Friday Night Lights and The Terminal List alum Taylor Kitsch says he wanted to play Isaac in American Primeval because the character is so complicated -- a broken man who rediscovers his humanity and finds a new sense of purpose.
Kitsch plays a traumatized 19th-century frontier guide who has lost his family. The character's life is changed when he meets Betty Gilpin's Sarah, a single mother trying to escape her own past and start a new life in Utah.
Other cast members include Kim Coates, Dane DeHaan, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Derek Hinkey, Joe Tippett, Jai Courtney, Shawnee Pourier and Shea Whigham.
Kitsch described Isaac as "lost, mourning, incapable of love" when he is introduced to viewers at the beginning of the series.
"He's incapable of receiving love until Sarah comes into his life," Kitsch, 43, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview."Through circumstances, in moments between them two, and understanding that, she starts to shed light to allow himself to forgive himself and, maybe, have a life moving forward."
"That's beautiful," Gilpin, 38, told her co-star.
"Without spoiling anything, she has done something to protect him before we met her, and she is sort of running from that secret and is just trying to get her son west to safety," Gilpin added.
"Being a mom myself, I related to the temptation and ability to take your own life and kind of make your own 'A story' the 'C story' in your own life and make your child the priority and their safety the priority, and I think she sort of forgets to do that for herself and meeting Isaac, against all odds, she sort of starts to dream for herself again."
While Isaac is cautious and cynical, Sarah is brimming with compassion and often endangers the group when she tries to help other desperate-seeming, but shady people.
"I tried to think about, again, being a mom, and how that can be at times," Gilpin said.
"It can make you the strongest and clearest thinker in the room and sometimes your love for your child can blind you," she added. "We sort of see Sarah do both. There are times that the power churning within her as a mom saves everybody and there are times when it almost kills everyone."
"When we would film the most intense parts, I'd be like: 'Isn't this a fun vacation, son? Isn't this a great Airbnb?'" Gilpin laughed.
Gilpin and Kitsch themselves found ways to decompress after a day of pretend murder and mayhem.
"Educating myself [about] the Native American community is something I've really held on to and it's changed my life. So, those are the kinds of things I try and stay connected with," Kitsch said.
"I think you're always just focusing on the positive: the experiences you had with amazing actors, storytellers, from [screenwriter] Mark L. Smith, Pete, Betty, Shea Whigham," he added. "That's kind of why you do what you do: to have, hopefully, these moments with them. For me, that was kind of my way out, ironically. It was focusing on those amazing things and letting go of the trauma and the sadness and the guilt that Isaac carried."
Gilpin quipped: "Spending the day sobbing at 11,000 feet? I never slept so well. I had no time or energy to process the trauma of the day. You just pass out and do it again the next day. It's a privilege."
Berg called Smith a "dear friend" and "talented writer," with whom he was eager to explore this tumultuous era in American history.
"He and I were at a place in our lives where we were both kind of thinking about how violent the world is today, how much war and murder and death and hardship and struggle there is on every continent on this planet, and how the cycle just can't seem to be broken," Berg explained. "We wanted to do something that was a creative response to that."
Julie O'Keefe said she was pleased Netflix and the filmmakers were so dedicated to realism that they hired her as the Indigenous cultural consultant and project adviser for the show.
"The first thing that struck me was the amount of language that was in [the script] and when you have that amount of language -- there's 3,700 words in three different Nations' languages in that script -- you know that the director, and, also, you know that the Netflix streaming company have a commitment to authenticity. They're working at a higher bar," O'Keefe said.
"So, that's something that you definitely want to be a part of, in particular, as a Native," she added. "It's just recently that we've started being invited to engage in telling our own histories."