Deep in the dark, twisting corridors of Netflix’s digital repertoire, tucked around the corner from more rambunctious titles such as Stranger Things and Orange is the New Black, you can find The Expanse — a gargantuan, multimillion dollar space opera that has quietly become one of sci-fi’s finest creations.
The ongoing series, which kicked off in 2015 and is entering production for its third season, has struggled to amass a sizeable enough audience to match its budget, scale and multi-planet narrative, but that hasn’t crippled its ambitions. It’s like The Beatles in their Cavern days — voracious, determined and on the cusp of something great.
The story takes place three hundred years in the future, at a time when humans have fully colonised the Solar System. Detective Josephus Miller (Thomas Jane) joins forces with officer Jim Holden (Steven Strait) and United Nations executive Chrisjen Avasrala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) to unravel a conspiracy that could wipe out humanity. The premise is taken from a series of books by American novelist Daniel Abraham.
Anthony Mackie, Kane, Liam Cunningham, Greg Grunberg and Cas Anvar at a press conference during the Middle East Film and Comic Con 2017 at the Zaabeel Exhibition Hall, Dubai in April.
‘IT FELT LIKE STAR WARS’
“This show is coming with a pedigree of five New York Times best-selling novels. It’s written by the writers of Children of Men and Iron Man I, the showrunner of Star Trek: Next Generation, Farscape and CSI, producers of Breaking Bad, and they’re putting $6 million (Dh22.03 million) into it every episode. It’s a dream team,” said Cas Anvar, who plays Martian pilot Alex Kamal.
The Canadian actor of Iranian origin, known for his voice work on video games such as Assassins Creed, sat down with Gulf News tabloid! in April at the Middle East Film and Comic Con. He exuded the unyielding confidence of someone accustomed to on-screen combat, suited up in a fitted vest, cross-striped tie and incongruous brown leather biker gloves.
For him, saying yes to The Expanse wasn’t a gamble — it was a no-brainer.
“I’m given a character description that says, ‘Alex Kamal is a Mars-born fighter pilot of East Indian-Pakistani decent with a Texas accent,’” he recalled. “I’m like, sign me up.”
The creators crafted a vast playground for Anvar and his co-stars to flourish in: three substantial sound studios and 7,400 square metres of set space. In a Reddit thread titled ‘What is the budget of this thing?’, one viewer who binge-watched the series in three days marvelled at the immensity of the show’s visuals.
“The most mind boggling thing to me about it is all the CGI. It looks all too realistic. What is the budget of a show like this? How do they make everything look all so realistic?” they asked. (The answer is millions and millions of dollars, similar to something like Game of Thrones.)
According to Anvar, CGI was only employed for the ships’ exteriors and elongated corridors. The rest was mostly built from the ground up. “It was huge,” he said. “It felt like walking onto the set of Star Wars.”
ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD
On a typical day, the cast and crew, who film in Toronto, are in the studio before dawn and back out when it’s dark again. They try to create something that can hold a mirror up to reality. The script creates interplanetary metaphors for good and evil, scattering a kaleidoscope of social and political predicaments through a lens of fantasy.
“These things were written and shot a year ago before [Donald Trump] was in power, but the things that are going on in our story are very relevant to what’s going on in the world today,” said Anvar.
“We’re on a space ship, but the suspension of disbelief is not that great. The issues, the political challenges, the emotional interrelationships between the human beings could be happening right now, right here, in any country in the world,” he added.
Anvar finds that this to be a staple of science fiction, a genre that has long created a safe environment for writers to take risks, explore tough questions and make comparisons without “anyone getting their back up”.
“We’re not talking about Americans or Canadians — these are Martians. But really, we know what we’re talking about,” he said.
EXPANDING MINDS
At a time when Hollywood has failed viewers via several instances of whitewashing — Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell and Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange, for instance — Anvar’s character might feel like a rarity. But in his view, it isn’t because Hollywood is racist: it’s because Hollywood is greedy.
“This is something I learnt from Salma Hayek, when she [executive produced] Ugly Betty. Everyone thinks Hollywood is racist, Hollywood is sexist, Hollywood is this and that. Bottom line is: Hollywood is ignorant and Hollywood underestimates the audience. All Hollywood cares about is money,” said Anvar.
While producers think they might make more money “doing TV shows that have white protagonists, and white men, and white women”, said Anvar, and that they’ll lose money if they have “a white lead with a black love interest”, viewers are hungry for representation.
“When Salma Hayek came in with Ugly Betty, she took this show that was a huge hit in Mexico and Americanised it, and they looked at her and went, ‘Are you crazy? An unattractive, overweight Latino girl with big glasses and braces? That’s our lead? You’re nuts — no one’s going to buy that, get out of here,’” said Anvar.
Hayek proved to the network that there were droves of viewers and advertisers who would make Ugly Betty a lucrative series to produce, and the show wound up airing for four seasons and launching lead actress America Ferrera’s career.
“Hollywood is just a big dumb gate keeper. A big dumb banker. You’ve got to show the banker: you’re gonna make money with this,” said Anvar.
And though The Expanse has yet to garner the mass appeal of some of its counterparts (the jury is out on whether it’s recouped its hefty budget yet), Anvar hopes things will begin to pick up steam once season two arrives on Netflix. He looks to another successful series whose ratings skyrocketed thanks to the streaming service: Breaking Bad, a crime-drama that nearly quadrupled its viewership from its first season premiere to its last.
“Our producer Sharon Hall [helped develop] Breaking Bad, and she said the first two seasons no one was watching it, until it hit Netflix,” said Anvar.
“I’m very hopeful for a season four and five. I think season two on Netflix and Amazon [Prime] is going to transform our world for The Expanse,” he added.
