Posted in: MGM Television, streaming, TV | Tagged: Aaron Tveit, earth abides

Earth Abides: Aaron Tveit on Unraveling Charlie's Mysterious Nature

Aaron Tveit spoke with us about his character Charlie having his own plans for survival and more in the MGM+ series Earth Abides.

Survival takes so many forms during the apocalypse, especially when there's a complete absence of order as is the case of the MGM+ series Earth Abides. Based on the 1941 George R. Stewart novel of the same name, the series follows Ish (Alexander Ludwig) and Emma (Jessica Frances Dukes), two survivors who survive a plague of unprecedented virulence that sweeps the globe, and the human race is all but wiped out. In the aftermath, as the great machine of civilization slowly and inexorably breaks down, only a few shattered survivors remain to struggle against the slide into extinction. Aaron Tveit, who plays one of the survivors, Charlie, spoke to Bleeding Cool about how his character survives, trying to restore some of the order to the chaos, even if it may be contrarian to the goals of the other survivors.

Earth Abides Star Aaron Tveit on Revealing Charlie's More Sinister Motives

Bleeding Cool: So what was the most difficult part of playing like a survivalist, and was there a particular scene or sequence in question that took a little longer to film?

I'm playing somebody who's "not the best person," to say the least. Any time you're playing characters who are a bit deplorable and have a different moral compass than you do, you need to find a way in, see their humanity, and not judge what they're doing. It was fun because the show was about getting everybody to like [Charlie], charm, and entrance them.

Once the shoe drops, the scenes afterward, where I'm no longer trying to do that, and I'm this terrible thing. Those are difficult, and it's hard sometimes to say certain lines or do certain things where it's hard not to judge the character; judge yourself doing it. Luckily, it was in service to the story and everyone on set: actors, crew, director, and writers, everyone. We were all on the same page about what that needed to be. That was helpful, but once the gloves came off, they came off with this guy. That was difficult.

Can you talk briefly about your experience with your costars, what they brought with their presence, and how they helped with your performance?

It's a wonderful group of actors and they're all better people as good as they are actors. I joined the show maybe three weeks into their shooting, and that can be tricky sometimes when you're not there right from the beginning because: A, you're not there when they're kind of getting to find their groove and figuring out what it is. B, you need to come in and do your job. I don't want to step on anybody's toes or disrupt the way they're doing it.

It's easy sometimes for people to be set in their ways, but Jessica [Frances Dukes], Alexander [Ludwig], and everyone else were so wonderfully welcoming to me and made me feel so comfortable, especially in a part like this, where I must come in with a character that bulldozes everyone around him, which could be difficult to do on set. They were so game, so gracious to me, and allowed me to come in and do that. I'm grateful to them and for everybody in the way that they treated me.

Earth Abides, which also stars Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Elyse Levesque, Luisa D'Oliveira, Birkett Turton, Hilary McCormack, and Jenna Berman, streams Sundays on MGM+.

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