The Expanse is an space opera television series that debuted in 2015 on Syfy, based on the book series by James S. A. Corey (the pen name for writing duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). It takes place in a future where the human race has colonized the solar system with Earth governed by the United Nations, while people have made Mars and the asteroid belt their homes for generations. The show follows multiple perspectives across space and the intricate political landscape.
Belter cop Joe Miller (Thomas Jane), is assigned the missing person case of a Julie Andromeda Mao, while James Holden (Steven Strait) and the survivors of an attack on their ice hauler ship, the Canterbury, (the Rocinante crew) try to make sense of the political web they’ve found themselves in. The Canterbury’s destruction was a deliberate attempt at destabilizing the solar system and strains the already tense relationship between the Belters, Earthers, and Martians. United Nations executive, Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), is on Earth investigating the truth to prevent an all out war between superpowers Earth and Mars. By the end of season one, we’re made aware that it’s all connected, with Miller joining the Rocinante crew as they flee the Eros (and the deadly protomolecule) and Chrisjen doubting where she can trust some of the people within her own government. It has a diverse and talented cast and it’s a show I highly recommend.
Cas Anvar playing Alex Kamal
Entertainment Weekly spoke with the showrunner about what we can look forward to season 2, but I got to speak with Cas Anvar who plays one of the Rocinante crew members, Alex Kamal, over the phone as San Diego Comic Con starts to rev up. He’s a Canadian actor who’s voiced characters in video games like Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and films/other TV shows like Room and Olympus. We talked about the show overall, what we can look forward to for Alex in season 2, and what he’s excited to see at SDCC.
I wanted to talk about what your experience was like filming season one and watching the show unfold for viewers and seeing the popularity grow?
Cas Anvar: It was actually quite the rollercoaster ride. None of us knew what we were getting into. Everyone fell in love with the books and the scripts and we walk into a set that was unlike any TV set I’ve ever walked into, where virtually the entire worlds are built for us practically. There is a lot of CGI in there but there is a lot of practical sets like our entire ship — the Rocinante — is all practical and it was an amazing treat to be able to work on that. The stories are unlike a lot of television that you get these days in the sci-fi world, like these huge epic space operas. I don’t think we’ve had anything like this since BattlestarGalactica. It has an extra little added edge with the Battlestar; it’s kind of like Battlestar meets Alien and Bladerunner. It’s kind of a mishmash of that. And what was really cool, because this hasn’t happened in a long time, is that we had a fanbase before our first episode even aired because of the books.
Yeah?
A lot of TV shows go out there with no fanbase because they’re brand new. This is kind of like a Game of Thrones in space situation where you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people eagerly anticipating your first episode and that’s exciting. So when we went to Comic Con the first year before it first aired, that was really a wonderful welcome to have two thousand people in an auditorium cheering us on while we showed them our pilot episode.
My friend is the one who got me into the show because she’s a huge fan of the book series. I haven’t read the series but a lot of new fans like myself have jumped on and embraced the show as well.
Exactly, yeah. You gotta get through the first couple of episodes because there is a lot of information to absorb but if people get episodes 1 to 4 under their belts then they’re hooked.
(L-R) Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), Amos Burton (Wes Chatham), Jim Holden (Steven Strait), and Alex Kamal (Cas Anvar).
I was hooked from episode one…
Oh good.
…because there’s this really intricate political game happening which is fascinating. I wondered — especially with your character, Alex, who is Martian born — if going into season 2 after the way things ended in season 1, we’ll see loyalties called into question for Alex now that we’re going to get some more Martian stuff?
There’s definitely…one of the beautiful things about this show is our team — the Roci crew — we’ve got a Belter, a Martian and two Earthers so there is always plenty of conflict and interpersonal dynamics between the batch of us when all the political stuff start flying because there is no one answer. There is no one point of view or perspective that is right. Everyone has their own justifiable argument for what should or should not be done. There is an Earther perspective, there’s a Martian perspective, there’s a Belter perspective and then there is a human perspective if you just extricate yourself from this partisan type of mentally and look at it as a global thing. So you have three or four different perspectives that each of which are completely valid and when you have that kind of a playing ground to play in, it’s a very fertile, very volatile playing field to work with. We have a lot of episodes that deal with the politics of it, that deal with the interpersonal dynamics between the different races, different planets and for sure our characters get embroiled in that.
By the end of season 1, Alex came into his own in terms of living out the fighter pilot dream.
Yes
Even if it wasn’t under the greatest of circumstances.
Yeah. He kind of had to rise to the occasion because circumstances forced him to.
Will we get to see more Alex being pushed? Because he is very introverted and very…off to the side and watching. Do we get to see more active Alex aside from flying and maybe making difficult decisions that the others have been making?
Alex has a lot this season. They’ve given him a lot to think about and a lot to do. You definitely get to see him hone his skills as one of the best pilots in the solar system. There is a lot of wonderful action that you get to see. I’ll get to be doing some of that the second I get back from Comic Con actually. We’ll be shooting some really amazing stuff from episode nine and ten but within that they’ve all given us a really huge group of character arcs whereas season one was all about building the world, building the universe, building the construct of Martian, Belter, Earther and the whole system of like survival out in the hostile environment in space. Season two is all about the people who inhabit those worlds and the emotional and political costs that come with some of the brutal decisions and the brutal things that happen during the show.
Are there any characters or actors that you’re excited to engage/work with?
Jared Harris is one of my favourite people to work with on the show. Shohreh Aghdashloo, who I haven’t had a scene with yet [laughs]…
She’s wonderful. Oh my god.
Shohreh Aghdashloo playing Chrisjen Avasarala
She is. I love her as a person and we’re great friends but we haven’t gotten to act together yet. Hopefully we will. I don’t know if it’s going to happen this season or next season but we will eventually. That’s where the story takes us. I love working with the Roci crew because we’re all great friends and we all have an amazing chemistry together. That’s always fun when we have our big kind of foursome scenes. I’m trying to think if we’re going to have…I don’t think we get to work with Bobbi Draper this season. And Chad Coleman! We’ve got one of our buddies from The Walking Dead who became a buddy of mine on the show so it’s always fun to shoot scenes with him.
So you’re heading over to San Diego Comic Con…is there anything you’re excited about? I know you’re a huge sci-fi fan.
Yeah. I mean I’m not going to have time to do anything for myself. I’m literally going from the studio to the airport back to the studio with no time to myself but if I have any time, I’m going to look for Star Trek…the new series if there is anything coming out for that. My gaming stuff. I do a lot of video game stuff. I’ll be signing autographs there meeting my gaming fans and some Expanse fans. I think there are going to be some great parties as well where you get to meet a lot of your colleagues and people like that which I always enjoy even though it’s kind of crazy and hectic, I still have a good time.
Thank you, Cas, for chatting with me. You can find him and the rest of the cast at their SDCC panel – Syfy’s The Expanse – this Saturday (July 23rd) at 3PM. There will be some sneak peek footage of season 2.
