Extant season 2 premiere: David Morrisey talks the new season at special Q+A in London
Last year Amazon Prime released their biggest television project to the masses. That show was Extant and starred Academy Award Winner Halle Berry as Molly Woods, a female astronaut, whom after returning from a year long solo space mission found herself pregnant. Meanwhile her husband John, played by Goran Visnic was hard at work designing a new form of artificial intelligence, known as a ‘Humanic’. The result was Ethan, played brilliantly by Looper’s Pierce Gagnon, a robot child that Molly and John were raising as there own.
As the series progressed it was revealed that Molly’s baby was of course alien in origin and Molly found herself desperately trying to save her hybrid child form government officials, whilst still trying to keep Earth safe from invasion. If you haven’t seen the show we highly recommend giving it a whirl (it wasn’t the most streamed show of last year for no reason), especially as season two launches exclusively on Amazon Prime today.
The second series of Extant will see a few things change, an invasion is in progress and Molly must help the government stop it. There is also the addition of both David Morrissey, of The Walking Dead fame, and everyone’s favourite TV dad John Winchester, aka actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Ahead of the new run we were invited to the UK premiere of episode one where we were joined by new recruit David Morrissey. Before we got to the episode Morrissey held a rather informal Q and A, and answered various questions about the new series and his character. Here’s what he had to say:
David, tell us about your character in Extant.
I play General Tobias Shepard. He is the head of the Global Security Commision, that’s a commission of countries on Earth and they are fighting this alien invasion. As you know Halle‘s character Molly is an astronaut and was on a solo mission to space, she was away for a year and came back pregnant. Then she gave birth to an alien baby, a baby that grew at a fast rate.
David Morrissey at Extant season two premiere. Photo Credit Kat Smith.
At the start of this season we know that the alien is out there somewhere and they’re trying to find it. We also realise that there are more out there. It’s about trying to contain this threat which is growing very, very quickly. My character is trying to save the human race but he’s compromised. He also loves Molly Woods, who is the character that Halle plays, they have a bit of a history and so his judgement is clouded because of his emotional attachment.
Are you good or bad?
Well in this world it’s hard to tell. I think at heart he is a good man, I think at heart he has really good intentions; I think he is someone who has the protection of the planet at his heart. But like all those people on those positions, he’s called upon to make some tough decisions, decisions where the collateral damage to his decision making could be huge. But the consequences of not acting at all are even bigger. It’s an unenviable position of having to make those decisions.
The first series had a heavy element of AI is this something that will continue this series?
Yes it is very much so.
Ethan, the main AI of season one is played by Pierce Gagnon, do you get any scenes with him?
David Morrissey at Extant Q and A
He’s phenomenal. I think he’s a fantastic actor. Also the crew just adore him. He inhabits his character fully and takes it very seriously, he’s a wonderful actor. But also my character in this, the AI development has really gone very ambitious and I recruit a lot of the AI as an army to fight the aliens. That is what part of the story’s about, the recruitment of artificial intelligence to do our work for us. Like a drone, but as soldiers. How that can be abused in certain ways and the moral implication of that, of war, by not actually doing the fighting yourself in some way and how you can distance yourself from the big decisions. The show deals with that I think very well. Of course Hallee’s character is right in the middle of all of that. She’s developing the AI, or her husband is and she’s involved in that, her son is an artificial intelligence but also she has this connection with the aliens as well. So she’s right in the maelstrom of it all, and compromised because of it, but also fighting for all of them. She’s the sane voice inside all that madness.
Then came our preview of series two wherein we watched the entirety of episode one and one thing is clear, it’s all change this season. Within the opening first quarter we’ve lost a couple of key players of last year with a few others suddenly cast in a different light. Whilst some of these changes are slightly disappointing there is still a viable through-line from last year that may have you re-watching the first again to see whether you missed any obvious clues.
We join Molly six months after the end of the first series and find her confined to a psychiatric ward, before flashing back and getting a heap of show re-working. Although a lot has changed it still feels like the Extant that drew viewers in last series. More importantly Ethan is back. How Pierce Gagnon at his incredible young age manages to so convincing play Ethan I’ll never know. He wowed a lot of people with his turn in Rian Johnson’s Looper, but in Extant he really shines.
As it’s only episode one we don’t get too involved in the future plot, instead just seeing glimpses at the direction the series is going. However, we still eagerly anticipate what is to come.
Extant season 2 airs every Thursday on Amazon Prime from 2nd July.
