'Altered Carbon' star Joel Kinnaman on his dual roles in the hit sci-fi series
Sci-fi fans are obsessing over Joel Kinnaman’s dual characters on the hit Netflix series “Altered Carbon.”
Kinnaman stopped by “Popcorn With Peter Travers” to talk about his roles as Takeshi Kovacs and Elias Ryker.
“Altered Carbon” "takes place 300 years in the future with this new technology where you are able to store the human consciousness, your memories, everything that’s you, in a chip that we call a stack that is inserted into the back of your skull,” Kinnaman said. “And this makes the bodies interchangeable. You can switch bodies. And if you’re ultra-rich, you can make your own clone.”
Kinnaman’s character must help solve a crime involving one of the ultra-rich.
“I play Takeshi Kovacs, who is a former terrorist or freedom fighter, depending on what side of history you’re on,” Kinnaman said. “And he’s been living in a digital prison for 250 years. I get brought back into this new world to solve the attempted murder of one of these ultra-rich.”
Kovacs' former identity in the storyline was Ryker, a police officer who was framed for murder, leading to his imprisonment.
Travers pointed out that Kinnaman has mastered his characters by teetering on a fine line of cynicism and humor. Kinnaman attributed his achievement to his love of sci-fi.
“I’m a big sci-fi nerd. I love sci-fi,” Kinnaman, 38, told Travers. “So I’m particularly drawn to these sort of dystopian tales of the future where it is sort of we’re sending warning signals back to [say], 'This is where we’ll end up if we don’t start making the right choices.' But I also love the idea of where technology could take us.”
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Be sure to watch the full interview with Peter Travers and Joel Kinnaman in the video above.
