From executive producer Luc Besson (Taken, The Fifth Element) and writer/showrunner Alexander Cary (Homeland), the NBC series Taken tells the origin story of Bryan Mills (Clive Standen), as he deals with a personal tragedy that has turned his world upside down. Choosing to overcome the trauma of the incident by exacting revenge, Mills becomes a deadly CIA operative that will develop his very particular and very dangerous set of skills into the character played by Liam Neeson in the films.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, actor Clive Standen (Vikings) talked about his reaction to being offered this role, what attracted him to the series, taking the first film as a base point while not really regarding the second and third films, the parallels between Homeland (which Alex Cary also wrote) and Taken, the relentless momentum, all of the new skills that he’s learning, and the storytelling structure for the season.

Collider:  How did Taken come about?

CLIVE STANDEN:  I’d just finished filming Vikings, and I was looking for a smaller job to fit in between seasons. Alex Cary, who writes Taken and has written most of Homeland, as well, is our showrunner. He wanted to get on Skype with me, and it was lovely. He said I was his one and only choice for the role, and asked if I would consider it. The script was fantastic, so everything just aligned. I really would have really been stupid to start hemming and hawing over the workload, so I just made it work.

Were you nervous, at all, about stepping into something like this, that people so identify Liam Neeson with?

STANDEN:  I did worry. When I first got sent the script by my agent, I didn’t read it. I just assumed that it was going to be full of car chases and explosions and no substance because I didn’t know anything about it. I had gotten sent 15 scripts, and Taken was one of them. I had to read them all, over a weekend, and I put Taken at the bottom of the pile. And then, my agent rang and said, “Did you read Taken?” And I said, “Yeah, it was full of car chases and explosions.” And he said, “You obviously didn’t read it ‘cause it’s not that. It’s written by Alex Cary and it will be directed by Alex Graves.”

And then, I got on Skype with Alex and the deal was done, really. I just saw his passion for it and what he wanted to do with it. I think what people think about, when they think about the film, is that Bryan Mills is this man who knows how to save his daughter from the kidnappers because he’s been catching kidnappers, all of his career. That’s not the case. Our spin on it is that he knows how to catch the kidnappers because he’s been kidnapping people, all of his career.

That’s what the CIA is about. The CIA is about doing America’s dirty work and not taking the credit for it. They keep us all safe, and sometimes that means clandestine operations where you’re taking people, and then you’re trying to get information of them. But Bryan’s moral compass is pointing the right way, and that’s what’s fascinating. He’s suddenly in this world of espionage and spies and covert actions. He’s a decent guy who’s been brought up well, and he has to struggle with right and wrong, and whether the people that are giving him the orders are just as corrupt as the people he’s trying to hunt down.

Look, you’d be stupid not to use the billion dollar franchise of Taken as a formula, but it doesn’t have to follow the film so much. We’re taking the first film as our base point. We’re not really regarding the second and third Taken films. It’s about the look and the feel of the first one, and the real Luc Besson characters. The show is going to build beyond that, hopefully, and if it’s a success, then hopefully it can relaunch the franchise. All I can hope for, in the future, is that if it goes to five seasons, than people will start associating me with Bryan Mills and not Liam Neeson. I’ve got so much riding on the show that I won’t let it become something that I don’t want it to be. I know what I want it to be and I think I know what people want this to be, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that happens.

Do you see any parallels between Homeland and Taken?

STANDEN:  The Homeland parallel is worth talking about because Alex wrote them both. Homeland is about Carrie Mathison, Claire Danes’ character, and she’s really the spy of the show. It’s all about the espionage and the intelligence and gathering information. And it’s Peter Quinn, Rupert Friend’s character, who’s more on the supporting side, as the covert action guy. With Taken, it’s almost like putting that kind of character as the lead of the show, and having the Carrie Mathison character as the supporting role. That kind of character is very similar to Bryan, in our Taken. He almost gets dumped into a situation, where if it all goes wrong, no one is going to look after him. He’s on his own.

I think that’s interesting, especially post-9/11. The CIA is more interested in covert action, rather than gathering intelligence by spying and going to countries and recruiting. It seems to be a more aggressive approach. So, when you’ve got a character like Bryan, who actually is a decent man, his only real power is direct action. It’s that forward-momentum that keeps him going. He has a desire to protect people. I think it’s quite fascinating to have him at the center of it all because it’s not an action piece. The logic of our imagination needs to believe what we see on the screen. Otherwise, you never really capture the audience.

If you’re watching a superhero film, you can completely buy into the idea that someone flies. But if you’re watching something that’s meant to be based on reality and it could be happening right now, behind closed doors in the CIA, you need to believe it. So, if Bryan starts running up walls and back flip kicking people than you’ve lost your audience. It’s very real. The action and the drama that we’ve created is just that. I think it’s important to actually show humanity as it is. There are no black and white characters. Everyone lives in the grey somewhere, and Bryan is no different. I can’t wait for the episodes where he starts to go to the dark side, so to speak.

The pilot has got a pretty high level of action and intensity. Will the series continue that?

STANDEN:  The momentum we’ve got is relentless. It’s got that tick-tock feeling that just doesn’t stop. Bryan is always going forward. When you watch the pilot, you feel like you’re on the mission with him and you’re going with him. If you go and make a cup of tea, when you come back, you’ll have no idea what’s going on because everything is important. And Alex is such an intelligent writer. The audience has got to keep up and listen. If you don’t, you’re going to get lost. I’m really happy! We’re really delivering a cable-quality show for NBC. That’s all I can hope for.

