Starring Mackenzie Davis and Himesh Patel, STATION ELEVEN is a Post-Apocalyptic Tale That Hits Close to Home

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede When filming began on the new HBO Max post-apocalyptic limited series STATION ELEVEN, the world population was just beginning to hear of the term COVID-19. But now when audiences watch the show – which debuts Thursday, Dec. 16 only on Crave, with three episodes – it’s all going to seem less far-fetched than it would have before. Created for television by showrunner/executive producer Patrick Somerville, and based on a 2014 novel of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel, STATION ELEVEN spans multiple timelines to follow the stories of the survivors of a devastating flu that resulted in the collapse of civilization. A small group of people has found a way to scrounge out a living as a band of travelling performers, but they encounter a violent cult, led by a man whose past is unknowingly linked to a member of the troupe. During a virtual panel interview, the creators and cast – including Canadian Mackenzie Davis (HALT AND CATCH FIRE, The Martian, Terminator: Dark Fate) and Himesh Patel (AVENUE 5, Yesterday, Tenet) – were asked about the oddity and uniqueness of working during a pandemic, on a show that’s about the aftermath of a worst-case-scenario pandemic. Did the vibe of the former impact the latter? How could it not? “Within the show, I think moments of fear – and we’ve experienced this as well in our experience with our pandemic – can forge new relationships, and push people together, and really bond humans together, and it also causes people to act defensively, and erratically, and violently, and with our own self-interest,” said Davis, who plays Kristen (Matilda Lawler plays the younger Kristen, 20 years earlier, when the flu occurred). “The responses are as varied as there are human psyches.” And given that, Davis is happy that STATION ELEVEN has a genuine interest in exploring why the various characters have adapted to extreme situations in very different ways. “There are going to be real penalties, and beautiful moments, but I think our show deals with all of those,” Davis said. “There’s danger in the woods, but there’s also beauty and rebirth in the woods. I’m glad that it’s neither a cautionary tale, nor sort of idealizing trauma and mass loss.” Patel said that shooting STATION ELEVEN during a pandemic gave him renewed appreciation for the teamwork required to pull it off. “I look forward to the day that we can all start sort of working together the way we used to, and connecting with each other in those ways, because I do miss that,” he said. “But there was a joy in the way that we were finding a way to do it, despite difficulties. So that was one of my big takeaways from doing this.” Somerville said that both the story being told in STATION ELEVEN, and the real-life pandemic, made him think a lot about communication, and the importance of it throughout history. “Communication has often been the hardest thing in the pandemic, but in our show, too,” Somerville said. “Miscommunication, in the ‘19th century novel’ kind of way, is a great storytelling device. People don’t know why they got separated, and they have 20 years to make up their own stories in their own heads about what happened, but they can’t find out what happened. The best of us comes out in our imagining the best version of what happens, or what could be. But the worst comes out, too, because sometimes we make up the wrong stories, and it leads to people getting further apart.” Following the three-episode debut of STATION ELEVEN on Crave on Thursday, three more episodes will drop on Dec. 23, two on Dec. 30, and two on Jan. 6, with the finale scheduled for Jan. 13. billharristv@bellmedia.ca @billharris_tv