True chemistry can't be faked. It's entirely evident that Toby Kebbell and Rupert Grint have precisely that when they sit down together to discuss their work on the new Apple TV+ series "Servant". After I tell Toby Kebbell that I said during the show's New York Comic Con panel that he is the most underrated actor in Hollywood, he expresses appreciation that the cast and crew on stage seemed to agree with the sentiment. Grint then jokes, "I was drinking a lot of wine, though." I joke back that I had assumed all the wine he was drinking on the stage was merely him being a method actor since his "Servant" character Julian Pearce drinks a significant amount of wine on the show as well. Kebbell doesn't miss a beat, responding in his best deadpan, "No, he's just a raging alcoholic."

Despite the heavy tone of this Apple TV+ series, Kebbell and Grint have developed an easy rapport with one another that translates incredibly well on screen. There are plenty of shared scenes between the two as Julian is Sean Turner's brother-in-law. Sean and Dorothy Turner lost a baby, though the exact circumstances are not revealed when the characters are introduced. Sean frequently confides in Julian about Dorothy's struggles to know what's real and what isn't, following this loss. They have used a new age therapy method where Dorothy treats a lifelike doll as a baby. The problem lies in the fact that Dorothy fails to understand that the doll isn't really her baby.

Sean is a renowned chef and his relationship with food and the various dishes that he prepares poses a strong presence in the story. With all the close-up shots on Kebbell's hands and forearms, it's impossible to miss the striking tattoos. He removes his coat to show that some of them are real and on the front side, but the ones on his inner forearms were added for the series by an artist called Mr. K.

Kebbell is coy when talking about the challenges he faced with different type of food preparations, though he surprisingly notes that doing spun sugar was easy. He is also full of praise for his colleagues.

"Working with Rupert was the hardest," jokes Kebbell. "We had the best time, honestly. He was my favourite person to work with. I've been sitting with Lauren and Lauren is obviously tremendous, but she's a phenomenal actress and I was like, 'Oh I'm gonna compete all the time, she's too good!' But with Rupert..." he pauses to laugh with Grint, who takes the joke in good stride. "No, we had a great time. It was so good."

Julian isn't a character who exists solely to be comedic relief or break up the tension, though he does offer a bit of both in the midst of all the serious dramatic content.

"He has a very different energy that comes into the house," says Grint. "He's very brash. He comes from the financial district so he thinks money can solve a lot of problems and he's developed all these different methods of manipulating people. He's one of these guys that always is like two steps ahead and knows what to do. He always has a plan. He's your only confidante in this," Grint says while looking to Kebbell.
"He is and he understands the situation I'm going through but is a real person, you know what I mean? That's how ludicrous it is that this financial, kind of brash dude is the real person in the whole thing whereas everything else is depicted as 'the crazy people.' [Julian] absolutely is the [confidante] and like... imagine having that as your brother-in-law for real. It'd be so good. He plays it fantastically. Brilliant character."

Kebbell struggles to narrow down any one particular moment between Sean and Julian as his favourite comedic moment. "I enjoyed Rupert's company so much that I was laughing all the time just as a human being and just hanging out. Scenes wise, it's been overthrown by how much joy we had."
"Yeah, we had a lot of clandestine conversations in the basement."
"I enjoyed our stuff in the basement!"
"Yeah, the basement, the wine cellar."
"That was the best stuff. I think that, because it was all one shot as well so we were allowed to just run it through. It was a lot of single shots so it was a lot like doing a play. It had that feeling and it just allowed us then to breathe out and be kind of greedy with our time."
"A lot of scenes as well with like, FaceTime, where I'm being kind of... we actually did that for real, didn't we?"
"Yeah, we did."
"I actually called you from a green room."
"He was off!" laughs Kebbell. "They called him in, poor dude, on his day off. He was like... 'Alright.' Yeah, it's hard work."

One of the more peculiar dishes that is presented on the show is a lobster ice cream, which Sean prepares and attempts to make work palatable for those unaccustomed to eccentric cuisine. Kebbell says he did try it.

"Was that what I had?" enquires Grint.
"No, we made you strawberry. What we did was, me and Drew DiTomo who is a phenomenal cook and was my partner-in-crime when it came to all of that, we would always take Tony's recipe which by the way was never a recipe. It was just like, 'They were eating this,' and it's like, 'How do we make that?' We would spend all of this time trying to figure out exactly what could go into it and then, Nell's a vegan. We'd have to figure out how to make everything a vegan version. What [Rupert] ate was actually delicious, vegan, strawberry ice cream made with oat milk. Drew's phenomenal. His Mrs. is an incredible pastry chef so whenever he was stuck he would just ask. We had such a good time figuring it all out but yeah, we made a lobster ice cream and it's like eating a dead guy. It's horrific. It's truly horrific. There is no purpose to it so don't make it at home. We made it and it's pungent. We made real haggis and everyone complained. 'It stinks in here!' Not disrespecting haggis but if you do it in a confined space it's a lot of odour to try and get rid of, so we just ended up making huge sausage with oat involved in it to try and give it that feel."

