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Exclusive: Neil Napier Shakes Things Up on Helix

Exclusive Interview with Neil Napier for Helix on March 27, 2013
Interview by Jamie Ruby
Written by Jamie Ruby

Neil NapierNeil Napier stars as Peter Farragut in the new Syfy series Helix, which just aired it's season finale. Peter is a very integral part of the plot of the series. At the beginning of the season, Peter was the first living person found infected by the Narvik virus at the Artic Biosystems research facility. It was discovered that he was infected with strain B, which rather than killing him, altered him so he became what they call on the show a vector, and in his case the king of the vectors. Peter is also the brother of Alan (Billy Campbell), a scientist at the CDC who was called in to help try to stop the outbreak. And with Alan came Julia (Kyra Zagorsky), Alan's ex-wife who also had an affair with Peter. And as the way good stories often go, that isn't even the half of it.

Neil Napier at the Syfy Digital Press Tour 2013Earlier in the week Napier not only joined SciFi Vision's podcast Fandom Access as a special guest, but he also sat down with editor Jamie Ruby in an exclusive interview to talk about his work on the series.

As a vector, Napier has spent a lot of his screen time with makeup on to make him look sick and ever dripping black goo. The actor revealed what the substance really tasted like. "People ask a lot what the black blood tasted like, the stuff that I always had in my mouth. And it tasted like chocolate, almond, and strawberry. Pretty delicious."

Still, getting all that vector makeup on is an extensive process, but he still enjoys it. "The process is pretty amazing to be a part of. There were two different states I had, earlier on when I'm just straight-up infected, and there was the second stage in episodes I think nine and ten when I became king vector.

"...The first state, it was about an hour and a half to two hours getting into that makeup state with two makeup artists working on me. First off, a big honking shout-out to Adrien Morot FX makeup, because they're the guys who did this and they're really beautiful artists.

"And then the second state took between two-and-a-half, three hours to get into the really protruding vein ones with the big black and red contacts.

"...And the second state, the king vector state, would take I guess between forty-five minutes and an hour to get out of, and that was with four makeup artists working on it. And usually I was a little less patient with that, because you've just had a long day and you're like, "I just want out of this makeup."

"But it really was an honor to wear it, because I thought it was just really quite beautiful and elegant work that I was wearing on my face."

Surprisingly, most of the makeup itself is not uncomfortable. "The only thing that feels bad is the eyes. Because the makeup itself is a really tight prosthetic, it's glued to my face, and I could swim in it. It will not come off, and I didn't find it uncomfortable at all.

"It's the big scleral contacts, because those contacts – they're black and red - they cover almost a third of my eyeball, like the total spherical aspect of my eyeball; it covers a lot of it. So they're big and they're uncomfortable.

"I had this lovely woman, Carol, who would follow me around with eye drops. That was her job; she was the eye technician and she would make sure I had eye drops in my eyes between takes. That was the only thing that got uncomfortable."

Even with the contacts, it's still a lot of fun to play the vector side of Peter. "It's a lot of fun. It's very freeing, and in a sort way it's no pressure, because sort of anything goes. I can just apply my imagination to what it would be to be this thing and go and have fun and go big."

Napier also loves playing the human side of Peter. "I also really enjoyed the whole time playing the man underneath it. While Peter's in this state of vectordom or vectorhood, there's still the humanity going on underneath. So I enjoy trying to kind of play that underneath it the whole time.

Neil Napier"But what I love most about my job is looking other actors in the eye and having a moment with them and trying to tell the truth to them, to my fellow actor. And I really enjoy doing that. I enjoy being in scenes where my character has a strategy and my character's listening; I don't get a lot of opportunity for that playing the vector king. There's not a lot of listening involved. He's very kind of linear and active, whereas I love listening and I love the chemistry between actors as you're playing off and reacting off each other."

As a vector, another thing that appeared to not be a completely fun and easy experience was the fact that Peter was always crawling and sneaking around in the ductwork at the facility. The actor confesses that it was worse on Billy Campbell.

"It was not bad for me; it was bad for Billy. Billy Campbell is a big man; he's six-foot-four. I'm five-foot-nine, and so I can actually turn around in those vents and scurry about; he's kind of stuck. He jams himself in there; he has a harder time moving around in those. But you pad up the knees and you run along, and it wasn't a real hardship."

Peter and Alan share a somewhat strained relationship on the show because of Peter's affair with Julia, though they were close in their childhood. Napier talked about playing Campbell's brother. "We didn't actually talk about it a lot. We tried to just have conversations about our lives, to get to know each other a little bit. We are both brothers; it kind of works out well: he has younger brothers, and I have an older brother, so we just understand those relationships from our lives.

"And then we just approach the text and the context we're in that the writers have given us, the given circumstances of our childhood. We just apply our imagination to that and go at it and just try to tell the truth to each other. It's a pretty simple process and mostly it's just about developing the relationship with Billy, the person.

"And we played a lot; we played a lot between takes. I was strapped down on a gurney a lot of the time and he had a lot of power to do whatever he pleased, like an older brother would. So he tortured me a little, and that helped to set the relationship. He treated me like a younger brother, so it worked out okay.

"...We felt like the chemistry between Billy and myself was good. And actually we like each other, and we trust each other, so that goes a long way. And I think the writers wrote a beautiful backstory for them. It's contentious, but there's a lot of love in it. They have a lot of competition, but a lot of love, a lot of bonding."

