Resurrection comes to life on Phl TV

MANILA, Philippines - What if someone you lost (or you thought you lost) returns? That’s the big question raised by the US TV series Resurrection — which debuts on Philippine TV tonight at 10 via the Lifetime Channel — and that should send viewers on their couches reeling in thought about life, loss and what-ifs. 

In the series, deceased people start showing up, very much alive and well, in the small town of Arcadia, Missouri. First comes an eight-year-old boy, who drowned more than three decades ago, followed by several others, all not aging a bit but reappearing as they were before they died.

Or did they? 

The “resurrection” turns the lives of those left behind — they who have settled into normalcy after years of struggling with the loss of their loved ones — upside down...again. 

Resurrection stars Omar Epps and Kurtwood Smith made a Manila stopover last week to drum up the Asian premiere of their series. 

TV fans will probably best remember Omar from the hugely-popular medical drama House. In Resurrection, he plays US federal agent and immigration officer J. Martin Bellamy, who accompanies the young boy named Jacob — who is found in the middle of nowhere in China — back to what he remembers as his home.

“You have this young boy who pops up in China with no papers and so, they extradite him back to the US. My character’s supposed to take him back to human services.(But) he sort of forms a bond with this kid,” said Omar during a presscon at Raffles Makati. 

Kurtwood (whose many noteworthy acting credits on TV and the movies include That ‘70s Show, Robocop and Dead Poets Society) is Henry Langston, Jacob’s now elderly father.

As preparation for his role, Kurtwood dug into what could have happened to Henry right before that life-changing moment when he opens his door and comes face-to face with someone who exactly looks like his dead son. â€œIn other words, what happened to my character 30 years ago? What was his life then? What has that life been since? He was sort of the big man in town. He was the largest employer in the vicinity and just dropped all that. So now, 32 years later, where is he? The doorbell rings, then everything changes. So, if you prepare up to that moment, then it’s just reacting to what’s going on.”

However, Henry’s emotional response to the arrival is the opposite of his wife: He alienates the boy, she welcomes him with open arms. “People react in different ways. For them, the loss was too much. (But) Lucille — Frances Fisher plays my wife — is very accepting immediately. But (Henry) is not because, first of all, this is too strange. It couldn’t possibly be his son. And how it could be him — exactly the same as he was 32 years ago?”

Omar’s character, despite being an outsider, gets caught up in this unfolding drama and mystery. Omar said, “He has come into this small town and formed a bond with this boy, so he stays because he wants to find out what’s going on. Seeing how it affects the family, he kind of gets protective of the family as a whole and becomes an extended family member. He’s stuck.”

Apparently, the mystery is not confined to the Lancaster family, but involves the entire town of Arcadia. (Interestingly, during the presscon, it was pointed out that Arcadia, according to Greek mythology, is “a version of paradise — home of supernatural entities but not the afterlife for dead mortals.”)

When asked on what mainly attracted them to the project, Kurtwood said he was particularly drawn to Henry’s complexity as well as his very complex life and situation. 

Omar, on the other hand, said of his character: “He’s fascinating to me. I call him grey. He’s not here or there. He’s just sort of in the middle.”

He is equally fascinated over how the show explores the big “what-if.” “The idea (of the story) just really blew me away because the real connective tissue between all of us as human beings is life and death. It’s not our ethnicity. It’s not our class... We have all dealt with loss. To be involved in a show that can step up and set a platform for us all to experience these notions and live vicariously through these characters was really exciting.”

Both actors were also asked if there was anyone they wanted to see “resurrected.” For Kurtwood, it would be his biological father, who passed away when he was only one year old. “My biological father was killed in World War II as a pilot. He had never seen me and I had never seen him. I think it would be quite something to meet and spend some time with him. The difference is that he would be 24 and I would be 70.” 

“It would be my great-grandma,” Omar, for his part, said.

“She passed on when I was around 16, so it would just be awesome to sit down with her (now that) I’m a father, a husband and that I’ve made something of myself. It would be great to share this with her,” added Omar who, apart from being an actor, owns a production company called BrooklynWorks Films, is an investor is several tech companies, and will launch BrooklynWorks Foundation, an arts-based organization for underprivileged kids.

Even with the serious theme of the series, light moments came aplenty on the Resurrection set. Kurtwood talked about the time they were shooting the pilot episode in Georgia. It was muggy and humid, he recalled, since it was spring. He was standing by the river, filming an intense scene, when suddenly, it snowed.

“It was freezing cold and Kurtwood was out there, in his flimsy shirt and was supposed to act like it was summer,” Omar chimed in.

Kurtwood further narrated, “A couple of days later, I’m getting in the van to go back to the hotel, and there’s some guy I haven’t seen before. And I said hi, introduced myself and asked, ‘So, what do you do?’ He said, ‘I’m the effects guy.’ And I said, ‘Oh, really?’ I thought we were blowing something up. (And he said,) ‘No, I’m the guy who has to erase all the snow out of your scene.’”

Kurtwood’s Henry has been described as vastly different from his past characters. A seasoned thespian prior to his Hollywood foray, he had earned fans for his fine display of onscreen antagonism (i.e. the bone-chilling bad guy Clarence Boddicker in Robocop). But ask him if there’s any character he still wants to flesh out, and he’d answer, “I don’t think about it in those terms. I don’t think about it until I read it. It helps me not to restrict myself.”

Meanwhile, Omar, in response to a question if he’s going to have a love interest in the series, as in House where he was famously paired with Olivia Wilde, said, “In the first series, there was no room (for romance), as we really have to dig into the characters — to take audiences to invest in them.”

“I think he and the doctor have  something going on. Who knows? We’ll see,” Kurtwood volunteered.

“(Maybe in the second season), there’ll be some smooches going on,” mused Omar, drawing laughter.

It has already been reported that Resurrection will enjoy a life extension of a second season.