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 the when you've got two trains on the train track and one of them one of them is gonna hit a baby, or one of them is gonna hit a truck full of people. It's the so-called 'trolley problem' in philosophy.
It's slightly different from a Marvel-ly type superhero who can fly or shoot lasers out of his hands or whatever. There's nothing actually remarkable about George himself apart from he's one of 0.000001 per cent of the population who when these time changes happen, he notices. Whereas other people don't.
Every time that happens, he wakes up and can't explain why he feels like he remembers something that hasn't happened. To me, I thought that must just feel like peak deja vu.
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 stuntman. They are doing some pretty insane stuff. I've got nothing but love and respect for those guys. They're quite wonderful.
THE SCRIPT FEATURES WAR AND A DEADLY VIRUS...
Yeah, [writer] Joe Barton's a freak! 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!"
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.
:: The Lazarus Project premieres on Sky Max and NOW on Thursday June 16
