Unlocking The Institute
As MGM+ launches Stephen King adaptation The Institute, Mary-Louise Parker, Ben Barnes and Joe Freeman tell DQ about starring in this supernatural thriller and exploring its themes of power, morality and resistance in a world where children with special abilities are imprisoned in the name of the greater good.
After starring in the first season of Stephen King adaptation Mr Mercedes, Mary-Louise Parker knew what to expect when director Jack Bender approached her about bringing another King novel to the small screen.
That book is The Institute, the author’s 2019 story about a teenager who is held hostage at the titular facility full of children who, like him, possess special abilities. Joe Freeman stars as teen genius Luke, who is kidnapped and awakens at the Institute, which is led by Parker’s character Ms Sigsby. Meanwhile, in a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide.
“We have a great relationship. He’s like family to me,” Parker tells DQ about reuniting with Bender, who partnered with another King fan, writer and executive producer Benjamin Cavell (The Stand), to bring the series to MGM+. “I just love him, and he posed the story in a really interesting way, which was, ‘How far would you go to save the world from the apocalypse?’
“In essence, it was a great jumping-off point, especially for a character [like Ms Sigsby] who is seemingly amoral and will just stop at nothing in pursuit of this thing she’s serving. I just thought it was a really interesting idea. This person has a sense of inner decay and yet, for her, everything is justified.”
A charming but iron-willed antagonist who feels no guilt over ripping the children from their families, it’s clear from the outset that Ms Sigsby and her co-conspirators, Stackhouse (Julian Richings) and Dr Hendricks (Robert Joy), have an unwavering belief that the end justifies the means, as their unethical, immoral work seeks to maintain world order in unimaginable ways.
“And it’s gotten worse,” Parker says. “In a way, I think sometimes people start off in pursuit of something and it seems like human nature for the motor to slow down. But with her, it’s sped up, so she has this constant sense of this rapacious need to fulfil the next goal. She’s only gotten more amped up for the cause.”
To play the cold and calculating character, Weeds and The West Wing star Parker started by digging into Ms Sigsby’s staunch support for the Institute’s cause. “And for me, my idea was she’d only gotten more directed, more energised, more deluded, as opposed to someone starting to question what they’re doing,” she says. “She doesn’t allow any space for that to happen. It’s terrifying in theory, but it’s also very human.
“People who do commit the greatest ills, they almost always have some built-in alibi or set of rules as to why what they did was right, and can generally blame the victim or the person they’re harming.”
In fact, Ms Sigsby frequently defends her actions, variously stating she’s “not a monster,” nor “the enemy.” But that’s certainly not the viewpoint of Luke and fellow inmates Kalisha (Simone Miller), Iris (Birva Pandya), Nick (Fionn Laird), George (Arlen So) and Avery (Viggo Hanvelt), all of whom have been kidnapped for their various levels of psychic ability.
“He goes from a little humble life in Minneapolis to being tested and tortured every day in a facility where there are no rules,” Freeman says of his character. “I wanted to bring it across very clearly that, under all of that cheeky front that Luke gives Sigsby, Stackhouse or anybody in the Institute, that will break at some point because he’s a kid. Under everything, Luke is just a normal teenager who is just sitting his SATs a bit early.
“When he goes back to his room at one point in episode three and just breaks down and cries, I really wanted to get across that he’s like any other kid. If you were in his shoes and you were 14 years old, how would you be behaving? Probably pretty similarly, because you want to try to stand up to these people but it’s very hard when they’re physically and mentally destroying you.”
The young actor – son of Sherlock stars Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington – landed the part of Joe after an “exciting” audition process, with The Institute marking his first major role. Co-star Barnes similarly describes being in a Stephen King adaptation as “one of those bucket-list things,” though his role as police officer Tim represents a change of pace for the actor.
“It was important to me, having played a lot of untrustworthy, villainous or psychotic characters for the past few years in a row, to play someone for whom it’s important to be a good man, even if he has a quick trigger when it comes to investigating and standing up against what he thinks is injustice,” the Westworld and Shadow & Bone star says.
