‘Devs’: How the Universe Brought Alex Garland and Nick Offerman Together
Never accuse Alex Garland of thinking small. From his Gen-X touchstone novel, “The Beach,” to his mind-bending science-fiction movies “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation,” the British writer and director has spent his career exploring grand ideas like utopianism and artificial intelligence, in multiple mediums. Now he’s attempting television with “Devs,” an eight-episode techno-thriller debuting Thursday on Hulu’s new FX hub.“Devs” stars Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation”) in a rare dramatic role, playing Forest, the longhaired, haunted and quietly terrifying founder of a Silicon Valley tech company called Amaya, which specializes in quantum computing. When the boyfriend of one of Forest’s employees, Lily (Sonoya Mizuno), disappears, she suspects Forest may be involved.During the course of her investigation, she discovers that Amaya’s most secretive division has been doing research into simulated realities and multiverses. It has also developed a predictive algorithm so precise that it functions like a window into any point in time.Garland and Offerman spoke by phone about their collaboration — Garland from England, Offerman from a vacation spot in Napa Valley — and about the tech worship that inspired the series. They also discussed the extent to which they buy into the series’s deterministic vision of the universe. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.“Devs” represents fairly new territory for both you. How did you two connect?NICK OFFERMAN: Well, I had been running like I was performing in a circus act, with several figurative plates spinning: acting jobs, touring as a comedian, book writing and woodworking. I wanted to slow down, to create some daylight in my calendar. So I did that, and then miraculously I got a call that Alex Garland wanted to meet me. I’d been a fan of Alex’s for a long time. I was quickly cast under his spell.When I first sat down with Alex, he told me about some of the ups and downs of his previous projects, which involved clashing with large corporations and standing his artistic ground. And I said, “I am getting ready to propose marriage to you.” As an artist, you always hope your collaborators will be so aligned because you have a much better chance of making good art. The more the captain of your ship steers to the to the tune of the military industrial complex, the greater chance you have of making dross.ALEX GARLAND: Nick’s character, Forest, is in some ways genial and affable, but in other ways there’s something really dark inside him. Though I didn’t see darkness in Nick, I did see melancholy. And my experience with Sonoya was not dissimilar, inasmuch as there’s something subverting the thing that appears to be there. There’s nothing solicitous about Sonoya or Nick. Many actors operate from a deep-rooted desire to be liked. They play a kind of seducing game with the audience via the camera. And these two just don’t have any trace of that, at all.Nick and I also just got on really well. All of the people in this cast are serious actor-actors, but they’re also good-natured. When you’re shooting, it’s always going to be difficult, and in the end the personalities you’re involved with become crucial. Nick, don’t you think it’s true that there was very little in the way of the hierarchies that can easily happen on set?OFFERMAN Yes, it was this unique, ragtag band of high-end artists across the board, with a wonderful diversity. The prevailing tone around the set was that everyone felt very lucky. I think when a person loses the attitude of a student and instead decides they’ve become a master, that’s when bitterness can set in on a set. What you want are those of us who are inescapably aware of our failings, and who understand that we succeed because of our ability to embrace them, as human animals. Those are the people I love working with.There are obvious parallels between the Forest character and real-world tech entrepreneurs. Was there anybody particular you had in mind?GARLAND I had lots of people in mind; and they’re probably the same people that you have in mind. [Laughs.] But the thing I was most interested in was not the specific personality traits of any particular tech leader, but more the kind of messianic quality that is conferred upon them — by consumers, by the media and by their employees. It all has a slightly cult-y feel. Ultimately we’re talking about products. And yet their launches feel a bit like church.OFFERMAN I was glad I wasn’t called upon to emulate any specific Silicon Valley figurehead, but instead a more realistic, finely wrought human being. When the story begins, my character’s company has been established, and my product and my triumph are all in place.I’m grateful Alex gave me some very human circumstances to dig into, because I don’t know that I have the skills to play some kind of Howard Hughes iconoclast. If I started thinking, “Wow, how am I going to going to play Attila the Hun?,” that would’ve become a whole other juggling act.“Devs” deals with some big theoretical ideas, like the possibilities of a multiverse of realities, and the question of whether we’re all living in some sort of computer simulation. Do either of you personally believe in any of that?OFFERMAN I’ll be the briefer of the two of us because I’ve seen Alex deliver a complete college lecture on this subject, off the top of his head. Alex would gently bring me around to a rudimentary understanding of all this, and then within about 36 hours, I needed to be reminded. I can understand the theory of it, absolutely, but when asked to place that lens over my own existence, it almost immediately becomes too complicated, and I say, “Well, let me put that aside for the moment, because I need a sandwich.”GARLAND In terms of whether we’re living in a simulation, I think it’s fantastically unlikely. The “many-worlds” theories are just an attempt to explain the strange and counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics; and there’s something attractive about it. I’ve met very senior physicists who believe entirely in many-worlds. I’ll ask them, “As we’re driving down this road, do you believe there’s another world in which your car spins out and burns up, and another in which you have a heart attack, and another in which the journey continues and your car arrives safely?,” and they’ll categorically believe that’s the case.We also deal with the idea of determinism. If everything is a result of cause and effect, this means our paths — our histories and our futures — could be predicted if we peered in closely enough. Of all the ideas contained within this story, that’s the one I think is most intuitive; because although we may feel very strongly that we have free will, we also can accept surprisingly quickly that we might not.Think about a 16-year-old who’s mugged someone at knife-point. If we live in a society that believes he exercised his free will, we’ll put him in prison. But what if the 16-year-old came from an impoverished family with a history of drug addiction? What if they became drug addicted themselves? Suddenly the question of free will becomes much more cloudy.Did the cast talk a lot about the ideas in the show?OFFERMAN We did. We shot across nearly six months, with a couple breaks, both in America and England. There’s a wonderful feeling of camaraderie when a cast assembles in different locations. We had these rehearsal sessions in which Alex held our hands and walked us through the ideas of determinism and many-worlds and how they might apply to our program.But really what got the most play between us was what it felt like to perform this. It was like if Eugene O’Neill and Stanley Kubrick had sat down to cook up a collaboration.Amaya’s secret team invents a machine that lets them peer into moments from history. If you could do that, what you look at?GARLAND The difficulty would be trying to narrow it down. But I’d like to go back to when we were living in caves. I’d love to know what kind of language existed then and what form human interactions took.OFFERMAN Mine’s easy, because I wouldn’t. I’m OK with just looking at what’s front of me on a day-to-day basis. I don’t need to see Hitler on a date with Eva Braun.GARLAND And I’d be very interested in seeing that. [Laughs.] I’d never stop. More
