Cas Anvar Talks ‘The Expanse,’ Character Alex Kamal, Co-Star Thomas Jane [Video Exclusive]

‘The Expanse’…It’s a very ambitious sci-fi show. It really brings sci-fi back to its roots, it’s hardcore, realistic sci-fi; I like to call it a fusion between Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner and Alien. It’s got all that grit that those shows have and it’s very realistically based on what it would be like if we really colonized our solar system. You got a colony on the Moon, a colony on Mars, and you’ve got a whole bunch of colonizers out in the asteroid belts between Saturn and Jupiter, mining the asteroids for minerals. So, we have martians and we have what we call belters, the people who live out in the Belt and are basically the working class of the solar system. As colonies are want to do, there’s a lot of tension that starts to build up between these colonies and Mother Earth. Mars is its own independent nation — there’s a lot of tension between Mars and Earth. The belters have developed their own culture, their own society, there’s a lot of tension between the belters and the martians, the belters and Earth. You’ve got this holy trinity between Earth, Mars and the Belt, where there’s all this friction and it’s just waiting for a spark to ignite it into an interstellar war.

I play a character named Alex Kamal, he’s a Mars born fighter-pilot of Pakistani, East Indian descent with a Texas accent. The reason for that unusual blend of characteristics is because Mars in this universe was populated by, what our writers and creators thought, ‘What would be the most likely people that would end up on Mars to colonize it?’ If you look around in our day-to-day, the people that are the most successful at taking themselves and going somewhere else, and creating a culture and just planting themselves somewhere and adapting, they believe, were the East Asians, the Asians and the Texans. The Texans being the ones who conquered very hostile terrain, and Mars is probably some of the most hostile terrain that needs to be conquered. But, they carved out the entire west of the United States and turned a desert into an oasis, basically. So, that combination of cultures is what ended up on Mars and then my character is a fusion of 300 years of I guess — breeding between those three. So, Alex Kamal is an East Indian, Pakistani fighter-pilot with a Texas accent.

We’ve commandeered three of the largest sound stages in Toronto, we’ve got 80,000 square feet and they built everything. As much as I thought it was gonna be green screen; we had almost a completely realized ship. The ship that I fly, the Rocinante, we have all three stages of it, all three levels of it. You could literally shoot us coming out from the galley or our quarters going up the stairs into the main deck, and then up the stairs up to my flight deck where I pilot, all in one take — if you had the desire. It would give you an incredible feeling of scope, and for an actor that’s a playground; to be given everything to work with rather than having to imagine it is really a luxury and we were afforded that luxury.

One of the ongoing memories with Thomas is Thomas, as anyone who has any experience with him knows, is that he doesn’t like to wear shoes. He probably did his interview with you with bare feet, I’m sure. I did the red carpet with him at the Toronto Film Festival, we went and did the InStyle party and you’ll see a photo online of me, Dominique Tipper and Thomas barefoot on the red carpet. So, that was a source of constant amusement, especially since we were shooting in the middle of winter in Canada. He liked to try and push the boundaries on that. It’s just interesting working with him in any situation because you never really at all know, he doesn’t like to rehearse in the same way that you might be use to, you really never know what he’s gonna give you. He’s completely in the moment, he’s completely organic, he will improvise like crazy, and he’s given free rein to do that because he’s really good at it. So, you always have to be completely present and aware and on your game because he’ll throw something at you; it’ll always be in character, always be in the scene, and it’ll be completely on track with what we’re supposed to be doing but you have to be aware that he could be throwing you a curve ball at any moment. You gotta be ready to play; and that’s actually very exciting to work with as an actor.