Stephen King's classic, apocalyptic novel The Stand has communities personifying good and evil rising from the ashes of civilization's collapse in the face of a devastating contagion. The sinister forces of unrepentant evil reside in Las Vegas, led by the charismatic Randall Flagg who commands his followers with an unhinged, unholy zeal. Among the villains vying for Flagg's attention and approval are Lloyd Henreid and Julie Lawry, portrayed by Nat Wolff and Katherine McNamara, respectively.
In a roundtable interview attended by CBR, Wolff and McNamara discussed portraying the two evil characters, competing with the others for the favor of Alexander Skarsgard's character Randall Flag and what surprise Madonna song helped Wolff get into the right mindset for his performance.
For Wolff, he felt Lloyd was groomed and manipulated by Randall Flagg all along to become one of his most trusted associates even before the pandemic swept across the world leading to his eventual imprisonment.
"Flagg put him through the wringer by putting him in jail and starving him and, by the time Lloyd gets to Vegas, he'd do anything for Flagg," Wolff observed. "I do think there's a heart-wrenching quality to Lloyd, he's not just a one-note villain. There's something painfully desperate about him and it reminds me of watching documentaries about these evil cult leaders and you see these sweet people who are just giving up their whole lives and doing these horrendous things and wonder how that happened and you realize that the power of an evil charisma is sometimes greater than an evil strength. Lloyd is somebody who is, even in the beginning, not a very ethical person but is used by Flagg and he has kind of a good journey through the series."
In response to a question from CBR, both actors admitted they enjoyed the opportunity to portray more villainous characters than much of their previous work.
"It's been a blast, coming off Shadowhunters and Arrow playing basically superheroes for the past several years, to paint with a different set of colors, especially with Nat and Skarsgard who are so brilliant and so down to play and just explore that world and really go for it; everyone did on this show," McNamara declared. "We got to be these forces of evil, there are no rules and everything was up in the air. They didn't really give us any rules on set either so we got to explore every color, truly."
"I was working on this character for a while and a lot of it was sort of finding a shadowed side of myself that was incredibly desperate and evil and a side of myself that I don't really let see the light of day," Wolff agreed. "But once I got to set, I got really nervous right before shooting wondering if I was going to be able to pull this off, am I going to get away with this because it's such an extreme character? And I was eating a Subway sandwich and 'Like a Virgin' by Madonna started playing on the speaker and I just broke into a dance as Lloyd and I thought 'Alright, I got it,' and from then on, 'Like a Virgin' became Lloyd's theme song and it helped me through the shoot."
Both McNamara and Wolff are self-professed, lifelong Stephen King fans and had been aware of the miniseries' development for some time through their friendship with showrunner and executive producer Josh Boone. Wolff revealed Boone first told him he was planning an adaptation of The Stand eight years ago while complimenting King on creating such imaginative worlds across so many acclaimed novels, with The Stand as his personal favorite.
McNamara was asked if she saw her character as a tragic figure or if her villainous descent and allegiance to Flagg was more of a conscious choice than manipulation outside of her control.
"I think all of the characters have a choice to make and, for some of them, the choice is clearer than others," McNamara answered. "I do think Julie is tragic in her own way, she has obviously been through a lot to survive up until this point, survive this disease and make it out with her life with some form of sanity -- which is questionable. We get to see a little bit of it in certain moments with Julie, she just wants to belong, she wants to be loved and she wants a home and that's what she finds in Vegas, this prosperity she never had a chance to before the disease. Whether that's for better or worse in the way she treats other people, she is a fighter and a survivor and she will claw her way to what she perceives as her top."
CBR asked how it was for the cast portraying the miniseries' community in Vegas playing off each other with an understated competition to earn Flagg's favor. "It was so much fun, that was a real blast," Wolff recalled. "Me, Kat, Fiona [Dourif], Ezra [Miller], it was an incredible group of actors and everybody competing for Skarsgard's love like little puppies; evil puppies."
"With Boulder -- I haven't seen those scenes yet -- but I assume there's a lot of trust and family there whereas, with us, you don't ever know where everyone's loyalties truly lie," McNamara concurred. "While characters may be aligned temporarily, that can all change if it seems Flagg's love is shifting. And for each one of them, especially for Julie, it's almost kind of like worship of this entity. We're all clawing our way like evil puppies."
For McNamara, this adaptation of The Stand is timeless, going beyond its initial publication date in 1978 and the original miniseries adaptation in 1994, noting that it feels as though it could be anytime in late 20th to early 21st century. "That sort of brings the humanity that courses through the story and each of these characters," McNamara observed. "That speaks a lot to the themes and that everyone has something they can relate to in this story."
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 series premieres Dec. 17 on CBS All Access.