“He’s also a character who’s quite self-aware in terms of his flaws. He’s bringing in a heaviness and baggage to a story even when it starts. They were all quite appealing things that were different from a lot of the stuff I’ve done before. The writing and storytelling is very thoughtful, and I love that when I’m watching something. It has a very simmering tension to it as a story. I thought that was something very appealing. We’re quite used to TV that either delivers things very quickly or is very artsy and poetic, and this strikes a balance in between.”
Barnes read King’s original novel before starting work on the series, informing him about the story’s themes around challenging the institutions that govern people’s lives and the often-hidden powers they have over the most vulnerable in society.
Yet it’s more than halfway through the show before Tim discovers the bigger picture and the secrets of the Institute, after coming into contact with Joe. Before that point, Tim is adjusting to his new surroundings in a small town where he becomes the police night-knocker after a traumatic incident in his previous posting. Barnes believes audiences now have enough film fluency to understand that though the first half of the series is slow to reveal its secrets, there are plenty of clues that point to what might be in store.
“We audience members all have enough filmic language to know if you see a character that is expressing some kind of unique power, that is eventually going to express itself against the powers that be, and we know a character who’s burdened by something or feeling shame is going to have some kind of redemptive arc,” he teases. “If you’re seeing two protagonists with so much in common in terms of their quest for justice, you know they’re going to come together. It has this inevitability about it, but it’s the ‘how’ that is the thing that hopefully thrills as we go through it.”
Walking onto the Nova Scotia set of The Institute, Freeman remembers feeling like “the littlest fish in the biggest pond” as he got to work making the show, which debuts on July 13. “There were so many people, and I don’t know what any of them are doing. I’m just walking around trying to keep my head down, and only open my mouth when the cameras are rolling,” he laughs.
“But to work with people like Ben and Mary-Louise, Julian Richings, Robert Joy… it’s what you dream of as an actor. You want to work with Class A talent, and to be able to not only work opposite them but try to make them better and try to make them perform better in a scene is what you dream about as a young actor.”
Parker spends most of her time on screen with the young cast inside the Institute, and says Bender doesn’t waste any time during shooting days. “His sets are always very energised and it was a really excellent crew,” she says. “They were really wonderful. There was a sense you felt like people were interested in the story, which isn’t always the case on set. Sometimes people are just looking at their phones and so forth, but I felt like people were interested in the story.”
Barnes could sympathise with Freeman’s position as the young lead of an epic production, having taken on the title role in the 2008 Chronicles of Narnia fantasy film Prince Caspian. He’s also used to braving numerous stunts, including being thrown into freezing waterfalls and off cliffs.
“The amount of times I’ve been killed on screen is unfathomable,” he jokes. That made The Institute a comparatively sedate affair for the actor, barring a couple of shootouts. “This was physically a little bit gentler,” he says, “which is curious because I did do a lot of night shoots. There are gunfights and tension, diving behind cars and all sorts of fun stuff. But I’m used to a very stunt-heavy schedule, so this one felt like he’s a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit detective-like in the way he thinks, even though no one’s asking him to pursue this, but he can’t leave it alone.
“I liked the quiet world you find him in at the beginning. I liked that there was a mystery to this man’s mood and mind when you first meet him, and there’s a bit of pathos to him. There’s a heaviness, and it plays off against the electric fire of Luke’s response to injustice.”
When Tim and Luke eventually meet, “they make each other better and buoy each other,” Barnes adds. “Tim does ground Luke in the real world and Luke does help reignite that fire in Tim. It’s almost a little bit frustrating they meet so late because you want to see them together more, as they do have so much in common. They play off each other in this pseudo parent-child justice team way.”
Describing King as “a master at understanding the audience,” Parker says The Institute promises lots of hooks that will keep viewers not just engaged but a little unsettled and insecure as well. “He’s the master of it. And if told well, his stories are foolproof, in a way. He understands how to do it,” she notes.
The way the series immediately aligns viewers with Luke is “heartbreaking,” she adds. “You get a little taste of him with his family and then he [King] just sets fire to it in the most heartbreaking kind of way that you almost can’t reconcile. You almost don’t want to keep watching, but you can’t not. That’s the genius of Stephen King.”
As for Ms Sigsby, the day of reckoning is fast approaching. “Redemption is yet to be seen,” Parker says. “I’m not terribly hopeful for her.”
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tagged in: Ben Barnes, Jack Bender, Joe Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, MGM, Stephen King, The Institute