbidden. But as the story unfolds, Manx finds his entire world threatened when Vic McQueen, a young, working-class artist discovers she has a supernatural ability to track Manx.
At a recent press event, Zachary Quinto who plays Manx through heavy makeup gave his take on the bold new series. “It’s always good when you’re doing a first season show and you’re doing it in a vacuum,” said Quinto. “It’s a great part of the process to be able to share it with people. And for a show like this to have a premiere at WonderCon and share it with the fans. It was very exciting. I think we were all encouraged and felt welcomed.”
Asked about his relationship with Charlie, Quinto replied, “They are inextricably tied. Charlie is an extension of the Wraith and the Wraith is an extension of him. That plays out through the narrative of the first season in a lot of interesting ways. It was really fun for me to get to learn how to drive it and to have my own relationship with the car as an actor. Darri (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and I spend a lot of time in that car together. The car is definitely a character in the show and it has relationships with other characters on the show as well. It’s definitely a big part of the world that Joe (Hill) created. And we’ve been able to make it a part of our show in a very interesting and cinematic way.”
Ashleigh Cummings who plays Vic McQueen added, “Zachary did some incredible acting in this series. I remember being on set for the first time and hearing him breathe and the wheezing sound of the car’s engine. At first, I thought it was a sound effect, but it was Zachary.”
Asked what brought him to the project, Ebon Moss-Bachrach (who plays Vic’s father) replied, “What I’m looking for when approaching something is love and how simple and complex that is as a most basic emotion. I was really interested in this man who would do anything for his daughter, who he adores, but at the same time, there are things he’s incapable of doing. That conflict and vibration between his two instincts or drives are what I’m fascinated by.”
So what drew her to the project? Cummings replied, “What I really loved and appreciated about the book and the script was that these female heroines are often portrayed as having this external strength or unwavering emotional fortitude. But what I loved about Vic and what we discussed with Jami (O’Brien) is that Vic is terrified and courageous. Her heart is her strongest muscle. Her superpowers are creativity, intuition, vulnerability, and empathy. And all of these typically feminine traits come to the forefront. It’s what she uses to take on these forces of evil.”
Cummings’ Bostonian accent in the series is not natively hers as she was born in Australia. She explained, “We had an amazing dialect coach, Amanda Quaid, who helped not only with the generational divide but with my accent. Originally we went in thinking that I would have a strong Massachusetts accent. But for a young girl trying to escape that environment, we decided to go with assimilation into the kind of standard American accent. So I think that creates that dynamic between her and the older generation who want to stay or are trapped in that environment.”
Asked about the underlying theme of children being failed by their parents, Quinto replied, “The more you learn about Manx, the more you realize how failed he was as a child and how much trauma he experienced at a very young age. And how the lack of resolution of that trauma and his inability to examine it is actually what evolved him into this kind of monster. So where is the love and how do you love a character that’s so evil and doing such reprehensible things? For me, it’s been about going back to the source of that trauma. So what we were trying to build is the idea that Manx really thinks he’s doing good on some level—saving these kids from their neglectful, selfish, thoughtless parents. He doesn’t give much thought or consideration to the cost. It was important for me to understand that monsters are created through trauma, abuse, and neglect. And Manx is no exception to that. So how do we integrate that to make him a little more multidimensional, more complex and not so one thing? I think that’s important in making the show compelling and drawing audiences into the multiple levels of complexity that exist in him and the world.”
Jahkara Smith, who plays Maggie Leigh, a bubbly, purple-haired librarian with a Scrabble Bag portal to the universe, added, “The cool thing about this show is that the backstories of the characters are so expanded and you see so much more of what it’s like to be them. You see the aftermath of what happens when kids are neglected and not taken care of properly. You’re faced with the fragility of kids as a whole because on one hand, you do have someone who’s rescuing them and saving them from these awful situations. It’s something we all agree needs to happen, that these kids can’t be left in these situations. But I think it makes people look at themselves because you’re faced with what it means to handle these situations, which sometimes calls for separation from parents. And you see the aftermath of that. So it’s terrifying because you have this supernatural stuff going on but you also have the real consequences of parental neglect, how we accept each other–our family and friend relationships. It made us all reflect on our own lives, to tap into that and give it an authenticity that it deserved.”
Asked what it was like to play a struggling artist who is supported far more by her father than her mother, Cummings answered, “That was another thing I enjoyed about Jami O’Brien’s script was that people can be good and bad at the same time. I really appreciate the multidimensionality and the contradictions that exist within a single human being because we have multifaceted souls. It was really fun to play.”
When asked about the extensive makeup that turned him into the ghoulish Manx, Quinto replied, “I’m not wearing any makeup (laughs). I’d been interested in the idea of really disappearing into a character and transforming myself in significant ways. So that was one of the things that drew me to this role and project. We found the best people to do the job. I’d worked with Joel Harlow before. Luckily he was available and interested and came on board.”
“We really worked on what’s important about the look of this guy and how do we represent and honor the character that Joe wrote and bring him to life in a cinematic and visual way. Joel did renderings and prosthetics and identified the stages of Manx’s aging process. We came up with five looks. When I showed up work every day, I knew exactly which version of the character I had to step into. I sometimes sat in the makeup chair for four-and-a-half hours. In the pilot, all you see is stage four of Manx’s aging. He ages backward as he takes the kid to Christmasland.”
Quinto concluded by answering the question about how the character of Manx was actually visualized. “The book provided great source material. One of the best things about the show is that all the scripts were written before we started shooting, so we knew where we were going. And we had conversations with Jami about the journeys of our characters throughout the season. For me, it was really about the book, going over passages and understanding the psychology of the character. And then physically, it was about where does this kind of atrophy live in the human body and where does this unprocessed trauma manifest physically. Manx is always grabbing and reaching for things, so there was a lot we did with his hands, the claws and nails and hunching over.”
NOS4A2 Premieres Sunday on AMC, June 2 10/9c. trailer.
Alex A. Kecskes is a published author of "Healer a Novel" and "The Search for Dr. Noble"—both now available on Amazon. He has written hundreds of film reviews and celebrity interviews for a wide variety of online and print outlets. He has covered red carpet premieres and Comic-Con events for major films and independent releases.
