Based on author Justin Cronin’s best-selling trilogy of the same name, the Fox series The Passage follows Federal Agent Brad Wolgast (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), the man tasked with bringing a young girl named Amy Bellafonte (Saniyya Sidney) in to Project NOAH, a secret medical facility where scientists are experimenting with a dangerous virus that could either lead to the cure for all disease or wipe out the human race, as a test subject. When he realizes the extent of what he’s involved in, Wolgast becomes something of a surrogate father to Amy while looking for a way out.
During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actor Mark-Paul Gosselaar talked about how hard it was for him to deal with the surprise cancellation of his last Fox TV series Pitch, the appeal of The Passage, making changes from the book series, the banter he shares with the author, the dynamic between Wolgast and Amy, what makes this the most ambitious TV series he’s been a part of, and the journey his character takes this season. Be aware that there are some spoilers discussed.
Collider: I have to say that you being a part of the show makes me both happy and sad because as intrigued as I am by The Passage, it also means that Pitch is not on the air anymore.
MARK-PAUL GOSSELAAR: Yeah. I feel the same way. Make sure we get on the petition to do at least a two-hour movie of Pitch. All I’ve gotta do is grow a beard, and I’m ready to go.
When Pitch ended and you were blindsided by the cancellation, and then got this show, what was your headspace like, during that time? Was it hard to get over that, and then jump into something completely different?
GOSSELAAR: Yeah. I told Dan Fogelman, Kevin Falls and the team behind Pitch, which was 20th Century Fox, the same studio that’s doing The Passage, “You guys really fucked me up,” in the sense that it was arguably one of the best projects I had ever been a part of. With he pedigree behind it, the story we were telling and the character that I was playing, I thought for sure that I could hang my hat on it and retire because it was just so good. Dan Fogelman had This is Us, and I was thinking, “Okay, I’m gonna be very comfortable here, for the next six years.” Then, for it to not find an audience was crushing. That was the part that really fucked me up. At that point, you have all of these great cards in front of you, and for it not to be a success, that just messed me up. I thought, “What does a project need for it to work?” Then, The Passage came along. Part of me thought, “Well, this is another script that I read and really fell in love with it and the character. Liz Heldens did an amazing job adapting the book. It’s a character-driven show with this orbiting genre vampire story orbiting around it. But because of what happened to Pitch, could the same thing happen to this show?” You just don’t know because what we’re trying to do is so hard in broadcast. We need people to sit down on the night it airs and I, for one, am not someone that can do that, all the time. I tend to stream everything that I watch, so I understand how hard it is for broadcast television to survive in this environment. The only thing that I can say is that we try to make the best possible product, and I’m so super proud of this product, much like I was with Pitch. I think that this has all of the same qualities, in terms of a show that will hopefully find an audience, because there are so many moving pieces that will attract every type of viewer.
Having read the books and now doing the TV series, as well, can you see why they were having so much trouble figuring out how to turn the material into a movie? Do you feel like you understand why they thought it was better as a TV series?
GOSSELAAR: I think so. I have a development deal with 20th, so I’m constantly looking for IP and reading books, and seeing if I can develop them into a show. Specifically with The Passage, when you read the books, they’re epic. They’re enormous. So, where do you start? How do you tell the story of what is happening in just those books, in the future? How did that begin? Trying to tell that story in 90 minutes for a film is nearly impossible. That works better as a TV series. We have taken the first quarter of the first book and we’ve made 10 episodes out of that. Liz Heldens has taken information that was backstory in book three, and for some of the characters in book two, and brought it into the story that we’re telling in the first season.
Even though your character plays a large part in shaping the story, he isn’t there throughout the books. When you realized that, did you immediately start to come up with ideas to keep him around?
GOSSELAAR: I immediately called Sharon Klein at 20th. I said, “Have you read the books? I’m reading book two, and I don’t see him in there.” She said, “We’re going to change that.” I said, “You can’t change it. That’s the beauty of the story.” They jump to the future and other characters that are involved. She said, “Listen, we’re not getting rid of you.” I said, “Okay, I’d like to know how you’re going to keep him around.” So, Liz told me what they plan to do, and it makes sense. The book goes from present day to 150 years in the future. What happens between those 150 years? There’s a lot of story that we can make up and insert, and still move forward with the story. I know that Liz had talked about Season 2 possibly being the next part of the book, where it will travel forward into the future.