Vikings is a very physical show, so people know that you can handle that side of things, but it also seems like a different kind of preparation for this. Did you have to learn a lot of new skills for this?

STANDEN:  Yeah. I’ve even had to learn Arabic for an episode. And I’ve never really done much gun training before. I’ve been at gun ranges, learning how to fire machine guns and different hand guns. I’m doing close quarter combat. I’m used to doing Thai boxing, which is a very physical martial art, but is very different from the Krav Maga, close quarter stuff that I’m having to learn. And when I’m on set, Bryan always seems to be running somewhere, and the bad guys always seem to come out at night. So, I’m running at nighttime, quite a lot. I’m always tired when they go, “Yeah, you’ve just gotta run another thousand meters.” That’s keeping me fit. The important thing about Bryan Mills is that Christina Hart, Jennifer Beals’ character, recruits him because he’s not like the average soldier that ends up being plucked from the Navy SEALs, or a department in the military, to become a black ops agent. He’s a regular guy who can disappear into obscurity in a crowd. It’s pointless staying the same size that I was in Vikings because I’d stick out like a sore thumb. He has to look like a civilian, but he has to be able to run 15 miles without breaking a sweat. He’s physically fit, healthy and strong, but he hasn’t got those military disciplines that come with years and years and years in the Army or the Navy. That’s been a different set of skills, as well. This show is relentless. There’s so much to learn.

What can you say about the other characters that are in Bryan’s life?

STANDEN:  There’s the black ops team that he joins. To be fair, every time there’s a vacancy in one of those teams, it means that someone has departed in probably the worst possible way, so they might not accept him so easily. Christina Hart, played by Jennifer Beals, is the Special Deputy Director of National Intelligence. She’s pretty much the mentor character that we’ve got.

In the pilot, it’s not too dissimilar from the film, in that something tragic happens to Bryan and he becomes a one-man wrecking ball to put it right again. He hasn’t really got the skills that he has in the film, so he’s a diamond in the rough. But Christina Hart sees him, and the CIA watches him from afar while he draws in the bad guys, so to speak, and she sees something in him. She decides to train him and teach him these skills, so she’s the one who has to face him. But, you can never really trust someone who’s that high up the food train.

And then, Brooklyn Sudano is playing Asha. It’s very complicated because Bryan’s life becomes so clandestine that he hasn’t really got anyone to let out his feelings with. Asha comes into it and she’s his only direct contact with the outside world. Everyone else he’s surrounded by is in the Agency, so she’s got a really interesting part to play.

Alex Cary is such a strong writer that he even has guest characters that come in for an episode and they burn so brightly on the screen that they feel like they could be regular characters. So many TV shows, when they find a good bad guy, they kill them. That’s almost their weakness. You want to keep them alive, so you can use and abuse them, down the line, in future episodes. And Alex is good at building characters that really scream on the screen.

How does the structure for the season work? Will there be one overall story that spans the season, with other smaller stories?

STANDEN:  Yeah, there will be an arc that goes all the way, but each episode has a stand-alone mission, and some of them might go into two episodes. It’s Bryan’s story, but each mission is connected, in a way, while also being stand-alone episodes. You will have to tune in to understand what’s going on.

Does it feel like a special skill to learn all the action and the languages, and still act in the scenes?

STANDEN:  It does, yeah. I have to keep ahold of the fact that he’s just another guy. He’s not superhuman. He’s fallible, just like I am. There are certain things that I have to work really hard at achieving. I filmed a scene where Bryan had to go from the bottom to the top of a parking lot doing Parkour, and they brought a stunt guy in. I was like, “When did Bryan learn to Parkour? I’ll do it myself, and if it looks a bit rusty and I bash myself, and I’ll be tired when I get to the top, so be it.” Bryan is just a guy. I don’t want him leaping around like a gazelle. That’s not believable. It has to all be rooted and the audience has to believe this guy can do this. I love that! Too many of these action heroes go into these fights and you know that they’re not going to get knocked out or hurt. I like the fact that Bryan gets beaten up and knocked around, and hasn’t quite got the answer, but he learns. I think the success of any show is a character that is always growing and learning. What’s the point, if he’s got all the answers? That becomes very boring, very quickly.

When you do a show like this, that is so secretive, is it just about trusting the showrunner and having faith in him?

STANDEN:  That’s a good question. Usually, you audition and audition and audition, and you want to get a role, but then you don’t get it. Because this was Alex ringing me up and offering me the role, I talked to him for a long time. You know when you just know someone. You can meet someone and know that they’re not bullshit merchant, within 15 minutes. Talking to Alex, in the first 10 minutes, I was like, “This guy can do it.” I’ve seen Homeland and seen what he can do, and I knew he wasn’t going to let me down with his vision for Taken. And I’ve been proven right, just by working with him. He wants this show to be incredible, and he’s relentless with his writing. He’s always on set, with every scene, and he’s always rewriting stuff. He’ll see something you do on set, on the day, and he’ll go back and rewrite a future episode to adapt it to what you’re doing. He’s the best type of writer, and he’s stupidly talented. You just have to have faith, and he hasn’t let me down yet.

Taken airs on Monday nights on NBC.