Based on the cyberpunk noir novel by Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon is an intriguing story of murder, love, sex, betrayal, and technology. More than 300 years in the future, society has been transformed by new advancements, leading human bodies to become interchangeable and death no longer being permanent. Society has been transformed by new technology: consciousness can be digitized; human bodies are transferable; death is no longer the end. Takeshi Kovacs is the lone surviving soldier in a group of elite interstellar warriors who were defeated in an uprising against the new world order. His mind was imprisoned – on ice – for centuries until Laurens Bancroft, an impossibly wealthy, long-lived man, offers Kovacs the chance to live again. In exchange, Kovacs has to solve a murder … that of Bancroft himself.
We caught with three of the show’s stars Joel Kinnaman, Martha Higareda & James Purefoy for an in-depth chat about the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhFM8akm9a4
OJ Williams: I love your show. It’s very daring at times. Was a lot of the material intimidating for you at times, moments of “this is not what I expected today.”
Joel Kinnaman: Well, it was a little … I’m Swedish, so we have a pretty relaxed relationship to our clothes.
James Purefoy: Or lack of.
Joel Kinnaman: Yeah, or lack of. We grew up getting into the sauna when everyone is naked in there, so that kind of helped me because the first two days I had on the show, I didn’t have any clothes on.
OJ Williams: Everyone, I believe, here has a moment.
Joel Kinnaman: Every one of us.
James Purefoy: Do you have a moment? You do have a moment.
Joel Kinnaman: I remember my moments. I was nervous.
James Purefoy: Everybody has a moment. We’re all naked at least twice a day.
OJ Williams: With all this technology and sci-fi, how fun is that with the acting and putting both together emerging, once you see all the final effects of the show?
Joel Kinnaman: It’s exciting because some of the things that are shot in blue screen, you’re kind of imagining how it’s going to be. We had a couple of scenes where we were in a flying car, and then when you see it and you see the whole like futuristic city around then. That’s exciting.
Martha Higareda: They kind of showed us a little bit of what we would look like.
Joel Kinnaman: Yeah, like a rendering of like what …
Martha Higareda: But it wasn’t even close to now that we see it finished. It’s like, “Wow.” It’s impressive.
OJ Williams: What was your reaction when you first got the first script?
Martha Higareda: I just wanted to know who wrote it. I remember thinking that, like closing the first script and saying, “Oh my God.” Because you’re immersed into this world so quickly and it just makes you wonder and want to know what happens in episode two.
James Purefoy: It’s very thrilling working on a show where you’re throwing up real, proper, philosophical ideas that you know people are going to go away from watching the show thinking about and talking about, and therefore wondering whether or not they’re really interested in changing our trajectory which ends up in a world like Altered Carbon or a Blade Runner or a Metropolis or any other dystopian sci-fis that there are.
OJ Williams: If you could take something from the world of Altered Carbon and bring it to today, what would you take?
Martha Higareda: My car. My flying car.
James Purefoy: I like the Ony
Joel Kinnaman: I’ll take your [Martha’s robotic] arm.
James Purefoy: Notice none of us chose immortality.
OJ Williams: Yeah. Speaking of immortality, the show has so many meanings of what’s going on. Talk about why the show is so relevant for today.
Joel Kinnaman: Well it’s it portrays an exaggeration of a lot of the problems that we see in society today. We see the growing income inequality, the rich are capturing a larger amount of the wealth and the poor live in squalor and have much less power to affect their lives. Altered Carbon is the extreme exaggeration of that. And this generation of Americans is going to be the first generation that lives shorter lives than their parents. But at the same time, the richest Americans are getting access to the best kind of medicine and are living longer than any humans have ever done before. So, Altered Carbon is an extreme exaggeration of that and telling us that if we don’t make the right decisions now, this is where we might end up.
James Purefoy: And access is really the key. Access everywhere right across the board to so many different things, that’s a great conversation going on; #MeToo, about #OscarsSoWhite. It’s all about who’s in the room and who’s making the decisions, and it’s not just about producers and writers and directors and who’s in the room, but access to medical advance-
Martha Higareda: Medicine.
James Purefoy: And medicines, and hospitals and healthcare and all of these things. Access is everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRJkYMnswII
