Jennifer Connelly is on board with the TV version of 'Snowpiercer'

Jennifer Connelly with co-star Daveed Diggs (left) in the sci-fi series 'Snowpiercer'.

In an acting career that began when she was just 11 years old, Jennifer Connelly – who turns 50 come December – has starred in just one TV series as a regular, a short-lived 2000 show titled The $treet.

Now, 20 years later, she makes a return to television.

The Oscar-winning actress (for her supporting role in A Beautiful Mind, 2001) headlines Snowpiercer, a new 10-episode series adapted from the 2013 movie by Parasite filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, which itself was inspired by a 1982 French graphic novel.

“I think there’s some really interesting work being done on television now, ” the raven-haired beauty tells Asian journalists during a Zoom meeting call from New York, the United States.

“And I had been interested in and curious about doing a show.”

Although the production ran into some trouble – namely change of showrunners, reshoot of the pilot, and switching of broadcasters, all of which caused almost a four-year delay – Connelly says she loved the experience of working on it.

“I enjoyed the community, the process and the pace of it – which is a lot different than making a film for sure, but I really enjoyed it.”

She’s signed up for a second season as well, of which she had finished filming her part before the lockdown happened in the US due to Covid-19 pandemic.

One of the things Connelly found interesting working on a TV show was how she didn’t receive the entire script at the start of the project.

She explains: “On a film, you have a document and you’re working from that document and building your character based on that document. There will be some revisions along the way.

“But here, we were getting new scripts as we were working.”

Something's brewing with the Tailies.

Snowpiercer refers to a train that is perpetually circling the earth, year in and year out, on a sturdy track.

Within its 1,001 carriages, it carries some 3,000 people – the last of mankind in a world that’s turned into a frozen wasteland after scientists’ brilliant idea to cool down the hot planet (from global warming and war) made things much, much, worse.

Built by an engineer named Mr Wilford of Wilford Industries, Snowpiercer houses all the essentials for a long-term survival including livestock and plants, as well as frivolous luxuries.

Problem is, the train practises a class system – with the extremely wealthy in first class enjoying the best of everything, and the second and third class getting by with much less than first class but definitely more than the “Tailies”.

Tailies makes the last class on the train – a group of people who had boarded the train as it was closing its doors, and is now made to live at the tail end of the train in poverty, with little provision, in tight spaces with no windows and definitely no privacy.

Connelly plays Melanie Cavill, who works for Mr Wilford and is the voice of the train – she makes the daily announcements over the PA system.

Melanie, who is in the hospitality department, not only takes care of the rich people’s needless demands, but also keeps the operations of the train smooth.

But, with the train running for almost seven years non-stop now, there’s bound to be tough obstacles – both inside (a murder!) and outside the train (an avalanche!).

Which of these uniforms suit you best?

Besides the fact that Snowpiercer had the potential to be a fascinating show to make – boasting impressive sets and exploring deeper themes such as class warfare – the series offered Connelly a chance to play a flawed character who changes over the span of 10 episodes.

In the course of the first season, audiences will see Melanie’s many facets, and also the shifts she goes through as a person. In short, Melanie is a character just too interesting to pass.

“She’s a very surprising character. She’s a contradictory. She’s a lot of things at once, ” mentions Connelly.

“And I found that those aspects of her character – that she fights for things she really believes in, but along the way she does things that are morally questionable, and sometimes just downright reprehensible – I think that it was kind of an interesting challenge to take on.”

She adds: “I like my character and I was curious to see where she would go, where (the writers) would take her.”

It’s not lost on Connelly that the timing of Snowpiercer’s release concurs with the current pandemic situation the world is experiencing, and that it’s kind of reflected on the show.

“The themes of the show always felt relevant, ” states the actor who has starred in films like Ang Lee’s Hulk, Dark Water, Blood Diamond and Alita: Battle Angel.

“(However) there are some additional themes now that are topical because of the pandemic, particularly the confinement and loss that people are experiencing because of that confinement.

Melanie hangs out at the third-class carriage.

“Everyone who’s on Snowpiercer has been separated from their communities, from the lives that they had lived before and places that they loved visiting. And, you know, we’re all experiencing a version of that, now.”

The American – who is married to English actor Paul Bettany and is the mother to three children – is handling the pandemic with the same calmness and intelligence she lends all of her roles.

“We have two of our children here, our oldest is in California because he works there now. So, he’s in lockdown there.

“But our two younger children are home with us and doing online school. Our youngest, Agnes, is doing remote learning. She’s in third grade. She’s eight. So, I’ve been doing school with her every day... from morning until about three o’clock.

“And then we do lots of cooking and baking. We have a puppy, so we’re training our puppy, and about to put our garden in. So, we’ll be busy working on that.”

Snowpiercer is available on Netflix.