Superhero franchises are a mainstay in the Vancouver film and television industry, but the local screen scene hadn’t seen anything like FX’s Legion when it rolled into town last year to film its first season.
Legion is based on a Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) character of the same name (we won’t reveal Legion’s dad except to say he’s an integral – and, ahem, gifted – mutant in the MCU) first introduced in 1985.
Unlike other superhero shows, Legion is highly stylized, borderline surreal, sporadically chilling and altogether quirky. Its aesthetic is early 1970s; its pace, dialogue and music are evocative of Stanley Kubrick, The Wachowskis, Wes Anderson and David Lynch – and something else that is distinctly showrunner Noah Hawley.
Mackenzie Gray was up for the challenge. The veteran Vancouver actor was already a familiar face in superhero film and television – his lengthy filmography includes Legends of Tomorrow, Smallville and Man of Steel – when he was offered the recurring role of The Eye in Legion by Hawley, with whom he’d worked on Fargo.
“I knew it was Marvel, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to be one of those off-shoot things that just takes off and dies,” recalls Gray in a recent interview. All Hawley would tell him about The Eye going in was that he was a mystery man with an iconic look: curly hair, a green suit and a milky eye.
The television series follows a troubled man named David Haller (portrayed by Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens, who recently played opposite Emma Watson in Beauty & the Beast) as he learns that his lifelong schizophrenia is actually untamed supernatural abilities. The series boasts a long list of established and emerging stars: Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza, Bill Irwin, Jeremie Harris, Amber Midthunder, Katie Aselton, Jemaine Clement and Jean Smart.
“As soon as we started filming [Legion], it was so different, and so specific, you just knew it’s going to be good,” says Gray. As for the over-arching story arc – which involves David discovering his powers, making mutant friends and enemies, and eluding The Eye – “Noah wouldn’t tell us what was coming, just ‘I have great things for you, you’re going to see: it’s going to be a wild trip,’” says Gray. “And then you’d get the script and go, ‘Oh my God, what?!’ And then you’d read it again.”
Legion premiered in February and is now available in its entirety on iTunes.
In the first episode, The Eye is positioned as a sinister figure, adversarial to David but with unclear motivations. The Eye, contends Gray, was “about meanness and the anger of somebody who doesn’t feel like he’s ever been accepted or part of it.” Gray approaches sci-fi characters with the same mindset he brings to roles in every other genre, he says. “Sci-fi is no different than anything else, except it lives in a different world,” says Gray. “I take each role as if it’s a real thing.”
The Legion role arrived during a time of profound sorrow in Gray’s life. His mother, Mary, died in February of last year; Gray had just returned from cleaning out his mother’s Toronto home when he got the call to slip into The Eye’s bespoke suit and begin filming.
“Because the series had been right after she died, I thought I’d really love to have her with me in some way,” says Gray. With permission from director Michael Uppendahl and Legion’s art department, an urn containing some of his mother’s ashes is present, albeit hidden, in a key scene. “Whatever Legion becomes or was, it was a very special place for me,” says Gray, who also scattered some of his mother’s ashes when the show filmed at a lake in Squamish.
What does the future hold for The Eye? Gray is tight-lipped; the only thing that’s certain about Legion’s next season is that it won’t be shot in Vancouver. Legion is one of two series (Lucifer being the other) shifting production down to LA.
Gray says he’s sad to see Legion go. “It had nothing to do with the quality of work here, because look at this series: it’s impeccable,” says Gray. “As for me, am I going down? I can’t say. I’m not allowed to say. With anything in Legion, it’s open-ended.”
2016 was a busy year for Gray. In addition to Legion, he appeared in two other freshmen series: as a coroner on The CW’s Riverdale and as a glam rocker on BBC America’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
Gray will soon be seen as the male lead in Heart of Clay, a locally-made feature film about a dying painter who must make amends with women he hurt in his past before he can journey to the other side. The film was written and directed by Ned J. Vankevich (with creative input from Gray) and features a parade of powerhouse actresses including Elysia Rotaru, Jessica Harmon, Johannah Newmarch, Carrie Anne Fleming, Sarah Deakins, France Perras, Mieke Verhelst, Lorea McFarlen, and April Telek. Heart of Clay is currently beginning its festival journey.
Find Mackenzie Gray on Twitter: @MacGray57.
MORE FROM MACKENZIE GRAY
On his toughest episode of Legion: “Episode 4 was one of the toughest ones we did. It had a lot in it. We had 18-hour days. It was physically brutal for a lot of us. I tore the tendons in one leg doing a running scene that I had to do 22 takes of because it had to be just right, disappearing into the mist. I ran 110 meters 22 times, and walked it back and I already had a pulled tendon. It was a beautiful bit.”
On how Legion’s attention to detail extended to costuming: “All of the costuming, everything was so specific in this show. There was nothing of, ‘Go to Moore’s and buy some suits.’ They made everything. Even the colours when we were the patients, the piping of our orange jumpsuits: red meant dangerous, yellow meant benign but troubled and white meant pure. David got white piping, and Syd had yellow and I had red. It was down to that kind of detail. I even had red socks, which you rarely saw. Every component of me was red.”
