Josh Hartnett says television was not part of the plan when Below landed in front of him.
The Oppenheimer actor revealed Friday that he was “actively not looking” for a TV role before he read the script for the Netflix thriller miniseries, which was created and written by Jesse McKeown. Speaking at The Hollywood Reporter’s Studio at 1 Hotel during the Toronto International Film Festival, presented by Canada Goose, Hartnett made clear that the project had to interrupt a path he already thought was set.
“Can I just say I was actively not looking to do a TV show?” Hartnett said. “Like, I was actively not looking for this. I’d just came off a movie and wanted to do another movie. I was going to go do another movie, and then I read this [script], and I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’”
That reaction helped bring Hartnett to Below, a Netflix miniseries set in a remote Newfoundland fishing village. Hartnett stars as Calvin, a man trying to protect his family and community from a mysterious and terrifying sea creature. The cast also includes Charlie Heaton, Mackenzie Davis and Natasha Henstridge.
The series has drawn comparisons to Apple TV’s comedy horror hit Widow’s Bay, but Hartnett pushed back against the idea that the two shows occupy the same tonal space. He said he had seen Widow’s Bay and enjoyed it, while stressing that Below is operating differently.
“I saw Widow’s Bay and I really liked it, but there’s a totally different tone in this show,” he explained. “It’s much more sort of human-oriented and less sort of overtly comedic, but very funny in its own way.”
Getting the Newfoundland sound right
Below filmed on location in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, and Hartnett said the production required more than simply showing up and saying the lines. He and Heaton, who play father and son in the series, worked with a dialect coach to shape a family accent rooted in the region.
“Charlie and I play father and son, and we are clearly from the same place. We had to find the specific sounds that we were gonna use for our family accent,” Hartnett said. “Newfoundland is not — there’s not a lot of people, but it’s a very large land mass, and there are lots of people that have been there for generations in one place. [They have] very specific dialects, and there’s many of them. We had to choose which one was gonna work best, I think, for the family, and then all work together … We were able to do that, which was really cool, and we had a great dialect coach.”
Hartnett also said he listened to The Broadcast, a long-running CBC radio show, “almost every day” as part of the process, because there were “so many regional dialects” to absorb.
His time in St. John’s extended beyond dialect work. Hartnett said he spent time in local restaurants and singled out one favorite, saying, “I love The Duke. It’s a great pub.” He also joked that part of living locally involved doing his best “not to hit [a] moose” while driving.
A sea-creature story for a water-wary star
Although Hartnett’s character Calvin faces danger connected to the water in Below, the actor himself described a very different relationship with the sea.
“I was born in 1978, like [when] Jaws [was popular],” Hartnett said. “[I’m] terrified of the water.”
That contrast adds another wrinkle to Hartnett’s decision to take on the Netflix thriller: he was not looking for television, the show required a specific regional accent, and the story places him in a setting tied to a fear he openly acknowledged.
What happens next?
Below debuts on Netflix on Oct. 8.