Kebbell has his fair share of gross things to do for the show, whether it's cooking or sampling unsavoury dishes or cleaning up pretend vomit. "The vomit was particularly awful because it was freezing cold in Philly and for some reason I had to be wearing espadrilles and shorts. I was like, 'Why am I in these summer clothes?' But that's acting, they say. You've got to pretend that it's hot when it's cold! Our life is so hard," he jokes before continuing, "It was oatmeal with a little egg in it or something to give it more strands or strings. It doesn't matter what the actual product is. It's the mammalian reflex of reaching into a gooey mass with tissue where your finger goes through it so yeah, it's not really gross is it? It was all easy... but it was pretty gross."

Julian has some of the most memorable one-liners of the show, with some being so strikingly funny that you can't help but burst out laughing when hearing them for the first time. I ask Grint whether this comedic delivery was something he tried to bring to the character or if it was more so the result of following the script.

"Yeah, he does have a way with words, Julian. I think it's the script. It's all credit to Tony. It was such a clear voice that that character had that it was very easy to jump into his skin and yeah, there's some good lines."
"His timing's brilliant, though, which is the performance part of it," adds Kebbell. "It's hard because we'll do fifteen takes because as I said, it's a continuous shot, but his timing is spot on so it's hard not to crack up. Every day he would have lines and he's just looking at me, I'm like, 'Don't do it. Don't look at me like that.'"
"Yeah, we did struggle with eye contact a little bit, didn't we?"
"A lot, dude, yeah! But it's good! That's the joy, because it's a stressful story to tell. It's a heavy story."

There's still a lot left to explore within the Turner/Pearce family dynamic moving into season two. The first meeting of Sean and Dorothy was never showed or explained and a lot of their familial relationships and character origins were omitted.

"Those are things we talked about," says Kebbell, "even things like who our parents or my parents are. Are my parents alive? [Are] there siblings? There's a lot of scope. I think what's incredible about that house is, I actually love being there. I know when you watch it, it starts to feel claustrophobic. Lauren would always say she wanted to get out of the house but I think that's how tremendous of an actress she is that you realise, obviously as you've seen it all, why she wants to get out of the house and hopefully you realise why Sean wants to stay in that house. For me, we're telling our own stories. For me, I love to be there. I want to be there. I want to make that house a home again. That's what's so nice about Julian coming over. It's the authenticity of it actually being, entertaining a guest and a guest who brings a bottle of wine and has some spurious story about why he's there. He's there when you're fixing something. It's that kinship you hope to get with a brother-in-law, that you hope to get with a brother. That's what we worked on, is like, 'Who is the family?'"

Grint says the experience of playing an American character is enjoyable. "The accent is something I've not done before. It's a funny one. There's a few words that do kind of trip you up. 'Aunt' springs to mind. I couldn't make up my mind how to say that."
"Because you guys say it two different ways, and it depends where you're from. Me, I have to stay in it and [Rupert] has this beautiful ability to go out. You try to stay [in it], 'Do I need to call you your character's name?' and he goes, 'No no, just Rupert.' I have to stay in it."
"I did try that. I tried."
"We tried that."
"Do you remember how awkward it was," says Kebbell to Grint, "We had another actor come in who plays the detective, the P.I. We were sitting and he was like, 'Where you from?' I was like, 'Newark', just because I'd been chatting with Rupert and I was just in my thing and I had my accent. I was like, 'Newark'. He was like, 'Oh yeah, I hear it in your accent,' but I had my American accent, but I'm actually from Newark in England. He was like, 'Whereabouts?' I was like, 'Boundary Road'. He was like, 'Oh yeah yeah, I know it.' I was like, 'This is such a fluke.' I'm giving all the right answers to a lie. I'd make a great spy. It is a struggle for us. It's a struggle. Some words are like... [unintelligible noises]. Your tongue gets three times the size, you're like, 'I can't get that word out,' especially cause he's an English writer."
"Yeah."
"There were some words I had to be like, 'I can't say that. It's too English.' I'm not saying you're not erudite as a people. I just can't be English pretending to be American and say this super English word."
"Yeah."
"I just did Drew DiTomo, who's from Philly. I was like, 'I'm Drew. That's it!' Talked with him the whole time."

The show also posed a unique challenge of alternating between shooting with the ultra realistic baby dolls and an actual baby. Kebbell shares about the eerie qualities of the doll. "It's a tricky thing because this baby has an anatomical correctness. It moves kind of real but no one hands it to you like it's a real baby. You know everyone hands you a baby like this and there's all this shuffling and you half hug each other and accept. People just hand you [the doll] like that and you're like 'Oooo...' and it's ice cold cause we're in Philly. The real baby's actually a blessing cause it comes in with it's mum and comes in with a nanny and it comes in with all these other people and there's the smell of a baby in the air and you're like, 'Ah, there's life.'"
"I actually have one of these dolls."
"Doesn't it have horns or something?"
"It's got fangs, yes, it's a vampire version. Yeah, it's the weirdest thing cause you wanna look after it cause [of] the weight and everything, the head, you want to support the head."
"It feels exactly right so you want to be tender, even with fangs."

