Apple TV's upcoming Foundation series is based on the world created by Isaac Asimov. His stories told a dense and heady tale about civilization and culture on a cosmic scale. Some of the principal players in the storyline are members of the Cleon Dynasty, individuals who command a vast empire that, according to Hari Seldon, is on the path towards ruin. Opposed to this evolution across the ages are different incarnations of the cloned emperors, most notably the ruthless Brother Day, portrayed in the television series adaptation by Lee Pace
During an exclusive interview with CBR ahead of the show's Apple TV+ premiere, Pace broke down his perception of Brother Day and the Cleon Dynasty at the center of Foundation.
CBR: Foundation is unique in the world of science-fiction, a particularly heady and philosophical take on the genre. What really caught your attention in a project like Foundation?
Lee Pace: I'm a fan of this kind of speculative fiction. Ursula Le Guin is one of my favorite all-time writers. I get excited in thinking about what happens to humans when they get off-planet. Early on, I was thinking about those early humanoids who were wandering out of the Rift Valley. They would come to a river that they couldn't cross, and they thought, "Well, this is the entire universe here. This beach, to that mountain. These are our limits, and this is the universe." But then they got over them, and they spread around the whole globe.
Right now, we're looking at a barrier of possibly establishing a base on Mars, establishing a base on the moon. Who knows if we'll be able to get over that barrier? Who knows what we become physiologically as humans once we do that.
But here's Isaac Asimov, creating this speculation that just as the Roman Empire surrounded the Mediterranean, rose and fell, this galactic empire that covers the entire Milky Way Galaxy, that holds trillions and trillions of people, extraordinary diversity, and mind-boggling technology... It's just all the great stuff of science fiction. But inside this speculation, we get a real investigation into what is a human. What does it mean to live a life? There's nothing wilder than space, right? There's no place on earth as rough and wild as deep space. It is infinite. But this is a story about these characters. I feel like what David Goyer has successfully done is created some characters that we can emotionally connect to, that will take us through a potentially 1,000-year story.
You play Brother Day -- who, across the series, will be featured as different incarnations of the same man, cloned again and again and again in an attempt to forever control the galaxy. It's hard to say there's really one version of the character. What was that like to take on as a performer?
Well, I think this is the riddle, isn't it? This is the riddle of what this Cleonic dynasty is, because it's a riddle of inherited power. There are always three of them. The fantasy is that they are the same man. That's the fantasy that they're living inside of. The fantasy also includes the fact that they have supreme power. They have the office of a god. They can decide who lives or dies. They decide who prospers and who suffers. But they have no friends, they have no family. They have no children. It's just these brothers who have kind of ... Are you ever of two minds about something? On one side, you're thinking the way you are conditioned to think. These men are conditioned to think that they're the same person, that they're emulating one another.
But I also believe that Brother Day looks towards Brother Dusk and says, "You made mistakes, and I'm going to be better. I'm going to do this better than you did. I'm going to be distinguished as a Cleon." I looked down at Brother Dawn, and I think, "It is imperative to the safety of the galaxy that you are exactly like me. Here are the lines. Here is the blocking. This is the role that you will inherit, and you have to play that role." So the emperor of the galaxy is really... It's a role. It's like an actor approaching a role.
So I'll get to play the role, but also, all of these different actors that kind of step into the role and for a period of time are the emperor of the motherfucking galaxy. It's outrageous. I think that's what's going to be so interesting is getting to play these people who start to discover that they are sentient individuals, that they are not this role, but they are individuals within themselves. I think it's going to create conflict for them. And if we're to believe Hari Seldon's mathematical calculations, we're going to watch them suffer.
This is such an epic, in the literal sense -- the story takes place across an entire galaxy, through different eras and sections of the galaxy. This is a series that really confronts humanity, warts and all, on such a massive scale, and asks whether or not we can -- or even are able -- to survive in a universe like this.
Because there's no guarantee that we'll survive. That's the question here: will mankind survive? There's no guarantee that we do. There's no guarantee that we make it. I think that's what Hari Seldon has the courage to seek. I think that the Cleons have the hubris to think that they have control over. I believe that when Hari Seldon says, "It's all out of our control, and it's all falling apart." The Cleon who is sitting on that throne is thinking, "What do you think we do all day? I'm the one who's keeping all of this in balance." I think he hears it in that way, but I think the boy sitting on the throne next to him, hears it in a very different way.
The event that happens in that first episode, and Hari Seldon saying what he says, I think that little boy lives his life with this pit in his stomach, knowing that it is his impossible responsibility to keep mankind alive when nothing, and certainly not this cage that he's living in, makes it possible for him to do it. I've got the responsibility of kind of playing the characters and trying to feel their way through a kind of truth. Look, the Cleons, they know how to do one thing and that holds a monopoly on violence. I think there's such an extraordinary contrast between the character of Cleon and Salvor Hardin, who never chooses violence... The way that character is introduced, with the Bishop Claw, when she shoots off to the side when she could shoot that Bishop Claw. There's always another way.
With the Cleon's, there's no other way. So the way I respond to the fear of my younger brother is by saying, "Yeah, what you do when someone's afraid is destroy the thing that scares them. If that causes the problem, you destroy that too." I think that's the thinking. It's part of the riddle of inherited power. I'm coming into these interviews a little bit reticent because I don't want to say too much. I so much loved coming to David Goyer's scripts and was able to receive the story as it unfolded. So to any of your audience, take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt. This is what I thinking about working on it.
But whatever conclusions you come to about who the Cleons are, what this war means is valid and right and a part of our investigation. We've been working on it quietly for this couple of years, but now the audience is invited in. We don't want to offer conclusions about that huge question -- of what does it mean to be a human. We just want to open that investigation.
Foundation stars Jared Harris as Hari Seldon, Lee Pace as Brother Day, Lou Llobell as Gaal Dornick, Leah Harvey as Salvor Hardin, Laura Birn as Eto Demerzel, Cassian Bilton as Brother Dawn, Terrence Mann as Brother Dusk, and Alfred Enoch as Raych Seldon. Foundation premieres Friday, Sept. 24 on Apple TV+. The first two episodes will be available at launch, with subsequent episodes arriving every Friday.
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