From award-winning screenwriter Andrew Davies, the latest dramatic adaptation of Les Misérables (airing on Masterpiece on PBS) is a six-part epic story that delves deep into the many layers of Victor Hugo’s classic story. Exploring the cat-and-mouse relationship between Jean Valjean (Dominic West) and Javert (David Oyelowo) with a modern relevancy in its powerful themes, plotting, and characterizations, all set against the backdrop of France at a time of civil unrest.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, actor David Oyelowo (who was also an executive producer on the project) talked about bringing this incredible story to life, what it means to him to get to be a part of Les Misérables, how he views Javert, what both excited him and made him nervous about playing the character, and his first introduction to the story. He also talked about what makes a project appealing to him, studying human beings and human nature for a living, his desire to do more comedy, and the experience he had working with Angelina Jolie, as they played the parents of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland for the upcoming film Come Away.

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Image via Masterpiece on PBS

Collider: This is absolutely beautiful to look at, and I can’t imagine how amazing it must have been to be able to shoot this. What was this experience like?

DAVID OYELOWO: When I first read the scripts, the ambition of the show was very apparent, but you never really know if that’s going to translate to the screen, to the production design, to the costumes, and to the casting. It was so clear what it wanted to be on the page, but that almost felt un-achievable because it was so sweeping and epic, and emotionally visceral and engaging. Soon after I started talking to Tom Shankland, our director, it became very apparent that what was on the page was commensurate with the folks involved and their ambition for it. Consistently, with everyone I met and talked to, and every time a new piece of costume would come in, you would go, “Oh, wow, this may just go on to be everything that we hope.” It’s just my opinion, but the joy of shooting it was that we were certainly doing our best to rise to the level of the material.

Had you ever thought about doing Les Mis before?

OYELOWO: No, and not only never thought about doing Les Mis, but having grown up in the UK, watching beautiful period dramas, at some point, you just come to terms with the fact that, certainly for me, I wouldn’t get to be in those. When I was approached about this, I was floored by that. I was elated by it, but I’ll be honest, I was also very emotional about it because I wish my 12-year-old self had the opportunity to see someone like me, getting to be in this kind of drama. It’s very, very meaningful to me.

And it makes the story more relatable, to see a world that represents our own.

OYELOWO: The more that I thought about it, it feels like a very natural extension of what we’ve done to the French novel. It’s a 150-year-old French novel, that we’ve transposed into the English language for a broad English speaking audience. It’s about accessing an audience with a French piece, in a way that they can relate to, so you do that with both the language and the folks in it. We like to think that what we’ve made reflects the people that we hope are going to see it, and the people who may not have necessarily thought that this story was for them, also.

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Image via Masterpiece on PBS

You’re also a producer on this.

OYELOWO: I am, yeah.

Was that something that you intentionally sought out?

OYELOWO: Yes. I was approached about it, and I was glad to be approached, but something that I was very keen on was that I wouldn’t be the only one. I wanted there to be more people of color, in order for the show to feel integrated and organic to that time. To be perfectly frank, people of color have been a part of European life for centuries, not just decades. So, yes, that was something that I definitely kept an eye on. Thankfully, it wasn’t something that I had to be Draconian about, but that was part of my producer involvement. I also wanted to make sure that, whoever picked it up, here in the States, would do well by it. I had a hand in the PBS Masterpiece of it all. If I’m going to be away from my kids and my wife for six months, I want to make sure that as many people get to see it as possible.

Because this is such a remarkable production, did you have a moment on set, where you were realized that the script was really being brought to life, in a way that lived up to the high bar that was set.

OYELOWO: At some point, you let go of all of that excitement and get on with the business of doing the work. Almost consistently, once a day and maybe twice, I would pause and look at all of the extras, or the amazing sets, or the phenomenal actors, some of whom I have admired from when I was a kid, and there would be so many pinch me moments. It would be me, riding on horse through the fields, going, “What is going on?!” And that feeling was pretty consistent.

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Image via Masterpiece on PBS

Did you ever see Javert as a villain, or do you avoid looking at characters that way?

OYELOWO: I don’t think you can play a villain as a villain, at least for me anyway, because you are immediately going to fall into the trap of judging the character, and of playing an archetype, a stereotype, a caricature, or a cliché, in the same way that you can’t play a hero. You can’t think, moment to moment, “I’m a hero.” If you do that, you’ll alienate the audience and you won’t serve the story. My job is to try to understand why he does what he does, from moment to moment, and his rationale for doing what he does is actually very synonymous with his job. He’s a law keeper, so he sees Jean Valjean as someone who broke the law and is a criminal. But there’s a layer on top of that, which is that Javert was born in prison, to criminal parents, and he hates that part of his own history. Therefore, his vehemence with keeping criminals at bay, especially this man who somehow feels like a mirror of himself, is something that he does, to an obsessive degree, but moment to moment, it’s entirely rationalized by the fact that his job is to be a keeper of the law.

There’s a righteousness in his behavior and his actions that makes it so interesting.

OYELOWO: He’s Old Testament, which in and itself, is not a bad thing. It’s just not a very human thing to do. It’s very legalistic. It’s a very judgmental, inhuman way to treat, not only other people, but yourself, and to leave no room for grace, redemption, love, generosity, or tolerance, all of which are things that he just doesn’t feel he can afford to give anyone.

What most excited you about playing this character, and what made you most nervous about him?

OYELOWO: It’s the same answer for both questions. What made me both excited and nervous was bringing complexity to a character who, though iconic, has historically been thought of as the villain. Is there anything one can do, in the telling of the story? When you read the book, you can tell, very clearly, that [Victor] Hugo did not think of Javert as just the villain of the piece. He fits that archetype, if you’re trying to compartmentalize the characters, but that’s a really lazy phrase, in relation to the book. I love the musical, but I would say that because a musical, by its nature, has to paint things in slightly more primary colors, you go, “Okay, so we have our hero in Jean Valjean, and we have the innocent ingenue in Fantine, and we have the villain in Javert.” Whereas the opportunity that I relished was to be able to up-end some off that assumption and nervousness that I felt. Six hours of just being the villain would have gotten pretty dull.

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Image via Masterpiece on PBS

Having six hours to tell this story really helps because you do get a chance to really get to know who these characters are, in a way that you can’t with less time.

OYELOWO: That was the opportunity being afforded. If we were doing a two-hour movie it would, to be perfectly frank, be less necessary because the musical film had just done a pretty good job of boiling that 1,500 page novel down to a two-hour film, though with songs. The opportunity that’s afforded with this is that you get to see Fantine before she’s the toothless lady who has to sell herself to protect her daughter. You get to see her fall in love, you get to see her have a baby, and you get to see her filled with hope, before it all goes downhill. With this, you get to set to see Jean Valjean in prison, and you get to see him as a criminal before Javert’s relentless pursuit of him, so that you, at least, have context for what that’s about. You get to see huge swaths of time passing. You get to see that my character was born in a prison to criminal parents, which gives that bit of context, as to why he’s so obsessed with this guy who is a mirror image of himself. All of that makes the story so much richer.

What was your first introduction to Les Mis?

OYELOWO: It was the musical. It was those songs. I probably heard the songs before I even saw the musical, and before I knew the characters and story. It’s been a completely backwards way. I went from songs to movie to story to Andrew Davies’ script, to the book. That’s how I arrived at reading the book, completely, back to front. The pleasurable thing about that is that, whether it’s the musical, our six-part adaptation, or the novel itself, those characters are so indelible, so strong and so piercing, in terms of who we are, as human beings, good and bad. It’s pretty tough to boil out the goodness, in terms of interest of those characters in that story. [Victor Hugo] really touched on something primal, in relation to who we are, as human beings. Between the characters of Fantine, Javert and Jean Valjean, every one of us, as human beings, has a little bit of all three in them – the innocent, the judgmental and the seeker of redemption. That is what it is to be human, so to see those qualities split in three and thrown against this epic backdrop, you only have to look up at the stars to think about how small you are. That’s how these characters feel, and that really goes to the heart of who we are, as human beings.

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Image via Masterpiece on PBS

At this point in your career and life, what do you look for in the projects that you get involved with?

OYELOWO: Fear. I want to be scared stiff. I want to feel like I’m not going to be able to do it. I want to feel like it’s going to challenge me and that I’m going to be a better actor, on the other side of doing it. It’s going to be something that I hope my family is going to be proud of because otherwise it’s, “Where’s daddy? Why is he gone?” My wife and I manage to off-set that by having a two-week rule. I spent a lot of time during Les Mis on planes, back and forth to L.A. from Brussels. It’s a pressure, so it better be something that has something to say, with people who are good at saying it, and with the real possibility that lots of people are going to see it. Those are some of the things that are important to me.

I was so tremendously impressed with the work that you did in Selma. It was such an incredibly beautiful film that did not fully get the attention that it deserved.

OYELOWO: Thank you.

Since then, the career that you’ve had has included a wide variety of very different roles. Is that the kind of career you’ve sought, as an actor.

OYELOWO: Yeah, it’s a very conscious decision. It doesn’t always go as you would hope or like. I seek out exactly what you’ve just said, to keep the audience guessing, to keep myself challenged, and to continue this quest to mine humanity of all its weirdness, complexity, and beautiful messiness. I really enjoy playing characters that are very far away from me because they actually help me understand myself a bit more, and humanity a bit more. I like to think that I’m nothing like Javert, but there were things about him that I had to come to terms with, as ways of thinking, in order to be able to inhabit him for that period of time. It’s a huge privilege. Most people don’t get to be students of humanity, like I do. I relish that, and I seek it out.

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Image via Paramount Pictures

When something like Come Away came your way, combining the stories of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, it seems like an insane idea for a movie. Was that part of the appeal, to do something so fantastical and wild?

OYELOWO: Yeah, that’s exactly the appeal. It was for that reason, exactly. I read the script and I thought it was so very creative to take these two beloved stories – Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan – and reimagine them as brother and sister, and give them a common history. I thought there was something inherently indisputably creative about that. You can never really forecast how anything is going to turn out, but you can pursue things that are going interest you and intrigue you, in the hope that it does the same to the audience. That’s what I’m constantly looking for.

So many of those animated movies are being turned into live-action movies, and the stories are being told, so many times and in so many different ways, that to have a version of it that I never could have imagined seems really cool.

OYELOWO: Right. Nowadays, to be able to have an idea or a story that you wouldn’t have thought of, there’s instantaneously something interesting there. There’s some merit in that. Not unlike me getting to play Javert, to see this beautiful, young, mixed-race actress, Keira [Chansa], play Alice from Alice in Wonderland, and to see this wonderful black boy, Jordan [A. Nash], playing Peter Pan, is extraordinary. And for myself and Angelina Jolie to play their parents, and for our kids to be bi-racial, there’s something amazing about that.

How did you find the experience of working with Angelina Jolie?

OYELOWO: Great. She’s a brilliant actress, and she’s a brilliant filmmaker and storyteller. She’s been a friend for awhile, and it was just great to get to work with her. Something that she and I have in common is having a bunch of kids. For both of us, that was what drew us to the project. We wanted to make a film that looks at the imagination of a child, but also the realities of when a child has to deal with grief and loss, and what that actually means, in the context of a fairytale. It was a huge pleasure.

Is there a type of project that you would still love to do, that you feel like you haven’t really gotten the chance to do yet?

OYELOWO: Yeah, I love comedy. I did a film, called Gringo, which scratched that itch for me a little bit. I also love action, and I love thrillers. I’d love to do more of that. I love it when I’m doing things that are contemporary. I’ve done a lot of period pieces, and I love doing them and being in all of the costumes, but contemporary clothing is more comfortable. There are many things that I still hope I will be afforded the opportunity to do, but in all honesty, it’s less about what it is and more about the effect it has on me when I read it. It’s about, “Do I feel like it’s been truthful about humanity, and does it challenge me, as an actor?” Those are the things that I look for.

There’s a real truthfulness in the work that you do, and that really translates in a way that makes the characters that you play feel so human.

OYELOWO: That’s the attribute I’m most in awe of, as someone who has to study human beings for his job. Our ability to be flawed yet compassionate, to be ugly yet beautiful, in terms of how we treat each other, and the fact that you have the capacity to do both of those things, in close proximity to the same person, shows how we’re very wonderfully complicated. I don’t think you’re ever going to really be able to fully break down why we are the way we are and how that manifests, historically. We always think that we’re going to learn our lessons from history. But if you look at Les Miserables and you look at the news, you go, “Wow, what would Victor Hugo think of this?” I’m such a huge fan of studying human beings.

Les Misérables airs on Sunday nights on Masterpiece on PBS.