The first three episodes of "Servant" will premiere on Apple TV+ November 28.

Watch our extended interview with Toby Kebbell and Rupert Grint here:

READ MORE

When promoting his new Apple TV+ series "Servant" at New York Comic Con, M. Night Shyamalan stated that this project has been the most creatively satisfying of his entire career. Shyamalan is also equal parts flattered and disappointed when joining our press session when the table full of reporters tells him that they enjoyed binge-watching the addictive series.

"Oh no, I didn't want you to binge it but I guess you had to. That's not how I wanted you guys to watch it. Take your time with it, take your time."

Indeed, interviewing him about the show would be far more difficult to do without having seen the rich material and story play out on screen. It's a series full of biblical motifts, including the baby being named Jericho and the new live-in Nanny Leanne being very religious in her upbringing, among other things.

"The idea of telling an almost biblical story but to[ do it in a contemporary setting in one location, and you're interpreting everything, I love that, that idea that we're in one home and we're telling a biblical story. Even when we think about that, I think about Exorcist and that story of humanity's soul versus the Devil's playing out in a bedroom in Georgetown. It's super powerful to me, big stories told in a very small canvas. I like that tension of it. It evokes in you as a viewer to participate in the storytelling, which is what I most want, because if you participate then it's very personalised and it stays with you. What we don't want is that kind of entertainment that is distracting, distracting, distracting, and numbing almost. You watch a lot of entertainment to be numbed. The thing I'm hesitant about [with] the format of what we used to call television, I don't know what we're calling it anymore, is that it was meant to distract you from your life and just kind of you numb you a little bit as opposed to it [becoming] a part of you. Those characters and that feeling become a part of you. The hope is that we can do that with this show."

"Servant" is the first time M. Night Shyamalan has worked extensively on content produced for television. His other works have been films, though he did make a cameo appearance on the NBC series "This Is Us". "Servant" however, was always made for television.

"Tony and Jason came with the pilot and the idea. The original thing had the premise of, a woman lost a child and was doing this therapy with a doll and you learn that in the pilot. That was the thing that stayed and we went from there. [There was] a super powerful conceit and I felt immediately like, 'I want to know how this story ends.' I felt very, very compelled for her and justified any and all the mania that the character was going through. It was super tragic, but yes, it was a long-form story."

Shyamalan continues on to share about the experience of how they shopped the series to different networks and platforms before deciding on Apple TV+. "We had three episodes, the first three written out. I wasn't quite there yet in terms of... the balance of this long-form storytelling as opposed to making movies is, I can completely map it out before I go to a buyer, but not in this case. I knew roughly where I wanted to go but I didn't really understand it yet so when we went out to the buyers we actually had more of an anthology idea for it. Each season would be slightly different and [that] immediately changed once we started writing four and five. As soon as we sold it, essentially, it switched into the format that it is now. Now we've spent a year and some, talking about it and really diving into it and we figured out the end, essentially. Now we know the movement of the entire piece. It's funny, you just reminded me of that. I didn't even remember that when we went out it was very different. I tried to convey that to the buyers that, 'Hey, just give me a beat here. This is our set-up and I'm gonna figure out the end. Just true me on this. We're gonna get an ending. I'm not gonna vamp here.' I said that to every buyer, that we'll find that ending. We went out and ultimately chose Apple for a bunch of reasons. One was, I wanted to be the thing that helps define a place the way David Fincher got to define Netflix. Even now when I think of Netflix I think of House of Cards. Even now, you start to think of Stranger Things a bit but still the base is House of Cards. 'Oh, that's what Netflix means. That's what it's aesthetics are. There were shows before House of Cards but that's what ended up being the definition for them."

Another unique trait of "Servant" is the half-hour running time for each episode. There's always a great element of creative freedom with streaming platform programming since the episodes don't have to make needless cuts or additions to be overly precise in chasing a particular length. Both on and off streaming platforms, dramas typically lean towards having hour-length episodes. With "Servant" keeping things at a half hour, there is no needless filler in the entire season.

"I don't think I would have done it if it was an hour. It's too much content. It doesn't go with the philosophy of what I do and want to do for the rest of my career. It allowed me to even consider doing this long-form, the half hour, we can do thirty minutes especially if it's very limited locations. That sounds like just a fun little tidbit but it's not. If it was ten locations like a normal show or something, it's impossible to do it at the quality [I want]. I have no idea how they did Game of Thrones for as long as they did. I have no idea how they could manage that. I think they almost thought of it as different movies. Each had their lane, each of their characters and their world had it, so you're making four shows essentially or five shows and then editing them together. [It's] super hard and you need that blueprint from the books to keep you steady and all of those things. It's a hard proposition. The half hour is what made this even possible. I'm really excited about that format and that play-like quality of half an hour allows it to be one location cause if it was an hour in one location every episode it would start to become like, 'Wow, I'm feeling this is small or tedious,' that kind of thing."

The most mysterious character is Leanne, whose actions and origins aren't often explained to the other characters or even the audience. Nell Tiger Free admitted to not always knowing what was going on when playing the role, and Shyamalan notes that some of the choices she made were ones he decided to direct her away from based on what he wanted the character to be.

