It was an apple tree that let Toby Kebbell know he was in for a challenge. The psychological horror series Servant, on which Kebbell had starred for four seasons, was ending, and he was ready for something new. A fan of For All Mankind, Kebbell took a meeting with showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, and came away with the role of season-four character Miles Dale, a former oil-rig worker who travels to Mars as a Helios employee and finds the planet far less hospitable to the working class than expected. But then came the actual work, and “all these nerves.â€
“I’m doing a sci-fi show and I’m expecting sci-fi. I’m like, I’ve been on a lot of sets. This is probably going to be a lot of green screen. But I arrived and they were installing an apple tree into that main central hall,†Kebbell says of his first day on set. “Everything that you’re thinking you’ll have to imagine is tangibly there. And the intimidation kicks in because then you’re like, I won’t have any excuses for not knowing seven pages of dialogue.â€
Miles experiences a similar sense of upended expectations upon making it to Mars. As a representative of the growing frustrations of Earth’s proletariat toward the governments who have parceled out space for their own interests, Miles accepts a two-year contract for what he believes is a high-paying gig working with fuels at the Happy Valley base. During that time, Miles transforms: First into an individualist who begins a sideline business shipping Mars rocks back to Earth for sale, then as a gangster who takes over his friend Ilya’s (Dimiter D. Marinov) import-export operation and underground bar, and finally as a revolutionary who takes up arms against American and Russian agents authorized to use whatever means necessary to get striking Helios workers under control.
Over his 20-year career playing characters like John Wilkes Booth in Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, an ecoterrorist doctor in Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling’s The East, and the abused ape-turned-villain Koba in the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy, Kebbell has flourished inhabiting principled believers willing to defend their creed with an unexpected nefariousness. “Miles felt justified — as so often we do because we feel like we’ve been let down,†Kebbell says. “When he arrives on Mars, he keeps getting disrespected and he keeps being spoken down to. I had to find the motivation to be that treacherous. I had to find that reasoning within it.â€
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You’ve described Miles as “this wide-eyed opportunist trying to seem like he’s doing the right thing.†I’m curious about “trying to seem.†Did you see him as someone who was always an opportunist and revealed that aspect of himself when he double-crosses Ilya, or did you see him as someone who changed while on Mars?
When Miles double-crossed Ilya, I realized, Even in the Helios interview, I’m trying to seem like I’m this guy I’m not in order to get this job. He has this opportunist element, which I think is very interesting to play, and I think it’s very dangerous for a human to be. If you just are an opportunist, then you’ll destroy things with no sense of what you’re destroying.
There are moments in your performance that clue us into that opportunism. In “House Divided,†when you’re talking to Massey about making money by sending Mars rocks back to Earth, while she wants to pursue justice for her friend who died in the premiere, you say, “Why can’t it be both?â€
He’s still running the con. There’s a certain amount of empathy, but what’s missing is where the empathy is required. I think he experiences a wave of understanding: I’m being selfish, so I want it to seem like I’m thinking about both. But he’s purely thinking about the opportunity, the pressure, the time crunch. The same in the room in North Korea, when he gets caught taking the thermostat by Lee Jung-Gil. He’s running a con but then he gets confronted with, “You’re a spy,†and then he’s like, “No, no, no!†There was actually a part of that scene that they removed, which was that I recognized him. I was like, “You were the first man on Mars!†But I think I probably didn’t play it with enough finesse. In the wisdom of the edit, they cut it out.
Did you imagine that Miles had done more cons on Earth?
I spent some time filming in Shreveport, Louisiana, and there are a lot of rig workers there, and there was a confidence about them. I stayed at this really lovely family-run place called the Remington Inn. Next door was a bar called the Black Cat. The girls who worked at the inn dated guys who worked rigs, whether they were on shore practicing training or on rig. The bar was empty for a few days, and then they would come back and it’s suddenly swollen with all these handsome, rugged, confident chaps. “So what is it you do?†“I’m a rigger.†“I’m a roughneck.†“My dad was a wildcatter.†You hear all these terms that sound so, to an Englishman at least, cool and interesting.
