Wonder Con 2015: CourtneyK spends time learning about THE MESSENGERS from the cast and creators!
The new series, THE MESSENGERS came to WonderCon, and in this particular pressroom, we had quite the large talent pool to talk to! Grand total? 9! Wheeeew! Let’s dig in, shall we?
The story is a potentially hot button topic: Religion/Faith and What Humanity actually means. Whoa, heavy stuff! When a mysterious object crashes to Earth, an energy pulse goes out and “kills” a seemingly random amount of individuals. However, each comes back to life (no zombies!) and they are changed. They each have different gifts, but a common goal that they must discover.
Don’t take my word for it, read what the cast has to say!
Joel Courtney
Joel Courtney – I play Peter Moore, he’s a very relatable teenager. He’s going through teenager problems. He’s gone from foster home to foster home, he’s never fit in. He’s always had to leave. So when something comes crashing to Earth, it gives out an energy pulse and he dies! People think that it’s a suicide attempt so when he comes back, there’s issues with that because he’s had a suicide attempt in the past. With (the rest of) The Messengers, he finds a family in episodes to come.
Q: With this energy pulse is it a life saving or life altering event?
JC: For Peter, it sets him on a straight path, it really is the beginning of when he comes to find who he is and what he can do.
Jon Fletcher
Jon Fletcher – The pulse really is Life Altering for all the characters, I think that’s a great way to describe it. I play Joshua Silburn, Jr. He’s a Texas Tele-Evangelist, which is very far from myself (*he says with the swoon-worthiest British accent*). He’s the man of God in the show, he’s next in line to take over the church that he and his dad have created. They preach prosperity, and this God of Love and if you do “this” you’ll get “this”; then after the crash and the pulse and they (all) wake up. He’s the one who has seen God and spoken to Him and it’s a very different God than the one that they preach about. It’s a great struggle he has immediately with his Faith and it’s a great journey he gets to go on throughout the season.
Anna Diop
Anna Diop – Rose Arvale is an ER nurse who is newly engaged, as she’s showing her best friend her engagement ring, she’s gunned down in a very violent and unexpected moment. Rose comes back with the gift of Understanding what needs to be done. In the second episode, she presents The Messengers with the first task. It’s a very large one; she works throughout the season to keep everyone focused. She has a very tough job!
JD Pardo
JD Pardo – Raul Garcia is an undercover agent in Mexico, his cover is blown and about to be executed when this “moment” (the pulse) happens and he just…dies. When he’s brought back, he’s trying to escape; he’s very confused because now he’s hearing things (negative thoughts, etc in his head) and he’s just trying to get back to his family. Throughout the season you’ll understand why he needed to come back home. Though all the characters don’t really understand why they’ve become Messengers; and it’s through Rose that they start to understand.
Shantel VanSanten
Shantel VanSanten – I play Vera Buckley I’m the scientist, I work for NASA. When the object makes impact, my character passes out/dies and when she comes back, her focus is less on what happened to her and more about what the object was. Vera’s gift gets discovered later on; with the others we get to know what their gift/power is right away and that they are Messengers. Vera doesn’t quite understands what happened but she doesn’t think that she dies, for her it’s more a mission to find answers on what exactly this was (that caused the crash/pulse) and I think she’s an interesting voice for the audience because she is a scientist and she questions, she’s not going to take it from the Faith standpoint.
Craig Frank
Craig Frank – I play Alan Harris, who is her sidekick (points at Shantel) or assistant. I’m the one who finds her when she’s “dead” and is there when she comes back. He is a believer in many things, no matter how strange! From his point of view, he likes the idea of aliens! He likes the theory of ancient astronauts and it’s a part of his science, he’s an astronomer. From an audience perspective, he doesn’t get a gift but his perspective that he looks at as both amazing and puzzling. Anything for him to discover that is out of the ordinary is going over the goal for him!
Diogo Morgado
Diogo Morgado – I play The Man! What can I say??? What I like most about my character is he’s really the only one that doesn’t have a “super power”. That’s why they don’t call him The Devil, they call him The Man. He’s only allowed to use human resources; ways to manipulate situations and people in a plausible human earthly way.
Q: There’s the whole alien theory though…
DM: What I can say about that impact, it’s not relevant. It’s a cool way to introduce a character, but there’s a reason behind (the method) that (he’s introduced, apparently he’s the thing that crashes to Earth!). That event is going to explored down the line, big time.
Eoghan O’Donnell – series creator
CourtneyK. Question: Would you consider him to represent the worst of Humanity?
[At this point, Diogo; all hunky 6’2” of him, LEAPS UP from his seat and high-fives me across the table, it was AWESOME!]
Diogo – YYYYEEAAAAH!! Yes, he represents the darkest and more sinister part of the human condition. Through him, we’re going to see the dark side of human beings, not only they way that he manipulates the situation but the consequences of that in our other characters. They’re all our “heroes”; and we will see that they will not act as we may imagine they should. In this show Good and Evil, or Wrong or Right; there’s only circumstances. And we are the product of our circumstances.
Trey Callaway – EP
After I finished swooning; I was privileged to speak to the Series Creator Eoghan O’Donnell and Executive Producer Trey Callaway about this exciting and complex new series.
Q: What do you want your audience to take away from the first episode?
Trey Callaway: We want them to be compelled by the mystery. To be engaged by the character. One of the great gifts that Eoghan (pronounced like “Owen”) gave all the writers in the writer’s room for The Messengers is that these are all characters that we can relate to. They come from different ages and different walks of life. They have different belief systems that we will explore to greater depth in the series. But they are all facing very real, relevant and relatable crisis in their lives. Not dissimilar from the crisis we all face in our lives. So this show is always going to be a tug-o-war between ‘how do I be my own human-self now that I have a new destiny thrust upon my shoulders? How do I reconcile the two? And now having to connect and share a common destiny with a group of complete strangers that is all about saving humankind as we know it!”
Eoghan O’Donnell – They all come at it from different directions, have their own reasons for not wanting to continue or wanting to move forward too much. There’s a way that a lot of them take on the mantel of Leader throughout the series.
Trey – To be a Messenger is to be a part of a Team Sport!
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JINKIES! The Messengers is definitely going to be a complicated story! Premiering Friday April 17th on The CW at 9/8c, will you be watching???
Click through for full size images of everyone we talked to!
