WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for The Expanse Season 5, Episode 7, "Oyedeng," available now on Amazon Prime Video.
Fans first glimpsed Jasai Chase-Owens as Filip Inaros, the teenage son of Naomi Nagata and Marco Inaros, in the Season 4 finale of The Expanse. In Season 5, Filip has gone on to become a major character who is caught between his mother, one of the show’s greatest heroes, and his father, one of the show’s biggest villains. As a result, Filip has quickly evolved into a singularly sympathetic figure, even as he occasionally commits reprehensible acts to live up to his father's warped expectations. Chase-Owens has infused Filip with a layered nuance that enables the character to believably be both a committed Belter soldier and a child who simply wants the love of his parents. It’s a captivating, powerful performance that's brought new emotional depths to the beloved sci-fi series.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Chase-Owens revealed what he sees as the core of his character, detailed his experience working with Dominique Tipper and Keon Alexander, the actors who play his mother and father, and discussed filming his intense scenes in the show's latest episode, "Oyedeng."
CBR: What has it been like for you to join The Expanse in such an important role?
Jasai Chase-Owens: It's been nothing short of a blast. I mean, what a wonderful world to walk into. This world, originally created by [novel writers] Ty [Franck] and Dan [Abraham], and then the way it's been translated to TV with [showrunner] Naren [Shankar] and our entire team, cast and crew. It's been such a wonderful experience. And you walk into it, there's this real sense of responsibility to really honor these characters.
And for me, for Filip, such a big part of this series that has been set up for a while with all these little breadcrumbs, so there's this responsibility to really come in and deliver on this character. And it's been fantastic. It's been just so much fun.
Were you a fan of the show before you became a part of it?
I became a fan of the show when I auditioned for the show. I mean, I'd never heard of the show before I auditioned for it, honestly. And then when I got the audition, I did some research on it, and I was just going through it immediately. It became more than just prepping for this audition, I was excited to go home every night and watch this show. So I became a fan of it as I went through that process.
Filip is someone who's been trained to be a soldier and believe in a specific worldview. And he's this very tough character, but in a lot of ways, his circumstances make him very sympathetic. How did you find your way into the character when his upbringing was so specific?
Well, I mean, I think there’s two sides of it. There's the side of the character that has been groomed to be a soldier, this freedom fighter, by his charismatic father. And he's really only known one sort of rhetoric throughout his entire life, and that's the Inners are terrible people who have mutilated the Belt in so many ways and it's the Belt's responsibility to take matters into their own hands, fight back and retaliate. So you have that, and then you have this other side of this kid who's been abandoned by his mother. And for me, coming into it from that angle, because that's a very human angle, that story isn't unfamiliar to so many people, children feeling abandoned by their parents in every walk of life. And I think that's at the core of what we see is that he is a child. Under all that grooming, there is this wounded child that lives in there.
And so diving into that and then doing all this research -- I did a lot of research on child soldiers to get into that mindset of that, what it is to just be groomed and almost numb to the things that you're doing at such a young age. But it's really what's under there, that I think what everyone can really relate to, is this push and pull between mother and father.
You've worked closely with Dominique Tipper and Keon Alexander, who play Filip's mother and father, respectively. What has it been like working with them?
[Laughs] I'm laughing because I'm going to give you the same answer that I gave for what it's been like on the show: it's been a blast. From the moment I met Dom in the final stages of my audition, we just clicked. There was just something where it was like, "Yeah, you're my mom." I left the audition being like, "That is my mother." And then to actually dive into the work with her -- I think it was almost a year later into where I actually got to be with her on camera -- and it was so fulfilling because everything that we talked about when we first met in my audition really came to fruition and more so.
And with Keon, I met him, I think, my first day of shooting, and again, it was the same thing. It was, "Oh, yeah, this could be my dad." And they're such wonderful actors and giving actors as well. We really talk about our scenes with one another and we're almost always on the same page. And everyone is so open to finding a common ground so that we're telling the same story. So artistically, I couldn't ask for anything more in terms of our collaboration.
