The Walking Outcasts
Philip Glenister ain’t kidding when he says you’ll know within the first minute whether Outcast is for you. The opening scene of the pilot episode is one of the most visceral pieces of pure horror on television. It has it all: body horror, jump scares, a creepy kid, even bugs. You though the little girl zombie in the first episode of The Walking Dead was bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
“That’s what I like and admire about Outcast; it’s not apologising,” Life on Mars star Philip Glenister tells us. “it’s basically saying, ‘This is the show, this is what it’s going to be about folks, so if you’re with us, great stick with us, but if it’s not your cup of tea, turn over now’.” He’s nothing short of gleeful at the notion of scaring the holy hell out of viewers.
The comparison with The Walking Dead is there for a reason; Outcast is the brain child of comic book writer Robert Kirman. Where The Walking Dead is a survival horror, Outcast handles demonic possession. Showrunner Chris Black (Star Trek: Enterprise) is keen to point out that Outcast isn’t a horror show; “It’s a character show with horrific elements.” It’s not just a straightforward possession show either. “Kirkman’s attitude was, “Why doesn’t anybody look at possession as a problem that can be solved, like a public health issue?” It’s a contagion, an outbreak. And when you figure out where these things are coming from and what they want, you can stop them and maybe you won’t have to keep having exorcisms. And that’s, I think, the bigger story he wants to tell.”
Outcast centres on Kyle, played by Almost Famous’ Patrick Fugit, a young man who has been followed by demons his whole life. “He’s never been possessed himself,” Fugit explains, “but he has a distinct feeling that people who get close to him become possessed somehow, like he’s infected or something like that.”
Kyle crosses paths with Glenister’s Reverend Anderson, a hard-drinking preacher with a side-line in exorcism and the two team up to find out why possession has been plaguing Kyle, and to exorcise their own personal demons along the way.
Anderson is the sort of preacher that Glenister terms ‘rock stars’, but with one key difference: “I don’t think he’s a charlatan. I think a lot of them are but I don’t think Anderson is… He gave up his family for the calling. It’s his duty, this service to wipe out the Devil and God knows what at the expense of his family. Of course, as the series unfolds he really starts questioning his belief, his faith and whether he’s done the right thing.”
“Kyle is the one who seems to have this power,” continues Glenister, “and Anderson, who’s maybe his mentor, starts to question his own beliefs and starts thinking, ‘Hang on, why has this kid dot it and why haven’t I anymore?’ It causes friction between them.”
Everyone involved in the show is keen to stress that while the pilot episode sets up the world with a classic exorcism (or a child, nonetheless), that’s not what every episode is going to be like. “It’s not CSI: Demons; it’s not procedural, it’s not ‘exorcism of the week’,” showrunner Chis Black says, “but it’s more about addressing a bigger issue: how does evil come into people’s lives? In different ways, sometimes from a supernatural place and sometimes good old fashioned, human, home-grown evil, and they have to deal with that too.”
To stress that the ‘demons’ theme is figurative as well as literal, the show also has the character of Megan, Kyles’ adopted sister, someone who’s entirely removed from the world of demonic possessions. “Megan likes getting things fixed. She likes projects and right now Kyle is her project,” Black explains. But, as with most science fiction and fantasy shows, Meghan has demons of her own to deal with. Black says that Outcast is “about the demons everybody carries inside them. And that’s what makes Megan an important, integral part of the cast; that it’s about something more than exorcisms.”
For Fugit, the horror elements weren’t what drew him to the show. “Ultimately, what I get attracted to us good storytelling. Being immersed in a world that has a unique context is always fin. Once I started reading Outcast, I realised it’s not really a show about possessions but about people and how this is affecting them. They react to it in sort of a realistic way. The show itself doesn’t seem to believe in the supernatural, and the characters don’t seem to believe in the supernatural, so when the supernatural starts happening it is even more unsettling.”
The relationship between Kyle and Anderson is clearly the beating heart of the show. Glenister confessed that he did little research for the role other than perfecting his Southern drawl. (“What do you say? You meet a priest, you say, ‘Okay, I’m playing this guy, he likes to some, he likes to drink, he gambles, he thinks of himself as a bit of a rock star in his sermons, does that relate to you at all?!?). Instead he focused on Kyle and Anderson. “When we were doing the audition process I met up with Patrick in LA for chemistry test so we spent a whole day going through scenes and talking about the relationship. That’s the most important thing really, that relationship.”
Episode one is faithful to the first issue of the comic, with some shots ripped from the panels. But we’re promised that it will start to become its own beast. “Kirkman is not precious about the material,” Black says. “He believes passionately in the story he wants to tell, and he will defend it, but he also understands it’s got to live and grow as a TV show. He trusts me that I’m not going to colossally screw up.”
“It’s very refreshing to have that trust from your creator,” Glenister adds, “who’s sort of saying, ‘Look, you’re the guys, this is your specialty. My specialty is writing the comic books, So I’ll hand over to you’,”.
