‘Pure Genius’ exclusive: Augustus Prew sets up Jason Katims’ new drama, merger between medicine, technology
Come Thursday night on CBS (10:00 p.m. Eastern) or Friday on Global in Canada (also 10:00 p.m.), “Pure Genius” is set to officially debut. It’s a show that looks at medicine in a modern, experimental, and ultimately interesting way as you see Bunkerhill, a revolutionary hospital that is all about helping people by any means necessary, no matter the expense. The man behind such a practice is James Bell, a Silicon Valley billionaire out to change the game. While the trailer below reveals that he has a more personal reason for operating this hospital than he initially lets on, there’s still no denying the results that he’s obtained through many patients as a result of his medical staff.
We recently had a chance to chat with the man behind this role in Augustus Prew (“The Borgias,” pictured above with Dermot Mulroney) about being cast in the role, how he views Bell and his actions, and the twist for his character in the pilot episode.
CarterMatt – So how are you feeling about the whirlwind you’ve been on the past couple of months? I have to assume it’s pretty crazy in between getting the series, filming, and now preparing for people to see the show. I’m sure you guys are several episodes in the can, and it’s now a perilous waiting game.
Augustus Prew – That’s exactly how I feel. It’s a weird waiting game right now. We think we have something wonderful on our hands here, and we hope that people get it. Jason Katims, our showrunner, the man behind ‘Friday Night Lights’ and ‘Parenthood’ and the master of the art, shall we say, he says that this is his favorite part of the show because it can still be anything you want it to be. It hasn’t been pigeonholed by the network yet, it hasn’t been received a certain way. The possibilities are endless, and it’s the most creative part of it where you can enjoy shooting it just for the shoot and it doesn’t matter how it does. When [the show airs], we can worry about that then, but for now you can just enjoy doing the show.
We just shot our seventh episode — seven was our Christmas episode, so I’m feeling very Christmas-y right now, prematurely. We’ve got Christmas trees everywhere and all sorts of dreidels. It’s very fun, but it’s also emotional like you can expect from Jason Katims. There are lots of emotional, human stories that make you go [insert crying noise here]. It’s great. It is a whirlwind.
When did you first hear about this script, and what appealed to you about working on this show in particular?
In terms of pilot season, I’m going to give you the whole story. I did a pilot last year as well, an HBO pilot that I really thought was going to get picked up but it didn’t. It was this really sad thing. Unfortunately it took them ages to tell us that the pilot didn’t get picked up, so I really couldn’t work. I did a small film, but I was in a bit of a weird place. I was in a weird place, I had run out of money, and it was a weird time. I had made the move to LA and taken this huge risk, and then I thought it hadn’t paid off. Then I decided that I was going to give everything this pilot season, and I was going to do the best I could.
‘Pure Genius’ was one of my first auditions, and I remember reading the script and thinking ‘wow, this is incredible.’ It’s a character that I connected to right away. It was an instant thing. I heard James’ voice and I felt how he carried himself. I had an instinctive guttural reaction to this part. I spoke with Jason recently about it, and he said that I was actually the second person that they saw, and once they met they knew that they wanted me to do it. By the time I got to the car after the audition, they had already called my agent to set up a screen test. So in time that it took me to leave the room, get on the elevator, and got the car, they had scheduled the screen test for the next day.
So I felt very blessed at the time, and it coincided with getting ‘Prison Break’ at the same time. Talking about whirlwinds, I went from a tough time the year before to this dream year where everything fell into place. It’s wonderful. You know you’re going to get something from the show when you click with the producers and you’re on the same page and you have the same sort of vision. You trust that gut. I’m still running, but it’s a marathon not a sprint (laughs).
What was your personal preparation for playing James Bell like? Did you model any traits of him after any other tech billionaires?
Being a billionaire, there are a small group of people who understand what that’s like. There are a small group of people who understand what that’s like making decisions [with that in mind].
James is someone who is so deeply displaced by his surroundings. He struggles with basic things like conversation because his brain is moving too fast, but he can solve things like world hunger. It’s one of those things where he’s someone who can always come across in a good light. He’s someone who controls his image, and is guarded very well. I was influenced by Steve Jobs. He was a very interesting guy. He sought out to mythologize himself, and there is that really iconic picture of him holding his hands in front of his face. I kind of riffed off of that. I created a James Bell version of that where I put a finger up by my mouth; I do it in the poster, as well.
I wanted him to have an awareness in his narrative and how he comes across. It’s a smart way of branding themselves to be more human, and come across in a way that is beneficial to their life. So there is an element of [looking for inspiration], but James is a unique person. He does his own thing, and he’s a very unique character. I didn’t want to overly embellish him with what’s come before because this is a new story. Interestingly, Mark Zuckerberg, who is someone else I looked at in terms of life and how [his success] happened, he just ended up starting his own thing called BioHub which is about merging tech with medicine. It’s a move to provide better healthcare, so he’s literally doing what we’re doing.
It’s revealed in the trailer that James has a specific motivation for setting up Bunkerhill. I think the way you played this line at the end of the pilot is really great, where you basically explain to him that it doesn’t really matter what the personal motivation is when you look at the result. How much of [his own motivation towards bettering himself] is going to inform his decisions moving forward?
I think that it’s the central conceit of the entire show, someone’s motivations. Even the title of the show is ‘Pure Genius.’ Is it pure? What is pure? The issue with Bunkerhill is that we have the best people in the world with technology and medicine, and we have the best knowledge and all of the money to make it happen. So the conflict with Bunkerhill comes not from your traditional medical drama, where you struggle with not having the medicine. We do have the medicine. The struggle here is that just because you can do something, should you? Just because you can do things, is that ethical? The more desperate James gets [in terms of his condition], the more the clock ticks down, the more you see these ethical dichotomies become a crux of the story.
The line is great — this is a flawed character, he’s not necessarily a hero by any means. It’s a character study of one man trying to cling to life by any means necessary. When you do have every means necessary, maybe the end justifies the means.
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Thanks again to Augustus for his time, and be sure to check out “Pure Genius” this week at the times specified above! (Photo: CBS.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx-5-t4Njlc