It’s cool that the author of the books and creator of this world, Justin Cronin, also happens to be a producer on this series. What’s it like to have him involved? Were you nervous about meeting and talking to him, before he gave you his thumbs up about taking on this role?
GOSSELAAR: No. I’m at the point in my career now where I’m here to do a job. I would love for him to give me the thumbs up, and thankfully he did because that just makes my job a little bit easier. Anne Rice had said that Tom Cruise was not her Lestat, but she retracted that after the movie came out. So, as an actor, it’s always nice when the creator of the story is behind you. When Justin came to the set, we were filming the carnival scene in the pilot. I was such a fanboy of his books that I asked things like, “How did you get to this point? What’s going to happen with this character?” I just wanted to know more and more backstory of the entire series. I didn’t want to know anything about my character because I felt like my character was very well explained in the books, and Liz gave me a very clear picture who Brad was. Justin and I are buddies now. We text each other. We go out to L.A. together. He’s a friend. It’s cute because he calls me Agent Wolgast when he texts me, and I call him The Author. In the series, Amy calls me The Agent, so I call Justin The Author. We have this little cute banter between us.
While there’s this really interesting sci-fi element to the story, with the creation of this species, the relationship Wolgast and Amy is really the heart of the story. What do you most enjoy about exploring that, and about having such an incredibly talented young actress to work with?
GOSSELAAR: [Saniyya Sidney] is amazing. In previous interviews, I’ve always said, “Never work with animals or children.” This is an absolute exception to the rule because she is brilliant, on screen and on set. What you see on film is real and genuine. It’s such a pleasure to work with her. She’s amazing. We’ve finished the season, and I love the progression that we make with their story and the relationship. We bring in Lila (Emmanuelle Chriqui), Brad’s ex-wife, and we learn about the backstories for every single character. The love story between Lear (Henry Ian Cusick) and Fanning (Jamie McShane) and Elizabeth is going to be beautiful to watch. The story between Babcock (Brianne Howey) and Richards (Vincent Piazza) and Sykes (Caroline Chikezie), and that whole backstory, is phenomenal. Every character gets a chance to expose themselves, and I think the audience will really appreciate that. Then, we have the genre aspect of it all, where it’s creepy as fuck. It really is an ambitious show.
You’ve talked about this being the most ambitious show that you’ve been a part of. What have been the biggest challenges of all of this?
GOSSELAAR: The biggest challenge is that I’ve never been a part of a show, at this level, for broadcast. The tone of the show is very rich and cinematic, which takes time. On top of it, we have very big scenes that, when you read them, you say, “My god, they would take two weeks to film this for a movie.” There’s a scene in Episode 9 where the virals break out of Project NOAH, and what the director, Jason Ensler, was able to accomplish in two days would’ve taken a month on a big film. It was just really ambitious, in the way that we did those scenes, running around and doing action while you’re being chased. We had 11 people in full viral make-up, which takes four hours to put on and an hour and a half to take off, and there were massive amounts of extras, gunfire and explosives. And then, you have a heartfelt emotional scene in the middle of it, which is very challenging for the actors, the crew and the writers. I was surprised that we were able to get it all done, in our allotted time schedule.
This is a character who clearly thought he was doing one thing with his work, and then he finds out that whatever he thought was going on is not at all what’s going on. Over the course of the season, how will Brad Wolgast deal with all of this, the more that he realizes exactly what is happening?
GOSSELAAR: Well, you’ll get a glimpse of it, in the first few episodes. There was a tragic incident that happened in his life, and you’ll see the backstory of that in Episode 7. We do a bunch of flashbacks. In Episode 3, it’s a flashback of Babcock. We use the mindscapes to get there. You’ll see that he’s not gonna allow the same thing to happen again. Brad is a smart guy. He says something very telling in the pilot, when he says, “I try not to think about it.” That’s not, “I don’t know.” I don’t think he knows the extent of what Lear and Richards have created through Project NOAH, but I think he knows that something is not good. He’s brought in 11 death row inmates, and he doesn’t hear a thing about them, so he tries not to think about it. He’s at a point in his life where he feels like, “I’ve done some bad things, and I’ve just stopped believing in anything.” That’s a really hard place for a person to be in, but can also create an opportunity for that person to do things that they normally wouldn’t do. That makes it a fun and challenging character to play. You’ll see the progression of him trying to make amends for the bad shit that he’s done.
The Passage airs on Monday nights on Fox.