"As she's performing it I'm going, 'That's not right,' and then me figuring out and talking to her and saying, 'That's not right because I believe she is coming from X.' Again, I had a blurry version of it. In fact, what now is definitively the end was, 'Hey, what do you think about this idea?' It was more like a suggestion. 'Maybe she's... [gestures hand], and this is what becomes of her,' and then I went, 'No, not maybe.' You put an idea out there, cause when you're writing or something, you put it out there and you go, 'I have a crazy idea,' and you usually do it like this, 'Oh this is a bad version of it,' and then you do the idea and they go, 'Wait, that's not so bad,' and you go, 'Oh yeah, it isn't so bad,' but in case it's bad you [can] go, 'I told you it was a bad idea!' You just put it out there, the idea, and it sits and it has resonance and you go, 'Oh wait a minute, this is strong.' As I became more confident in where I knew she was gonna go, I could guide her in that. We reshot a bunch as we were going so one of the great things about owning the show is I just reshot everything. I would call out in the morning and go, 'We didn't get it and this is why. Bring everybody in,' and go, 'I believe this is what happened.' There's no failure. There was, 'We didn't get it because of X,' and we learned something new because of it. For me, it's critical. The half hour, being in the same location, I would go, 'Hey, can you guys give me the set for an hour? I want to do something on that previous episode.' Having the ability to admit that we were blurry because we didn't know, and to keep on orienting it that way and learning, listening to it and learning is great. If we're constantly chasing content just to get it done as fast as you can, we're not doing the audience any service that way."

Though most shows pose many questions in that will be answered by the season finale, "Servant" leaves far more of its questions unanswered.

"It's a balancing act of how to end the season and let you wait one year to get to continue it. I wanted you to learn something really specific and orient you at the end of season one that made you understand Leanne's trajectory, at least as much as I want you to know right at that moment but 'Wow, I thought I was only going down this road,' but it actually starts aiming you in this new direction. Each season, we want to do that in terms of getting to this finish line here. What I love about the format is, it's a humbling format between, I'm trying to get better at negative capacity. Do you know what that means? That's a psychological term which means your ability to be okay with uncertainty. That muscle, the more you can grow that the happier you'll be in life. As an artist, that's where your strength comes from because what ends up happening is as an artist or an athlete or anything, you start to squeeze that, especially success starts squeezing that. You're not as comfortable with, 'Hey, the next one may fail, the next idea may fail.' You start to try to protect yourself. You want to keep widening that as much as possible. The great thing about this format is, you have to learn that muscle. The other part that I haven't seen enough in this format is to have a discipline about, 'Hey, this is our ending.' We have to do the work now to get a sense of where the ending is so that we're not taking audiences this way, that way, and then betraying them as you do that and finding unmotivated reasons for them to do that 180 to get you back to this. When you see shows like Breaking Bad, you see the architecture of the movement from beginning to end, it makes sense and there's integrity to it. There's not many shows like that where you can go from beginning to end. You're learning both muscles, to do the architecture and to be open in the moment. As we're learning ourselves, we're listening to the characters. The best writing and the best artistry is where you're listening. Don't jam it. Listen. Why is it saying that? It wants her to be this. It wants the characters to go this way, even though you want it to go that way. Listen to it for a second and see where it wants to go.

The lead character Sean Turner (Toby Kebbell) experiences a recurring set of splinters that dig into various parts of his body. The show plays with the perception of whether there's a very practical explanation, some secret he's hiding perhaps, or if there's a supernatural force at play inflicting some sort of penance on him for his sins.

"The idea is, everything could be explained away. Is he just getting splinters cause the house is full of wood or is he now interpreting that as something biblical? Is that a plague of some kind? Is that something that's happening to him? It should always be on that line of, 'I can interpret it either way.' Sometimes the show will say, 'Absolutely supernatural!' and then it goes 'Wait a minute!' [and] you could explain it this way."

Shyamalan is hopeful that the audience will lean into this more proactive form of viewing that entails reflecting on the mysteries and interpreting everything with theories of their own.

"It's a healthier conversation. They say in art and even when I talk to the actors I'm like, if you just ask the right questions as an artist, as an actor, that's what we want. Don't give an answer, cause then it rings untrue. I'm sad. I have a loss. I don't know how to deal with this. Is there a God? Ask the question, properly, and I think it will resonate with us. In that same way, I hope we can get that balance right cause it's tricky."

Shyamalan not only acted as a producer of the series, but directed two of the episodes (1.01 and 1.09) as well. Shyamalan hopes to direct even more episodes in future seasons. "I really enjoyed directing [episode] nine, directing nine. That one, I was so excited. Every shot had movement, this kind of ticking clock feeling the entire time. It was fun to do."

The first three episodes of "Servant" will be available for streaming on Apple TV+ November 28.

Watch the extended cut of our video interview with M. Night Shyamalan here:

READ MORE

Amid all the new shows premiering and getting early renewals on Apple TV+, the most intriguing and creative by far is "Servant" — a mysterious story produced by M. Night Shyamalan that takes place almost entirely within a single house. There are many notable religious motifs that recur throughout the series, whether it's a particularly religious character, or the baby at the centre of the story being named Jericho. However, series writer Tony Basgallop explains that the show is more so about faith than any one particular religion.