I think for me, Miles was based off, I see why they’re confident. But if that’s taken away from you? A lot of it’s based in how much money you’re making. It’s hard work, but you’re making a good-enough wage where you’re financially comfortable. If you no longer work hard, or you do work hard but you’re not making money and you’re just a hard-working schmo, then that confidence goes away — unless it was existing in there as a kind of opportunism. Like, a wildcatter is somebody who has education about rocks and geology, and then they’ll go out and decide where to drill for oil or frack. If you’re a rigger, there’s that idea of, you could be a guy who learns this and then goes somewhere and says, “I know this. I know there is something there.†I built Miles from that idea that there’s some way to do better, and it grows into this opportunist’s idea.
“Have a Nice Sol†heavily features Miles realizing the actual situation he’s gotten himself into on Mars — low pay, poor accommodations. There’s a great split-screen montage to Gorillaz’s “Clint Eastwood,†where we’re seeing Miles’s awful experience versus Dani’s excellent one.
That sequence, that’s so well-done. They were so apologetic. “Hey, Toby. Sorry to call you in. We know it’s a day with no dialogue,†and I’m like, “Guys, you’re apologizing for my favorite day.†I have to push buttons and open things and walk around and nod at people. Sometimes you get very lucky — you go on to a set where everything feels tangible and real and you don’t have to keep imagining, like, “Over there, there’s a giant, and you need to use your sword!†That’s fun in its own right, but takes a lot of work. Here, you push the button, it lights up; you push it again, it turns off. The technical terms, the seven pages of dialogue — comparatively these are great days, easy days. Even when I had a big long monologue, it’s over us moving around the trolleys and the carts, and going in and picking up the packages, and nodding and looking and winking. They’re my favorite. Silent movie acting is the best.
In “House Divided,†Miles falls into a ravine after retrieving Mars rocks. How was that sequence filmed?
It was a real ramp that they had, and there was dirt. I was like, “Am I on Mars for real?†They dragged me and I smashed my teeth into the suit, and I was like, “Wait, there must be a stunt guy around here who could hurt himself for me, please.†[Laughs] I bonded with the stuntman over that. They’re so thoughtful whenever they develop something or make it go longer. “It’s clear that you’re smashing your teeth into the mask. Maybe we can do one where you’re just going out of the side [pantomimes screaming with his head turned to the side].â€
The suits are incredibly uncomfortable, and that’s the old suit. When I put it on, there was this kind of an inauguration of everyone going, “He finally suited up!†They’re all in the new suits; Krys Marshall was like, “It ain’t much better.†I said, “Can we do one of the cooling shirts?†And they’re like, “They don’t fit. In addition, we have all of those units for the white suits.†And I was like, “Are you guys like, making this Method? It’s the real deal that the blue suit’s the worst?†I had Joel Kinneman’s one, because Joel’s extra tall. It truly was recycled. It didn’t smell great, but it didn’t smell as bad as it was made out to be.
You’ve said that Miles’ big betrayal scene, where he turns on Ilya and takes both his underground bar and his smuggling operation, broke your heart. Did you rehearse beforehand with Dimiter?
I found out about the scene from an actress who said, “Oh, I did the scene where you’ve betrayed Ilya.†And I was like, “You what? What’s that scene?†Dimiter and I are both sitting there, and he was like, “No, no way.†Then I received the sides. We come to the day, we have a fantastic director, Sylvain White, and he was like, “I really want this to be brutal. I don’t want you to play any kindness at all. You are absolutely in the right in your mind.†I’d prepared a version that was absolutely dead down the line, and I thought I could use the “Keep your voice down†part as the switch. What I was trying to play with Miles was kind of subservient: I’m always listening, I’m always hearing. But this was totally the change of posture from subservient listening guy [leans forward, tips his head to the side, widens his eyes] to “I have all the information, so that’s the end of that†[leans backward and straightens his posture, hardens his gaze, flattens his tone].
Earlier, Ilya is looking at me and says, “Anything else you want to tell me?†I didn’t want it to be like, He’s onto me! And that was where he helped me as an actor, where he was like, Now I’m doing the intimidation. You can’t really play the mighty or the king or the superhero unless everyone around you is accepting that, and playing that you are that. We had a long conversation about that: “Alright, we have to make this work. This has to be really good, because we don’t want to do goofy play-acting Godfather.†And he’s that guy. If he can find the funny way to do it, he then can find the brilliant and heartbreaking way to do it. When he left and he gives that little look, it was heartbreaking. I was like, “You bastard. That’s stealing the scene, you clever fellow.â€
The Miles character and the conversation about labor issues this season have reframed as villains characters we had previously accepted as heroes. That becomes especially clear when Miles is tortured by CIA and KGB agents after the scheme to steal Goldilocks is discovered. Did that violence surprise you? He holds out for a long time.
