A Metal Life Exclusive Interview With Noah Huntley Starring In The CW’s Highly Anticipated Upcoming SciFi Drama Pandora

Noah Huntley

Photo courtesy of Kenneth Han

Noah Huntley has had a long and diverse career in entertainment, both on and off the silver screen. He has starred in films such as Event Horizon, 28 Days Later, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and Snow White and the Huntsman, to TV shows such as Free Rein, The Royals, and Midsomer Murders. He has even lent his voice to video games such as Battlefleet Gothic: Armada and Ryse: Son of Rome, with a few side gigs as an international model appearing in campaigns for Bloomingdales, Paul Smith, Jigsaw[9], Cacharel and Nautica. He has also appeared as a model in international editions of Vogue Hommes, Esquire and GQ. You could say he’s been a busy guy. His latest role as Professor Donovan Osborn in the CW’s upcoming Sci-Fi Drama Pandora has Noah playing a somewhat darker role as a deeply respected yet fully feared instructor at a prominent space fleet training academy in the year 2199.

Donovan stars alongside Priscilla Quintana who plays Professor Donovan’s niece Jax, a prodigy who may hold the key to saving or destroying Earth, depending on how her particular gifts are cultivated. Donovan’s role is a complex one for which Huntley was given a lot of free rein in its development. I had a chance to have a quick phone chat with Noah while he was still on location in Bulgaria filming Pandora about his role as the professor, his interesting way of prepping for the part, and his career path had he not been discovered as an actor.

ML- So of course right now you are currently shooting in Bulgaria for your role as Professor Donovan Osborn in the CW’s upcoming Sci-Fi drama Pandora, how is that going?

NH- It’s been going really, really well! It’s so exciting to be doing sci-fi and it’s a very interesting one for me because most of the lead characters are in their early twenties at a fleet training academy of which, I wouldn’t say I’m the Head Master, but I’m kind of the head professor at this training academy set in 2199.

ML- Your character has been described as one of the most respected yet terrifying instructors at the academy. Are you able to elaborate on it?

NH- Well yeah, he’s intimidating. He’s a chess player, he’s a strategist, he’s head of the intelligence service, and he’s a professor at this academy. So, he might be a bit like Indiana Jones or someone like him with an interest in sort of esoteric things and with connections to some major institutions, and yet curates as a professor in a superficial world at a teaching academy. But, it’s a teaching academy for gifted children, so there’s that spin on it. In terms of his quality, I think he’s a guy who has seen a lot. He’s certainly been in the military, but he’s seen a lot. I don’t want to spoil it, but he has reasons as to why he’s a no nonsense kind of guy, so on the surface people don’t think he’s a nice guy. As the series unfolds, you realize the reasons for that and how much is at stake in terms of the balance of power he is negotiating on a day-to-day basis. So he’s discrete and an enigma, and obviously a powerful man and not someone who suffers fools gladly.

Photo courtesy of Kenneth Han 

ML- How did you prepare for this role?

NH- That’s interesting because more and more now it’s a question of coming into the role and we’ll tell you how things unfold as we go, and the ambiguity is kind of nice in a way. I think the producers set it up quite nicely for the actors because they never get too clear as to where they are going. The nice thing about my character is that there was nothing really likeable about him from the start. I mean, if you think about it, he’s an asshole but he’s definitely an enigma. In terms of preparation, I tried talking to Mark, the show’s producer, writer, and show runner about it. I realized he just had so much on his plate to juggle that I was going to have to do some guess work myself, so I just started doing a timeline for every sci-fi reference, movie and TV show that existed from the fifties. Then alongside sci-fi, the particular flavor of it is this espionage thriller that’s running through the context between the timeline and the future world we’re in, so I kind of wanted to get a feel for what that meant to me. Almost immediately, I had the voice. Sometimes when you mentally prepare, you have different things that come to you. For me, that voice became very important to me. He (Donovan Osborn) was originally written to be a lot older, and then they cast me. I think he was originally written as 60 years old and then they said, “Well actually, it makes sense that he’s younger and you (Noah) have the gravitas to pull it off.” As I was researching it, I was thinking of Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day with Emma Thompson, because he had this centurion quality about him where he just needed to make sure that everything ran as smoothly as possible because of what’s at stake for the wealthy aristocrats he works for. And then, of course, Patrick Stewart from the Next Generation of Star Trek. Those voices sort of came to the forefront of my mind. I eventually got to speak to Mark, who created the show, and he was able to just go, “Yeah, like that; that not so much.” So, it became quite easy even with the time restraints.

ML- Obviously this is taking up a lot of your time, but do you have any upcoming projects you are able to talk about?

NH- We’re wrapping up August 26^th. Bear in mind it comes out in four weeks. It’s coming out July 16th and it’s going to be featured on Sundays. Then I’m off to Paris for a feature film called Love In Paris, and that takes me through to October, so that’s what I’m doing for the next few months.

ML- One last question for you. Obviously you’ve done so much in the industry, but what do you think you’d be doing now, at this point in your life, had you not been discovered?

NH- Oh God, that’s just one of those questions (laughs) I don’t know. I don’t live my life that way then or now. I mean you follow one thing for a while and then you continue with that until something else and that’s just the way it goes. But really, if I was going to go back to that adult what do you want to be when you grow up, I think I’d be an accountant. I have a weird way of looking at accounting and finding it fascinating. I think I have found myself more sorted outside of acting, ironically. I don’t know if it happens for other people in life, but things just take off when you’re not really paying attention to them. The moment you put your attention to them, like riding a bike, it gets really confusing.

Pandora on the CW network premiers July 16th