Harold Perrineau interview: ‘From’

“Are we going to get answers or is this gonna be like ‘Lost’ again?,” asks Harold Perrineau about his new show “From.” For our recent webchat he continues, “It’s more of a threat, then a question if I’m being honest.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

“From” is the new Epix drama about a mysterious town that traps anyone who enters. As the residents try to find a way out, they have to contend with monsters that come out at night. Perrineau plays Sherriff Boyd Stevens, who provides leadership for the town. The actor explains, “My character is a broken guy, but you don’t know why. I needed to know why so I’m not playing he’s broken, because he lost his job. For me, it’s better to not know about the mysteries, because then I can really live in the experience of ‘what is actually going on here?’”

The end of the season saw Boyd venture into the surrounding forest to find a way out of the town for everyone. On that journey, he got entangled in spider-webs, discovered an ominous lighthouse and entered a tree that turned into a stone prison. Perrineau reveals, “My best theory is that there’s someone, or something, controlling this for a reason. You can walk into whatever that is, but you can’t necessarily walk out of the nightmare that this town is. That’s my best guess.”

Perrineau has previously worked on HBO’s “Oz” and the Emmy Award-winning drama series “Lost.” For “Lost” he shared the SAG win for top drama ensemble in 2005.  He reflects, “Creating the character of Boyd was not just playing this archetypal grumpy old sheriff, but thinking, ‘who’s Boyd and what makes him tick?’ That was the thing we learned in ‘Lost.’ We learned really quickly people had questions not only about the mythology but the people within the mythology. However you felt about the end of it, the writers were right about one thing; it was always about the journey with the people.”