Even avid readers of the comics may be surprised by the show. It’s dark, it’s character driven, it’s not a straightforward horror, but scary. “If you thought a kid getting beaten up was bad,” Glenister whispers, wary of the looming PR, “you just wait ’til episode seven.”
“That’s what I like and admire about Outcast; it’s not apologising,” Life on Mars star Philip Glenister tells us. “it’s basically saying, ‘This is the show, this is what it’s going to be about folks, so if you’re with us, great stick with us, but if it’s not your cup of tea, turn over now’.” He’s nothing short of gleeful at the notion of scaring the holy hell out of viewers.
The comparison with The Walking Dead is there for a reason; Outcast is the brain child of comic book writer Robert Kirman. Where The Walking Dead is a survival horror, Outcast handles demonic possession. Showrunner Chris Black (Star Trek: Enterprise) is keen to point out that Outcast isn’t a horror show; “It’s a character show with horrific elements.” It’s not just a straightforward possession show either. “Kirkman’s attitude was, “Why doesn’t anybody look at possession as a problem that can be solved, like a public health issue?” It’s a contagion, an outbreak. And when you figure out where these things are coming from and what they want, you can stop them and maybe you won’t have to keep having exorcisms. And that’s, I think, the bigger story he wants to tell.”
Outcast centres on Kyle, played by Almost Famous’ Patrick Fugit, a young man who has been followed by demons his whole life. “He’s never been possessed himself,” Fugit explains, “but he has a distinct feeling that people who get close to him become possessed somehow, like he’s infected or something like that.”
Kyle crosses paths with Glenister’s Reverend Anderson, a hard-drinking preacher with a side-line in exorcism and the two team up to find out why possession has been plaguing Kyle, and to exorcise their own personal demons along the way.
Anderson is the sort of preacher that Glenister terms ‘rock stars’, but with one key difference: “I don’t think he’s a charlatan. I think a lot of them are but I don’t think Anderson is… He gave up his family for the calling. It’s his duty, this service to wipe out the Devil and God knows what at the expense of his family. Of course, as the series unfolds he really starts questioning his belief, his faith and whether he’s done the right thing.”
“Kyle is the one who seems to have this power,” continues Glenister, “and Anderson, who’s maybe his mentor, starts to question his own beliefs and starts thinking, ‘Hang on, why has this kid dot it and why haven’t I anymore?’ It causes friction between them.”
Everyone involved in the show is keen to stress that while the pilot episode sets up the world with a classic exorcism (or a child, nonetheless), that’s not what every episode is going to be like. “It’s not CSI: Demons; it’s not procedural, it’s not ‘exorcism of the week’,” showrunner Chis Black says, “but it’s more about addressing a bigger issue: how does evil come into people’s lives? In different ways, sometimes from a supernatural place and sometimes good old fashioned, human, home-grown evil, and they have to deal with that too.”
To stress that the ‘demons’ theme is figurative as well as literal, the show also has the character of Megan, Kyles’ adopted sister, someone who’s entirely removed from the world of demonic possessions. “Megan likes getting things fixed. She likes projects and right now Kyle is her project,” Black explains. But, as with most science fiction and fantasy shows, Meghan has demons of her own to deal with. Black says that Outcast is “about the demons everybody carries inside them. And that’s what makes Megan an important, integral part of the cast; that it’s about something more than exorcisms.”
For Fugit, the horror elements weren’t what drew him to the show. “Ultimately, what I get attracted to us good storytelling. Being immersed in a world that has a unique context is always fin. Once I started reading Outcast, I realised it’s not really a show about possessions but about people and how this is affecting them. They react to it in sort of a realistic way. The show itself doesn’t seem to believe in the supernatural, and the characters don’t seem to believe in the supernatural, so when the supernatural starts happening it is even more unsettling.”
The relationship between Kyle and Anderson is clearly the beating heart of the show. Glenister confessed that he did little research for the role other than perfecting his Southern drawl. (“What do you say? You meet a priest, you say, ‘Okay, I’m playing this guy, he likes to some, he likes to drink, he gambles, he thinks of himself as a bit of a rock star in his sermons, does that relate to you at all?!?). Instead he focused on Kyle and Anderson. “When we were doing the audition process I met up with Patrick in LA for chemistry test so we spent a whole day going through scenes and talking about the relationship. That’s the most important thing really, that relationship.”
Episode one is faithful to the first issue of the comic, with some shots ripped from the panels. But we’re promised that it will start to become its own beast. “Kirkman is not precious about the material,” Black says. “He believes passionately in the story he wants to tell, and he will defend it, but he also understands it’s got to live and grow as a TV show. He trusts me that I’m not going to colossally screw up.”
“It’s very refreshing to have that trust from your creator,” Glenister adds, “who’s sort of saying, ‘Look, you’re the guys, this is your specialty. My specialty is writing the comic books, So I’ll hand over to you’,”.
Even avid readers of the comics may be surprised by the show. It’s dark, it’s character driven, it’s not a straightforward horror, but scary. “If you thought a kid getting beaten up was bad,” Glenister whispers, wary of the looming PR, “you just wait ’til episode seven.”
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