It was a long process. Selling it, making it authentic, was strenuous. There were all these discussions. Then Ben and Matt let me in and they said, “This is America turning against England. This is the U.S. realizing that taxation without representation is not the right thing, and they’re going to stand up for it. And it’s going to have to be a battle.â€
It was a great note. It was very helpful at the time, and it gave me an insight as to, how am I lasting out? How are we getting into this point? I was Googling, “What is oxygen deprivation?†The joy of the Internet for research is that there are videos of people: You see them lurching forward and not being able to see because their depth perception’s going. It’s partially drunk, it’s partially drugged; it’s loss of ability. I wanted it physically to look broken down, because the script had taken care of the verbal pressure. I wanted to create a version of Miles that just depletes.
Miles essentially gets radicalized on Mars, and he ends the season having fought in an uprising. I’m wondering if you felt any of your Koba performance from the Planet of the Apes films coming through as you were portraying Miles.
What I always tried to portray with Koba is, he doesn’t think he’s the villain. And that’s what we’re trying to do: We’re just trying to spin a story where, can you grasp for a moment where this person’s coming from? Can you suspend disbelief and make people think, This is authentic?
I can totally see the correlation between what Miles ends up as and what Koba was. He’s been pushed to a point. If you watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Koba’s sitting in a room where they’re testing on him, and then he stands upright. I got this beautiful opportunity to go to a hospital in New Orleans that is for apes from laboratories. You’re watching these apes walking, standing upright, and you’re like, “Why are they doing that?†And they’re like, “Because every single person they saw from birth was doing that.†It’s not really how they’re built to do it, they are just capable of assimilating and fitting in. That element that I grabbed for Koba is there in Miles: that unconscious assimilation. It was not conscious, but I can clearly see exactly it in two performances I have loved doing.
I loved making Koba. I loved building him as a person, as a sentient being. I loved that whole journey — and again, full of moments where everyone was very prepared. And I was like, “Hey, I’ve had this one idea. It’s probably kooky, but maybe I can arrive and steal their drink, spit it in their face, then steal their gun.†And being heard and understood, it’s a glorious place to be.
I will just rewatch that scene apropos of nothing because it’s so good.
In the hospital, I first went in with a wonderful doctor the apes are in love with. This pubescent ape came in and he was smiling. I was like, “This ape loves me!†And she said, “No. It’s absolutely a threat. Be glad you’re not in that room. When they bare their teeth, it’s not a smile. That’s just what we gauge it to be.†I was like, “That’s what Koba has to have, that smile that looks so like a smile.†Especially during that scene when they think he’s drinking: “He gets it! He’s trying to be a human!†They have no clue the danger they’re in. That was the pressure I wanted to add to that scene. Both those actors, Kevin Rankin and Lombardo Boyar, are phenomenal and embraced it — because they’re not sitting there with Koba. They’re sitting there with me in gray pajamas and a helmet with two cameras hanging off it. It’s the performance from them that sells that scene.
I’m not asking for spoilers about a potential season five, but I’m wondering if you have your own theories or expectations for where Miles could be in 2012, at the time jump that ends the fourth season?
I’m so excited by the prospect, and I’ll give you an insight because of the nature of the interview. We filmed a scene where Miles goes to prison; he’s arrested for the riot. We land in Florida, we’re off the plane, we’re handcuffed, I see my family, I get put into a van. Just before the premiere, Matt and Ben told me, “Hey, so he’s not going to jail.†I was like, “What? How am I going to get these face tattoos removed?†[Laughs]
It can always change, but there’s a trust I have in these guys to tell the best story. When they told me these people are the pioneers of Mars, I was like, “I just hope what you’re saying comes true. I hope this is the start of a revolution.†That’s what I’m hoping for, personally, and I hope I’m not spoiling anything and they go, “Well, you already told what it was, so we’re changing it now: You die, in a box, and we don’t see it!â€