"I think it's about looking for a solution. It's about trying to reason out an argument that you can't process yourself. I think for me that's what religion is. I don't have a religion of my own but I kind of respect people that lean towards that. The religious imagery in there is attached to Leanne as a character. It's her belief system that she's been raised in. I feel like it's very strong. There's something mysterious. It's something that I would never say, nothing does or doesn't exist."

"Servant" tells a story about a married couple, Sean (Toby Kebbell) and Dorothy Turner (Lauren Ambrose), who are entangled in a complicated situation regarding the recent birth of their child Jericho. The audience learns in the first episode that Jericho died, though the exact circumstances are not revealed. Dorothy did not handle this tragedy well, and Sean and her brother Julian (Rupert Grint) decided to give her a realistic baby doll as part of a new age therapy method. Dorothy goes about her daily life as if this Jericho doll is completely real, leaving Sean struggling to figure out how to best help his unwell wife. Ambrose is excited about the many facets of Dorothy.

"I relish the opportunity to play this character. She's dealing with it in such a bizarre way and the writing is so beautiful thanks to Tony. When I saw the script, I was just like, 'How on earth will I do that?' She's so fragile and she's also so big and presentational and Type A. Everything is perfect in her life, except she has this giant failure. The character breaks my heart. For me as an actor, I work to make things as personal as possible, which is easy because on the surface this character is a mother going back to work and I've had that experience. But then, to figure out how to let out all of her cracks come out and when there are cracks in the veneer, I don't know, it's just working with beautiful actors and incredible artists. It's been really fun. It's the best to have a character that's such a challenge, it's great."

The show offers an element of magic and surrealism, where the audience can't help but wonder what's real and what isn't. Even the house can feel like a character in the drama, that borderlines on being alive. When Dorothy and Sean hire a live-in nanny to look after Jericho, this young woman Leanne (Nell Tiger Free) brings a stronger element of religious mysticism to the story. Free elaborates on this aspect of the show.

"What's so great about the show is that you doubt everything that you see. You can start the episode firmly believing that my character and the things that are happening in the house because of one thing and then you'll end the episode thinking completely differently. I think that's fun to play for us. We sort of give you something and we were like, 'This cannot be explained,' but then we explain it. That's kind of the to and fro of the series. You think you know what you're seeing but you really don't."

"Different characters might experience the exact phenomenon in different ways," adds Ambrose. "One might think it's a miracle and one might find an actual, real-life explanation."

"From the writing process," says Basgallop, "it was always, 'How do you present a story that can be viewed in two different ways?' It comes down to you as a viewer. Do you have faith? Do you believe in miracles, or do you question everything that you see? That's where we divide the characters and the audience at the same time. You should be able to watch this story and think, 'Wow, my god, miracles are happening!' and at the same time look at it and go, 'That young girl's really exploiting this family and their desperation.' Are you watching a miracle or are you watching a crime? It has to work on both those levels." Balancing these two components is something Basgallop does with great difficulty, by his own account. "It's about finding stories that play into characters' hopes and desires and at the same time questioning what's in front of your nose. How you do it, I don't know. There was never a point when... Night and I discussed this very much at the beginning. Everything that happens has to have a logical explanation, otherwise you're just in fairytale land and then anything can happen and there are no rules and then you lose track as a writer. You're like, 'I don't know, the unicorn lands and takes a dump on the table.' You can't do that as a writer. If you don't have rules and restrictions then you can't even begin to do your job. You don't cross a line, or everything collapses."

Ambrose notes that this necessity for rules seems especially important to the thriller genre, which she is only now doing for the first time in her career. The season ends with a sense that there is still more story left to tell (before the season premiered Apple TV+ announced a renewal for season two), and Basgallop admits to having ideas for how to continue onward.

"There's always an endgame with writing but I try not to specifically say I know every single step because something happens in every episode that... I learn something new about the characters or something. I find a crack in there that is worth burrowing into so yeah, there is definite forward momentum going into season two. We know what's been lost and what the characters are trying to regain. As long as [you] always see the desire in the characters, there's more story to tell. As you know, at the end of season one there's a lot for them to get back."

One of the recurring sources of conflict in Sean and Dorothy's relationship is their stark differences in regards to intimacy. Dorothy is frequently shown to be making digging comments about how she perceives Sean's interest in salacious activities to be, despite a lack of any evidence to the audience to prove he is the way she claims. Ambrose explains her interpretation of this dynamic in the relationship.

"There's this couple and they have this giant crack, this awful fissure that has happened, and this tragedy that has happened in their family. They're trying in different ways to fill it and they need different things and want different things, and want to acknowledge what's going on in different ways or not. I suppose with a couple it'll come out in every aspect, including in the sexuality. I love that they're kind of brutal to each other. I mean, that's awful in a marriage but pretty fun on a set to play. In our best moments it feels like an Edward Albee play. We're all trapped in this house which is very much a character and so it's like everything is just resonating and shaking, and sexuality is part of it."