Now that Peter has been given the cure, it has been left opened ended to whether he completely is aware of what he did as a vector. "I'm not 100% sure if he has full memories of what he did. I have spoken before about someone being high or being drunk. I had a fair run at it, and there were some mornings I woke up and there was like brownout kind of flashes of things I did the night before, and I don't really remember what it was or what the context was, and I don't know if maybe Peter has that kind of sort of vague impressions and images of some of his experiences as a vector, but he can't really make sense of them. And he knows intellectually, because he's been told what went on for sure, that we know, but does he actually remember the experiencing of it? I'm not 100% sure. I think it's more in the form of images and impressions."

The vagueness of Peter's awareness has actually been purposely changed from what was originally filmed in order to leave viewers guessing. "In the scene where we're at the elevator after the massacre, I tell Alan "Whoever did this was just like me." Originally what we shot was I go on to say, "Do you want to know how many I infected? Seventeen. I was aware Alan." And so we had Peter struggling more with the fact that he did remember and struggling more with the guilt. And with the edit we changed that to leave it a little more open ended to have the questions out there, which I like."

Neil NapierNapier is a fan of the show and has enjoyed finding out the story along the way, including all the shocking WTF moments. He talked about some of things that shocked him the most. "When Doreen dies. That was big.

"We would get the scripts maybe a week before we started each episode; we never knew what was going on. We didn't know. I would find out "Oh, okay, they're going to put Peter in a cryogenic freeze."

"Then when I read episode nine or whatever it was, I'm like, "What's this twenty vectors/one cup scene?"

"But I think the most surprising thing for me, one of them, was "Oh my God, Balleseros kills Doreen." I didn't think that was going to happen; that was a big one for me.

"Another was Finding Miksa's twin. Miksa has a twin and we find that he was stolen. That was a big surprise. There are quite a few twists and turns that I was like "What the..?" We loved reading the scripts.

"And how about the last scene there with Miksa in episode twelve? I knew it was coming. I was there the day of the filming; I watched it happen on set and still, when it happened my heart almost stopped, and I got goose bumps and felt like crying. I was like, "Oh my God, Miksa!" It was devastating. I was there; I saw it happen; I knew it was coming, and I'm still like, "Oh my God! Daniel!" Poor guy."

Of course probably the biggest shock of all for the actor was when he read the script for the season finale and realized that Peter was working with the Scythe. "We block shoot two episodes at a time, so we block shot twelve and thirteen together, and we got the script about a week before we started shooting, and that's when I found out, just about two weeks before we started shooting that episode. That was one of those WTF moments – "Oh my God."

"I'll tell you one thing, when I was reading it the first time, in the scene where the gang says, "We're going to go do this thing, you go babysit the kid," I'm like, "Peter's dying! He's going to die, because I'm going alone to babysit the assassin. Oh my God they're killing Peter!" Then I was happy to read a few pages later that that was not the case. And then that was another like "What?!"

"...And it was very interesting. When I first read it, I was a little bit concerned about how everything I had shot up until that point would read. But when I went back in my mind over all the scenes and everything we had shot, I was like, "It still can all make sense throughout the whole thing." It was not completely out of left field, which was really cool."

Neil Napier at the Syfy Digital Press Tour 2013Is the betrayal really only about Peter being jealous of his brother? There may be more to it. "I think it's bigger than that; I think it's a lot bigger than that. I don't think he's really motivated by only that jealousy. I like to think that there's something more. The possibility it still out there, because we left if fairly open ended. So we leave it up to the audience right now to decide why he did it until we shoot a season two and explore it further, like what the motivations are. And in my mind there's always a bigger picture at play. And I have some ideas of how I'd like it to go and what I'd like it to be, but we haven't actually hashed out any of that right now."

Napier doesn't know what season two could have in store for Peter, but he has discussed it a bit. "I have some ideas, and I've thrown a couple of ideas around with Steve Maeda (executive producer), but really nothing concrete, just musings of an actor going, "Oh well wouldn't this be interesting if this happened."

The actor would like to see more about Peter and Julia and learn if there is more going on with them. "I'd like to see more scenes that sort of explore Julia and Peter's relationship to each other, like what the nature of that is. Like especially in light of the thirteenth episode, are they complicit? How deep does it go? And I have no idea, I am just like, "I wonder what goes on with those two." I think they did a brilliant job of tying up the season and leaving a really interesting host of possibilities.

"...When everyone sees the finale they're going to be like, "Whoa, this could go here or here or here." That's really exciting to me.

"But for me, I think what I'd like to see explored more is the true nature of the relationship between Peter and Julia; if it was just lovers and that was that, or if there was something bigger at play. Who knows? It would be fun to explore."

Speaking of their relationship, one of Napier's favorite scenes was between himself and Julia. "I think the shower scene in episode two was one of my favorites, and it was because working with Kyra, we knew each other before a little bit; we knew we got along well, and we trusted each other as people and were able to just be really free in that scene to do whatever we wanted. And it was really important for us to play our entire history and play all the love that is between us in that moment as I'm moving in to kiss her. Because if we didn't play all that history and all that love, there was no way she'd let him in. She had to kind of get lost in it for a second, lost in that fantasy of what Peter was."

To hear more from Neil Napier about Peter, who he describes in three words as "conflicted, ambitious, and believe it or not, loving," listen to him on Fandom Access, from 3/26.

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