BACK FROM THE BRINK
PAAPA ESSIEDU STARS IN NEW SCI-FI THRILLER THE LAZARUS PROJECT ABOUT A TEAM TURNING BACK THE CLOCK TO SAVE THE WORLD. GEMMA DUNN LEARNS MORE
FROM a run at The Old Vic to gracing the big screen in Alex Garland’s Men, it’s certainly been a busy time of it for Paapa Essiedu.
And now the Emmy and Baftanominated star, 31, is set to try his hand at time travel as the lead in Joe Barton’s action-thriller, The Lazarus Project.
The eight-part drama sees Londoner Paapa take on the role of George; a seemingly ordinary guy who wakes up one day to find himself reliving a day from months ago.
But just when he thinks he is the only one to note what’s happened, he is approached, and recruited, by, you guessed it, The Lazarus Project, a secret organisation that has harnessed the ability to turn back time every time the world is at threat of extinction.
Cue nuclear-wielding criminals, endangered loved ones and plenty of make-or-break decisions.
A compelling watch, co-starring Caroline Quentin, The Musketeers and Strike star Tom Burke, The Split’s Rudi Dharmalingam, Vigil’s Anjli Mohindra and Pure’s Charly Clive, it’s sure to keep viewers on the edge of their seats.
But just how did Paapa fare starring in it? We hear more from the I May Destroy You actor, himself...
In summary, what is the Lazarus project?
It is the brainchild of Joe Barton, one of our great screenwriters who wrote Giri/Haji and has been working on pretty much everything since then.
I suppose at its heart it’s a love story set in a world where there’s a top-secret organisation who have got the ability to turn back time in order to prevent extinction level events from taking place. So for example: atomic bombs being dropped; worldwide viruses being spread, civil wars happening.
They’ve got the ability to do a butterfly effect-type turning back of time, and then tinkering in order to stop those things happening.
Who is George?
George is an ordinary guy who has a genetic mutation that gives him the ability to be involved in that time tinkering process.
He gets invited in to this organisation, but then something traumatic happens in his personal life.
The show follows his journey of what he’s willing to do – with the great responsibility that he’s given – in order to either address his personal pain or look after the global issues of the world.
What happens when you’re put in that position and you can look after number one, or you can look after everybody? It’s kind of that thing of when you’ve got two trains on the train track and one of them is gonna hit a baby, or one of them is gonna hit a truck full of people. It’s the socalled trolley problem in philosophy.
How do you get into the headspace of a guy with powers?
Yeah, it’s interesting, because it’s slightly different from a Marvel-ly type superhero where I can fly, or I can shoot lasers out of my hands or whatever.
There’s nothing remarkable about George himself apart from he’s one of 0.000001% of the population who, when these time changes happen, he notices. Whereas other people don’t. So there’s definitely the thing of, every time that happens he wakes up and he can’t explain why he feels like he remembers something that hasn’t happened. To me that just feels like peak deja vu. But as soon as an explanation is put to it, it’s very quickly how we, as humans, we normalise things, you know?
Huge things have happened in our lives in the last two years, and we just normalise it so that it becomes the new normal, as it were. So I, with the character, try and lean into it being as odd as possible, while it’s odd. And as soon as it’s not odd, it becoming as normal as possible, if that makes sense.
Is it a physical role?
Yes! It was pretty intense. But it’s kind of great. It was really exciting. Obviously, I’ve been in action-y shows before, but haven’t really been at the centre of the gun-toting, car-crashing type thing. My character is very much at the centre of that in this, which was thrilling.
All I’ve got to say is that I’ve got nothing but respect for actual stuntmen. They are doing some pretty insane stuff. When you see that stuff on telly or in films, and you’re like, ‘I wonder how they did it? What kind of trick of the camera did they use?’
Nine times out of 10 that’s just a guy chucking himself out of a building, actually.
There’s a deadly virus in the script, and civil wars. Has Joe Barton somehow predicted the future?
Yeah, that guy’s a freak! It’s not really a spoiler to say that there is a virus strand to it.
It’s actually a very small strand; it’s not an essential part of the whole thing, because I think we’ve seen enough masks in our lives. But I said to Joe, ‘Oh, it’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it?’
He said, ‘Mate, I wrote this four years ago’. I was like, ‘You could have given us a heads up!’
It feels quite topical, then. Would you agree?
I suppose, because right now we’re very much faced with our own extinction on a day-to-day level. I think a lot of us hark back to what things were like before, often with very rose-tinted glasses: ‘Oh, do you remember when we didn’t have to think about wearing masks?’ or ‘Do you remember when it was just about that hole in the Ozone layer? or whatever.
I do find myself thinking, ‘If we went back to those times, how would we do things differently? What could we do to impact future generations in a more positive way?’
I think that’s something that a lot of people think about. And it’s the kind of parallel thought that we’re exploring in this show.
All I’ve got to say is that I’ve got nothing but respect for actual stuntmen... On the series’ action sequences
■ The Lazarus Project premieres on Sky Max and NOW on Thursday at 9pm