"With regards to the sexuality," adds Basgallop, "they're also three months on from having a baby. Things change, physically change. The relationships between a husband and wife change as soon as the baby comes along. You have to deal with each other in a very different way and your focus is on something else apart from yourself. I think it's changing and Dorothy doesn't quite understand why a lot of these changes are happening and why Sean is being more protective than usual cause she doesn't really know what the experience has been."

"Everyone is in their own story," continues Ambrose. "Everyone is in their own channel. On the surface, I'm playing this working mother going back to work as a news reporter with my career. What's fun to me to play is where the cracks come through in that perfect veneer. It's great writing, it's great actors to work with and amazing directors, a beautiful set and an incredible DP, all of the parts, Apple and Night and this company, they made space for us to do our work as artists. It just felt incredibly luxurious, from the sets having every considered, from Night's storyboarding every shot, from the rehearsals that we were granted and the time that everybody took to get everything, to make sure everything was as we intended, it's just been an incredibly luxurious process. The same for me as an artist, I was given my time and space to work."

One of the rare instances that the story travels outside of the Turner home is when Dorothy is shown on television working as a local news reporter.

"I love how the newscasts fold into and highlight underlying moments in the story. I think it's brilliant. I love that, Tony," says Ambrose.
"Good," responds Basgallop.
"I was the only one that got to go on location cause I got to leave that house to go shoot my newscasts," cheers Ambrose. "For the most part, the other actors are trapped in the house and I got to leave sometimes."

Basgallop elaborates further on the importance of these newscasts in the larger storytelling. "Thematically, everything you can do to point back to what your story really is all about is great. Using the television to show what Dorothy does all day, cause we don't follow her, that's the only insight we get so we understand her mood. If she walks in through the door in the evening fed up and smelling of sewage it's because we know she's been down [in the sewer]. We need that kind of information in order to understand her. It's just a naturally logical way to fill that gap in. The same thing happens with food in the episode. The food that [Sean] cooks reflects the mood in the house."

Leanne Grayson, the new live-in nanny, is the most mysterious character of the ensemble. Very little information is given about her back-story to the other characters or even the audience. This posed an interesting challenge for Nell Tiger Free when attempting to develop her performance and character.

"I think every conversation that me and Night had was always like, 'Well... maybe...', they never definitively told me anything about Leanne. I know as much as you guys. Honestly, we've had conversations where there's been thoughts as to what she... what's going on, but they won't bloody tell me! But mainly because I spoil things..."

"But she's made lots of beautiful decision in her performance, you can see," notes Ambrose.
"Me?"
"Yeah, because you're very specific."
"I think I tried to figure her out as best as I could as an actress but yeah, she's a very mysterious character and she's stayed that way. I have an idea of what's maybe gonna happen in the future."
"You know enough," says Basgallop.

The first three episodes of "Servant" will be available on Apple TV+ on November 28.

Watch the "Servant" interview with Lauren Ambrose, Nell Tiger Free, and Tony Basgallop:

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Photo credit: Apple

M. Night Shyamalan is no stranger to Comic Cons. His first time attending one was for the tenth anniversary of "Unbreakable" and ever since, he has made several appearances at them to promote his various works. "We really embraced it. Whenever I do a film it's 'How do we show something at Comic Con?' It's always on my mind now. The irony of the Unbreakable story is, when I made Unbreakable I was like, 'Oh, I'm gonna make this movie about comic books.' The company that I made it for said, 'Well that's not a viable thing to do. That's just a small group of nerdy people.' This is literally a conversation [that happened]. 'So let's not say that there's anything to do with comic books when we sell the movie because it's so niche. No one's gonna see a movie about comic books heroes.' That was Disney."

The tides have turned significantly since then, as Disney now is the corporate overlord of the film industry and dominates the box office charts due in large part to their massive churn-out of superhero films. Shyamalan expresses an interest in genre material that dates back to his childhood, though he had to ensure that he didn't bring anything too graphic home since it would upset his conservative Indian parents. Even now as an adult, he will find himself shying away from including nudity in some of his films because he imagines how his mother would react to it.

Shyamalan has often been a misunderstood creator. The over-simplistic perception is that his works too often rely on plot twists or that they have a propensity for being esoteric. In actuality, he puts tremendous thought into creating works that respect the audience that will eventually consume it. "It's a big, big deal to me. Some of the things we're going to talk about [are] value systems, about story-telling, and what I've been able to use my position to do. I use it to leverage as much as I can to make sure that I am doing things that at least in my opinion are of the highest quality so that those individuals, there's an understanding that they're really getting something from me specifically and that I'm willing to take risks and I'm not chasing you. I'm respecting you guys. The big thing I say to the studios [is] 'The audience's EQ, their emotional intelligence, is off the charts. They're all together  and it's off the charts. They can feel that authenticity in a performance. They can feel it and that will translate to commerce on their sides so please trust me on that. You don't need to talk down to them.' I have that conversation all the time."

Shyamalan has previously forayed into television with his work on the FOX series "Wayward Pines" but is now set to return to it in an entirely way with the Apple TV+ series "Servant" (which he later reveals on this New York Comic Con panel will premiere on Thanksgiving, November 28).

