FROM interview: Ricky He on season 3 episode 3, Kenny’s grief

Through the first three episodes of FROM season 3, Ricky He has undoubtedly been a standout performer among the cast. With that being said, so much of that has come at the expense of his character Kenny Liu. He just lost his mother Tian-Chen and now, he’s out with several of the town residents, in the freezing cold, in the hopes of replenishing the food supply.

What have they discovered along the way? Think along the lines of mysterious figurines, possible echoes of the town’s past, and many more horrors. This is all coming while Kenny still navigates his grief, and it may take some time before he fully grapples with that.

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Below, Ricky talks with us about tapping into dark emotions this season — plus, just how many answers we can expect in the weeks to come!

Matt & Jess TV – Kenny has really been through it this season. You’ve gone to some really dark places, and you’ve had some awesome scenes — especially with Harold [Perrineau]. What do you tap into when you know something like that is coming, a scene that is that hard?

Ricky He – It’s a lot of preparation. It’s a lot of putting yourself into some really dark and negative headspaces. I’ve always been, fortunately, good at leaving work at work. If I’m preparing at home, once I’m done preparation for the day, I can walk away from it.

The challenging thing this was with the material was that because of the weather, we had to reschedule shooting so frequently. I [would think] I was doing this scene at the tunnel with Harold on Friday, but now it’s being pushed to another day. You spend the days leading up to it getting into this gloomy, dark headspace and then they are like ‘actually, we’re not doing it.’ There was a lot of jumping back and forth between being in this bad place in your head.

At the end of episode 3, we see that Kenny is out with Jade and some others in the wilderness, where they are making some new discoveries. Where he is at mentally at that point?

I think it’s similar to real life when you are grieving and in so much pain, you kind of focus on a singular mission. You focus on the task at hand, and that’s where he is right now. He is trying to complete the mission, and the mission is feed the town. The town’s starving.

Sometimes, like in real life, that [mission] can come at the cost of people around you. That’s where he is at right now.

It seems like on the surface, he’s pushing a lot of his grief to the side and handling it about as well as anyone could in that situation.

Yeah. I think he’s definitely shoving his grief down, because he doesn’t want to deal with it with other people around. He wants to deal with it privately, [like when he’s] in bed.

I know that there has been some talk that there will be answers coming this season. Is that something we can expect over the episodes ahead?

Numerically? We definitely get a few! I don’t know if we go double digits, but we definitely get some answers … but we also unlock some new questions. Just like a video game — new quests.

Are there some stories coming up where you, Ricky, get to spend time with people you haven’t had a chance to before?

We have some new cast members joining us, and Kenny gets to spend a lot of time with the new cast members.

Following the end of episode 3, are things about to get crazy right away?

Yeah — it’s about to get nuts.

Who are these new cast members?

It is very well possible that Ricky could be referring to Henry, who is seemingly about to run up in FROMville alongside Tabitha. Or, could it be the paramedics who were in the ambulance with them? There is a lot to think about here…

Related – See our recent FROM interview with Catalina Sandino Moreno

What do you want to see from Kenny moving forward on FROM season 3?

Let us know in the comments! Once you do just that, come back for some other updates.

This article was written by Jessica BunBun.