What has that process been like developing your characters' relationships together? Has that impacted the way you've gone about filming certain scenes?
Well, I think the character development for each of us is done separately and has to be done on our own. But when we come together, there's new things that are discovered when we finally get to set with one another and we're on camera. So from there, I think that's when things really begin to percolate because I think everyone has done the prep necessary to get to that point.
In the most recent episode, "Oyedeng," Filip and Naomi have this really beautiful scene together where Filip is very childlike and really lets himself be her child in that moment. What was it like to shoot that really emotional scene?
Well, I think it wasn't as hard as it could have been had it not been with Dom. Dom is such a giving actor, and that scene is really a story about [Filip and Naomi]. Filip, he's never been a mother's child, and Naomi has never been a mother. And so I think they're feeling each other out, and there's, really for the first time, this sort of awkwardness as cards [are] being dropped for the first time.
It's really beautiful but it's also jarring because only a little bit later in the episode, Filip is insulting Naomi and hitting her. How did you understand Filip's drastic transition and commit to what it took to make that come to life?
Well, I actually don't think the transition is that drastic in the grand scheme of things. He sides with his father who he's known for his entire life. And he's being offered something from his father that he's always wanted from his father, and I think that outweighs, at that moment, what his mother has offered him. And so it's almost like that scene with Naomi, by the end of the episode, feels like a stumble on Filip's road to taking his father's place in the Belt and growing into what he has always wanted to become in his father's eyes.
Yet at the same time, earlier in the episode, when he talks to Marco and asks for his own ship to command, his father insults him and tells him he's screwed up. Did you feel like that was a manipulation, or did you feel that that was a glimpse of the core of their relationship?
I mean, as Jasai, I can look at it and see that it's very clearly a manipulation. But that manipulation is so ingrained in the relationship that, for Filip, it is the core of the relationship. And that's what an abusive relationship is. So many times, the person being abused has no idea that they're being abused, and I think that's the case for Fillip. He has no idea that Marco is manipulating him and pulling his strings because he loves his father so much and wants nothing more than to please and be acknowledged by his father.
At the end of the episode, Filip watches his mother throw herself out an airlock. How did you approach that scene in playing through that moment?
[Laughs] As we list these moments from this episode, I'm like, "What was I going through that day?" Oh, my gosh, there's so much! Yeah, I mean, I think it's just imagining the loss of a parent. I don't think Filip ever expected his mom to do that again. But I think, again, what I love about this story throughout this season is, between Naomi, Filip and Marco, we're watching a family dynamic that is very human and takes place in any century. It takes place now, it's going to take place when The Expanse takes place. And I think just bringing it back to those very simple levels of "This is a boy losing his mother" is where I started from, and then you build on everything else after that. But if you have that core, the script and the writing is so wonderful that everything else kind of just falls into place.
Speaking of this incredibly intense episode, did you shoot your scenes in order so there was an emotional trajectory, or did you have to sort of work your way emotionally into each scene separate from that context?
To be honest with you, I don't remember at this point. But I think either way, as long as you understand what's going on in each scene, it doesn't really matter when you shoot it because, either way, it's not like we're shooting my scene in the room with Naomi, and then the camera just stays on me, and you see me walk down the hall and into the Pella command room. There's so many things that happen in between these scenes that, either way, you have to kind of get back into it when you start again.
Can you tease anything about what might be coming up for Filip for the remainder of the season?
Ooh, I don't think people want to know. I think, no, I'm going to stay silent on that one. I'm going to remain very quiet on that one.
Yeah, I think everything's going to round itself out.
Okay, that's a hint. You may not be willing to answer this last question either, but is there any chance we will be seeing you again in Season 6?
I feel like that is just as much of a spoiler as coming in later. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. You’ll have to see how it all rounds out.
An adaptation of the novel series of the same name by James S.A. Corey, The Expanse stars Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Frankie Adams. New episodes of Season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Amazon Prime Video.