"I've avoided this format. The great thing about the format is that it's a character-driven format. You come to watch week to week because you're connected to the characters and I love that. That's amazing, but the amount of content you have to deliver for the amount of time and amount of resources, the math, it just doesn't work. That's why on two hands you can count every show that has gone from beginning to end with the same quality. It's just a machine that keeps going. That was terrifying to me. Tony, who wrote the show, came up with an amazing premise which is [that] we're gonna do a half hour thriller. I went, 'That, we might be able to do at this level.' We were talking through [it] and in my head, we have a sense of the story, we know where it's gonna go. In my head, it's sixty episodes. That's where we're gonna get to here, and get you guys to this place, and finish this story. This is where everyone's coming from. For [the audience] that would be thirty episodes of Game of Thrones. That would be three seasons or less of Game of Thrones, that [would be] over six years. The other thing that's really important to me is I do a lot of contained stories. I do that for a lot of reasons I'd like to insinuate. It's very practical. It's something I can execute at a high level and not travel all over the world. The other thing that's really, really unique about the show is it never leaves one location. The entire show, all the time, is always in one location so it has this almost play-like quality to it. We got to concentrate on the performances, the writing, the cinematography and every shot is thought out. When our directors come in we talk about... my theory about cinema is, if you're gonna do a medium shot on a character you need to tell me why. Why is she feeling medium? Is he feeling medium? Is that what she's feeling? Then why is the other person, are they both feeling medium? Why do we even do this scene? Talk me through it. It's to evoke an understanding of, if the frame is dropping that makes you feel something. The frame rising has a different feeling. Which feeling are you going for? Are you thinking about that? Is that the right lens? Is it a twenty-seven? Is it a thirty-five or is it a fifty? They all have different senses, depth, and create different emotions. They say different things about what the characters are. What does this all mean? For me, I feel when you guys see an image from this show, you will sense all of that. That's what I was referencing, your EQ being off the charts, that you will go, 'That's ringing true to me. I'm seeing all the resonance in the choice of colours, the framing, the textures. I see her dress as this pattern and the wall has the opposite pattern. I see that without knowing it and I can feel that there's thought and depth there,' and that will cause a connection. At home, when someone's watching a show and they're typing on their computer and watching [without fully paying attention], I'm watching that happen and I'm wondering why that's happening. I want you unable to do something else because [of] that tension in every frame. [These are] the aspirations. I have to say when we finished the first season, it was really one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. It's just been a really beautiful thing. I hope when you guys get to see it, you'll appreciate it."

Shyamalan directed two of the episodes of the first season, all of which was shot in Philadelphia. The set was built in a warehouse near his office and the entire creative process was a collaborative one with his cast and crew. He even shares how much fun he had editing the show at his house. This commitment to authenticity is at the core of Shyamalan's process, believing that every artist will thrive when they are as specific as possible. Since Shyamalan grew up in Philadelphia, it's a natural choice to make the series be set there.

When casting for his projects, Shyamalan has a spiritual perspective about how he finds his actors. By concentrating on the specific vision he has for his characters, the right actors for the part seemingly appear exactly when he needs them. He cites James McAvoy as an example, sharing the story of McAvoy walking up to him at a Comic Con with a shaved head and Shyamalan immediately knowing this was who needed to play the lead in "Split". As for casting the four leads of "Servant," Shyamalan describes Lauren Ambrose's audition as a "lightning bolt" that set things on the right track for the rest of the casting process.

"Toby [Kebbell] auditioned and I was like, 'God, this guys feels like a revelation.' He's like the guy's guy but he's super sweet. This is exactly how we pictured him. Then Rupert from Harry Potter came in, literally guys, he is transcendent in the show. It's like a different human being. We've seen him as a child and when does that ever happen where you find yourself as an actor as an adult? We are so lucky. Everybody I just mentioned are incredible physical actors as you'll see when you watch this series because it's a contained piece, they're all very physical with the way they act. You'll see it in their language, the running up the stairs, and how they conduct themselves. Then of course, you're looking for a new colour that you haven't seen and then Nell walks in. Nell Tiger Free, again, I've gotten very lucky with Abigail Breslin, Bryce [Dallas Howard], and Haley [Joel Osment]. Nell walked in and against all this energy you have this very quiet kind of mysterious quality of someone who's discovering themselves in the world and that energy, the four of them, it's just unbelievable. I'm so lucky. Honestly, I feel like, I don't know how to express this enough, that's why I love filmmaking. I feel really, really grateful."

Shyamalan has always embraced a sense of mystery in not only the works of fiction he creates but also the way he approaches the marketing of his content. "I'm very much a scene-based marketeer in the sense that I want you to see the tones of the show. I don't want it to be commonised. I want you to see that it's different. That's what makes you stop tying. You look up because the rhythms are different. In this particular case, we were really, really lucky. A lot of places wanted to make this show. We decided to go with Apple and the reason we did is because I felt there was a connection between the aesthetics that we talked about and them as a company, their kind of minimalism, their pass at spirituality, all of that. Also, this was an opportunity to help define this, which was a really  exciting thing to me, to help define a place. This new movement in how you guys watch content, to me with the biggest company in the world, and there's 1.6 billion devices that Apple has, to have that kind of reach and to say, 'Hey, let's tell a long-form story with them,' that was really exciting. They really did give me the opportunity to just go make it."

