![]() Those action scenes make liberal use of firearms. I was really taken by the ambition of the storytelling” - Paapa Essiedu, star of The Lazarus Project I didn’t want to repeat something I’d done before. ![]() “I wanted to do something that felt different and authentic. Much of the first two episodes are relatively low-key, largely taking on the form of a relationship drama (to the point where Clive initially thought she was auditioning for a rom-com) with a Groundhog Day twist before exploding into action scenes on a scale rarely seen on British TV. Without blinking, Mohindra calls Barton “a genius”, while Charly Clive, who has written for stage and TV herself, adds that his scripts were “like reading a novel”. Such an ensemble was only possible due to the cast’s reverence for main man Barton and his past work – mainly his Kelly Macdonald-starring thriller Giri/Haji, which Essiedu says is unlike anything “the BBC have made before or since”. Paapa Essiedu and Anjli Mohindra in ‘The Lazarus Project’ (Picture: Courtesy of Sky UK Limited) There’s Pure’s Charly Clive as George’s partner Sarah Bodyguard’s Anjli Mohindra, playing cerebral agent Archie Tom Burke as former Lazarus agent-turned-supervillain Rebrov and TV legend Caroline Quinton as unflinching Lazarus leader Wes. Surrounding Essiedu is a cast of Britain’s best and brightest. I was really taken by the ambition of the storytelling.” “I didn’t want to repeat something I’d done before. “I wanted to do something that felt different and authentic,” he says. Paapa Essiedu describes his character as “an ordinary man that finds himself in an extraordinary situation, and this extraordinary situation becomes increasingly extraordinary”.įollowing his BAFTA nomination for I May Destroy You, Essiedu was finding himself on a lot of writer, director, and producer’s wishlists, but he felt personally swayed by The Lazarus Project and the drive of its creator creator. In the show, George is thrust into a dramatic world of espionage and time loops as well as personal tragedy as an accident rattles his moral compass and bends him to harness his new power in ways that may put the world at risk. But this stuff has been bubbling over for a long time now.” Charly Clive and Paapa Essiedu in ‘The Lazarus Project’ (Picture: Courtesy of Sky UK Limited) The only difference was it was Estonia instead of Ukraine.”īarton sometimes hit too close to the bone – when the war in Ukraine broke out in February, after production on The Lazarus Project had wrapped, “there was a lot of Russia and Ukraine stuff that we had to go back in and change with ADR and digitally removing flags. “I talked to this retired army colonel and asked him what’s the most realistic way for World War 3 to start, and he said exactly what’s happening now. “There’s been this fear of nuclear since the ’40s and ’50s,” he says, detailing how his research led him down a rabbit hole that closely mirrors the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. “I talked to this retired army colonel and asked him what’s the most realistic way for World War 3 to start, and he said exactly what’s happening now” - Joe Barton, creator of The Lazarus ProjectĪs for nuclear armageddon, that came from Barton’s ongoing fascination with the Cuban Missile Crisis and history’s many close calls with self-destruction. “When I was writing I was thinking, ‘This will be fun, this will be a scary thing to watch.’ And then here we are.” ![]() ![]() “I feel like a pandemic has always been on the cards,” he says. In a conversation over Zoom, Barton – who is best known for creating the BBC’s Japan-set cop show Giri/Haji – sees the humour in accidentally predicting the future, but stresses that the show comes from a very real place. In particular, nuclear armageddon looms large, just as it has come to again in the real world. George is recruited into the Lazarus Project of the title, a secret organisation that is part-Torchwood, part-MI6, who use people with ‘abilities’ like George’s to turn back time to prevent extinction level events. ![]()
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