Of all the characters that survive the apocalypse in Stephen King's classic novel The Stand, one whose innocence informs the heart and soul of the story is Tom Cullen. Portrayed by Brad William Henke in the CBS All Access miniseries adaptation, the character is a developmentally challenged man who plays a pivotal role in the war between the surviving forces of good and evil after the world endures a devastating contagion.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Henke spoke about preparing to portray Tom, developing the character's unique voice and wrapping work on the adaptation as an actual pandemic arose around the world.
How did this project and your role as Tom Cullen first come about?
Brad William Henke: [Executive producers] Ben Cavell and Taylor Elmore both were kind of young, coming-up writers while I was on the second season of Justified. They wrote a lot of what I did on Justified so maybe that's how it came about because it was at a time when they were really making it. I worked with them on that, and then I worked with Ben on Sneaky Pete, and Ben just called me and offered me the job. I hadn't read the book so I got it and was like "This book is 900 pages long!" and I only had a couple days to tell them if I wanted to take the job or not but they also sent me four scripts.
I watched, like, literally three seconds of the original [1994 television miniseries] just to see what it looked like, and I just knew this was an opportunity to be terrible or amazing; there could be no in between. And what was really cool about this too was I've never had a job before where it was just offered to me three months before it started [filming]. Usually, it's like a week or two; with Orange Is the New Black, it was like "Be there in three days!" so this was so cool because I had so much time to prepare; it was just really exciting.
And this role is so unlike anything you've done before: Tom is the most pure-hearted character in this world gone wrong. How was it finding that voice for the character?
Henke: I had this guy that was a couple years older than me that went to the same high school named Ed Reinhardt, Jr., and he played college football and got a brain injury and, after that, he was kind of like Tom. I remember I ran into him and he said, "Inside, still me," and that just broke my heart; he's trapped in there. My character had a blow to the head too, and I carried that around with me, so I wanted to have that heart but also have another layer of frustration that I can't be like everyone else and I'm trying to. Sometimes emotions would come out at inappropriate times, but I tried to make it layered and real. You never know what they use in the editing, but sometimes you do lines as clear as this because sometimes people do that. I spent half the day walking around as Tom and sometimes, at Starbucks or something, they'd say "You're the guy from Orange Is the New Black!" [Laughs]
I just got to prepare a lot like that, and I would listen to sleep meditation. I would start working at 1 in the morning, but they would get me there at 10 at night, and then I worked the rest of the night. But I would listen to these sleep meditation tapes to go, and I would kind of be in a weird place, like a floaty place. And they supplied someone to run lines with me two weeks before so I could just float into the scene...there was no thought, there was no looking at lines while I'm up there.
So it sounds like it was reflexive performance.
Henke: Well, through so much work that it was reflexes. Know how you feel so much so that whatever comes up, you'll know how to react to it. You could do that as [yourself] because you know how to react to shit, but to do that as someone else that would react to stuff differently as you, yeah, that was great. I had three months up there [on location], it was raining everyday, the sun never comes out, I was just out there with my old dogs, and in December the sun only came out on Christmas and New Year's. So it was easy to only be with myself, I'd literally go work out, go eat and be in my apartment with my dogs, and it was great because this was my art piece; this was me doing some real shit here so that was really fun.
As someone who played professional football yourself -- you played in a Super Bowl -- was seeing guys impacted by that cranial trauma an emotional grounding point for your performance?
Henke: Yeah! In fact, I tried to get ahold of Ed -- he was a couple years older than me, I just knew him -- I sent him an email to his site to see if he'd mind if I used his voice exactly, just to listen to it. And also my character wants people to like him and take care of people and he has such a good heart. Everyone on the cast was so cool, they'd be hanging out and singing and stuff and I got along with them, but I sat by myself because I didn't want to go around [hanging out] and then have to do my scenes; I wanted to stay in that mode, in that emotion.
Your character spends a lot of time with Nick Andros. How was it working alongside Henry Zaga and developing that rapport?
Henke: It's funny because the first episode I was in, Episode 3, the director was like "We want to set up a rehearsal between you two for your first scene" and I love to rehearse but I was like "We've never met each other. Why don't we just meet each other in that scene? And then we can rehearse as much as we want! But first, let's just meet each other when we say 'Action!'" And that's what we got to do and that was great. He is just a great man, he's so supportive. I was kind of quiet and he didn't care and we just became really great friends. He's a great actor, he came super-prepared and lost a ton of weight just eating tomatoes or something. When I was walking through the desert, I was like "I'm going to lose like 30 pounds!" and then I lost 10-12 and then they moved up the schedule. [Laughs]
But people were so dedicated, people were really into it. You can't really see it in Episode 3 but, in between filming takes, setup was like 3 in the morning, and I was eating a piece of chocolate and Henry was like "You've got to do that in the scene!" so I don't know if you can see it when we're walking in the scene but I'm eating it. It was just a lot of fun. So many times we're given mediocre stuff and trying to make it better, so to get great stuff, great actors, great directors, that's the chance to be fucking amazing, and I think everyone saw that.
How much leeway did Josh Boone and Ben Cavell give you on set?
Henke: Nobody really told me what to do, but they steered me. They never heard how I was going to talk until I talked; they were anxious to hear what Tom sounds like. The costume designer Angelina Kekich, I was doing a fitting with her two weeks before I started and she was like "Let me hear how Tom talks" and did it and you could tell she wasn't really buying it, and she was like "I thought there would be a little more Oklahoma..." She gave me fucking notes and I decided I would try that because I was doing it a little bit too much like my friend Ed after watching the video and her note put me in the right direction.
I wear this Dolly Parton shirt [in Episode 3], and I was reading that people who get brain injuries, a way they start talking again is by singing. So I would sing this Dolly Parton song "Coat of Many Colors" because that's up where I wanted my register, so I'd sing that song and say my lines and that's how I learned how to talk Tom; I did what people did when they have head injuries.
I do have to mention, the overriding premise of The Stand, with the contagion, hits different now than when you started filming.
Henke: Yeah, in the book, they'd always go "I think I have a cold," and it's like "No, in 24 hours, you're going to be dead!" I feel like doing the show and then coming from Vancouver, where they were a couple weeks ahead of [the pandemic's outbreak in] the U.S., I came back wearing a mask and nobody was wearing a mask. We wrapped March 12 and you had two days to get out of Canada or else you had to stay. You get to Vancouver's airport and nobody was in the airport and you'd get to LAX and it was normal, with people walking around; it was really weird.
The Stand stars Alexander Skarsgård as Randall Flagg, Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abigail, James Marsden as Stu Redman, Odessa Young as Frannie Goldsmith, Jovan Adepo as Larry Underwood, Amber Heard as Nadine Cross, Owen Teague as Harold Lauder, Henry Zaga as Nick Andros, Brad William Henke as Tom Cullen, Irene Bedard as Ray Bretner, Nat Wolff as Lloyd Henreid, Eion Bailey as Weizak, Heather Graham as Rita Blakemoor, Katherine McNamara as Julie Lawry, Fiona Dourif as Ratwoman, Natalie Martinez as Dayna Jurgens, Hamish Linklater as Dr. Jim Ellis, Daniel Sunjata as Cobb and Greg Kinnear as Glen Bateman. The Stand releases new episodes Thursdays on CBS All Access.