On Legion co-stars Bill Irwin and Dan Stevens: “Bill Irwin is one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. He’s so insanely talented. You know the scene in Episode 5 where we’re all doing our little bits of madness and Bill is falling asleep? Dan and I watched on the monitors. I’d been doing something else and Dan said, ‘Get over here! It’s a masterclass!’ And we watched Bill take 10 minutes to close his eyes, or however long it was; everything he did, we would always stay on set to watch him work. He plays ukulele; he’s got a little pocket one from his clown days, and I play guitar and I had a ukulele that was George Harrison’s, I bought it many years ago, so I brought it in for Bill to play, and Bill loved it. In one of the episodes, Dan has to play “Rainbow Connection” on a banjo, and he was learning it for two weeks: every time you’d go by his trailer, you’d hear the banjo. He was working very hard, so Bill and I recorded a version of “Rainbow Connection” called “Downton Connection,” and it was, ‘Why are there so many scenes about David?’ In the end, we played it for Dan and got a laugh. It was quite an earworm.”
On the challenges of working on a show when you don’t know the whole story: “You had to work within the tight confines of what they wanted to get. You have to open yourself up to that and say, ‘Well, if I’ve got to stay in this little box, can I go here, can I go here?’ That was a challenge, because sometimes you’d say, ‘Can I play it this way?’ And they’d say, ‘No, you really need to hold the teacup here,’ or whatever. And understanding how to play something when you didn’t know much detail of what they’re playing, and it’s not based in any reality because it’s all David’s perception, so what is The Eye? My final scenes, the event happens twice, and I thought, ‘Well, is it real, or not real?’ It doesn’t change how you play it, but that’s always hard to read those things and say, ‘Well, what happens now?’ Nobody could tell me. All John Cameron, the producer, said was, ‘Don’t leave town.’ And then Legion left town.”
On Legion’s comic book roots:“Legion is an intelligent offshoot. I’ve gotten to know Bill Sienkiewicz, who created it [with Chris Claremont]. He’s a lovely, lovely man, and he said that what Noah [Hawley]’s done is taken their concept and given it a whole new world, but its roots are completely honoured, and he’s so delighted by it.”
On possible reasons why Legion has moved to LA for its second season: “There are two shows that left Vancouver: Lucifer and Legion. Lucifer makes total sense. It’s set in LA, and they kept having to send second units down to film. It’s very costly, and they got $11 million on top of tax credits, pure cash, so if it’s a million an episode, that’s 11 episodes. Legion, I was a little surprised, but I know that it was very tough on Noah doing Fargo, which he oversees completely. He’s writing a novel, he’s got another series on the go, and he’s got Legion, so he’s never home. It’s very trying. He’s got a young family. So I think that they were worried that Noah was burning himself out, and he was pretty exhausted at the launch when he flew back from Fargo. He’d been shooting until 3 in the morning, and so maybe, to keep the quality of it, it’s better for Noah to be in a better situation. I don’t know that that’s what went into the decision or not, because you can’t replicate our crews. Our crews were very special, and I know that the producers and Noah and everybody loved our crews. I’m personally sad to see them go. I’m personally sad that our crew – we had a crew of 250 people, all of the cutters, the sewers, the landscapers, everyone. We created something really amazing, so I’m hoping that some of the crew can work down there, and I hope that they keep the quality. Our crews did 18-hour days, and they were keen all of the time. There was never any malaise. They were willing to do it, and I just hope that they can keep it.”
On the strong female characters in Heart of Clay, an upcoming feature film Gray stars in, story-edited, and produced about a dying painter facing visions of women he hurt in his past: “[The women in Heart of Clay] may have had some victimization at some point, but their visions are about their strength or being vulnerable. There’s a difference between being vulnerable and being a victim, and we worked really hard to make sure we took the victimization out. I’m proud that we wrote good stuff for them. There’s a responsibility to that you have to take seriously, and I don’t think all writers do. I’ve seen some stuff written – I know one, I won’t say his name, but there’s a screenwriter and he boasts about how well he writes women. “I write these great female parts.” He writes, really, clichés, and it could be a man or a woman in that part for what its function is in the script. Just because you’re putting a lot of women in your script doesn’t mean you’re writing well for women. There’s a responsibility to that, if you’re going to be honest. Ned [Vankevich, Heart of Clay’s writer and director] and I took that responsibility seriously.”
On success at this point in his career: “I’m 59, and you have waves. In my early 40s, I had a big career leap when I landed a US TV series [The Net] and I was one of the leads. In the States, you would always build on that. In Canada, we never do. You do feel on a CBC series, you can become a Canadian star, but out here, we’re a bit adrift. You can have all of the success, but you have to work on it yourself to make it continue. I think what happens is you become familiar, and people go, ‘Oh, he’s in everything, we’ll go with someone else,’ or, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll use you.’ It can be an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. When I did Man of Steel, we shot in 2011 and it came out in 2013: that’s a big enchilada, that’s a big movie, and I had a big role in that, and it did some stuff for me locally, but it didn’t do anything else. I went down to the States and said, ‘Look, I did Man of Steel,’ and that’s it. So it’s very odd to manipulate success when you think it should naturally happen. In our country, we don’t do that. We don’t celebrate that success, so you have to either leave, or just be complacent.”
Heart of Clay Official Trailer from Ned V on Vimeo.