Shyamalan premieres the complete "Servant" trailer he has put together with Apple, that won't be premiered to the public for a few more months, to the New York Comic Con audience. It confirms what the early teasers and taglines hinted at, which is that the married couple of Sean (Toby Kebbell) and Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) have a doll infant as a form of therapy following the loss of their newborn son. Dorothy is the one that is in denial about the doll not being an actual baby, while Sean is simply trying to help his wife through this traumatic ordeal.

Following the trailer, the four actors and "Servant" writer Tony Basgallop join Shyamalan on stage to further discuss their work on the series. One of the unique facets of the show is that all of the episodes are written from a single writer, which ensures a greater consistency in the style and voice of the show's continuity and tone. For many of the actors, this trailer reveal is the first time they have seen any of the finished episodes.

"I watched some of the first episode just today," says Ambrose. "There was emotion and tribulation! It was super beautiful and lovely to see everyone's beautiful work. As actors we're so focused on the minute details of our characters it was so lovely to see the scope of the story and the masterful cinema that it was." Ambrose says that in approaching the project, there were many scripts to look at right from the onset. "It really felt like making a film." Ambrose plays a character she describes as "really tragic" but was excited about being able to work in a genre she had never done before and explore grief in general and the specific grief of her character. "She takes her grief and expresses it in the most bananas way. Of course, we're all denying death. This character, thanks to Tony, takes it to a whole other level."

Shyamalan elaborates on the premise being a couple that loses a child and embarks on using this fringe therapy to deal with the trauma and grief caused by this loss. This doll is an actual form of fringe therapy that exists in our world, but in the series Dorothy takes this therapy so far that she goes and hires a nanny for the doll. The premise is intended to be tragic while also being inappropriately funny. Shyamlan gives full credit to Basgallop for being able to infuse that dimension of humour into an otherwise serious, dramatic concept and to Toby Kebbell for being funny where it was appropriate.

"It was a lucky position I was put in cause I'm dealing with so a huge amount of grief and guilt," says Kebbell. "Then, I have this incredible partner-in-crime who's my brother-in-law, played by Rupert. I have these two great positions to play. I had this blessed opportunity. I'm sitting there learning all these practical things with Drew Turpine, who's a phenomenal cook who was cooking with us the whole time. I'm dealing with this beautiful performance with Lauren, then I get to crack lines with Rupert. Those days were like a breath of fresh air."

The food aspect is a key part of Kebbell's material, as his character Sean is a professional chef. "It's life. For Sean, it's everything, it's his entire life. He's become a head chef, he's opened restaurants, he's closed restaurants to start a family. Food is that thing where it brings families together, it keeps them bonded. The extravagance, the search for new fragrances... there's eating, then there's the gastronomic eating. For me, it's that bond."

Nell Tiger Free begins the series playing a mysterious, enigmatic character, Leanne the nanny. "I think for me it was definitely tough to work out when to retreat and give more. Naturally in front of the camera I tend to retreat quite a lot, which was useful in some aspects. She's quite closed, you can't quite figure her out for pretty much most of the series. She's always sort of a big question mark in the house. What is she? Who is she? Why is she here? That kind of lent itself to my acting in the start. Naturally, it was quite helpful to not do big stuff. It was very difficult for me, stepping into the new shoes and trying to figure her out."

Rupert Grint consistently gets a strong reaction from the New York Comic Con audience, due to the residual interest in him from spending the bulk of his childhood acting in the Harry Potter film series. Now he is set to unveil an entirely new character, Julian Pearce, whom Grint is full of praise for. "I love Julian. He's something I've never really played before. He's just so brash and outspoken. He's so much fun. He is someone who is quite good in a crisis. It always feels like he's one step ahead. It's really when he comes face to face with Leanne that you learn he's a quite wounded guy."

It's revealed that Shyamalan was previously in talks to direct one of the earlier Harry Potter films. He even visited the set and met Grint when he was still a child. Grint admits to having a vague memory of the encounter, while Shyamalan notes how remarkable it is to see him transformed into a man now acting in this series.

The "Servant" cast raves about the attention to detail of the set design and how immersive the filming experience felt as a result. "It felt like a film to me," says Ambrose. "The attention to detail, the wallpaper, the patterns, beautiful clothes, incredible apartment, the fact that we're all trapped in this one space. For me, the result as an actor is interesting because nothing is casual. Every single word is considered. Every single word has weight and matters. 'Pass the fork' doesn't mean 'pass the fork' at all, ever. That's one of the things he was constantly reminding us. It's easy to just think, 'Oh it really just says pass the fork, doesn't it?' We were always mining for what's underneath, what's happening, what's the tension, and what's the subtext. It was so fun to play."

"Servant" premieres on November 28 on Apple TV+.

Watch the full "Servant" panel from New York Comic Con here:

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