The new limited series Station Eleven starts with characters Jeevan and young Kirsten, grocery hoarding at a supermarket.
They’re getting ready to hunker down at his brother’s apartment after Jeevan got the news that the latest form of flu that’s going around is not your typical cold. This one kills.
Sound familiar?
That particular scene in Episode One of HBO's Station Eleven – which is based on Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel – was shot in January 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic happened.
British actor Himesh Patel who plays Jeevan on the show admitted during a virtual Q&A session that it felt very strange to have filmed that segment only to be faced with the same reality soon after.
The 31-year-old stated: “The day that we shot the (supermarket) scene, my partner had come to visit and she was looking at the trolleys full of stuff.
“And obviously the production designers had just filled it full of stuff that they’ve found and with like vague ideas of what one might fill their trolleys with.
“But she was looking at it going, ‘You know, if this happened for real, this isn’t what we’d buy. And I was like ‘Yeah, OK, whatever.’
“And then two months later we were sort of having the conversation in real life.
“And I remember it really spinning me out because I just couldn’t have predicted that, you know. Very, very strange.”
As with every productions around the world, Station Eleven shoot was shut down and all the actors had to abide by their respective country’s rules regarding lockdown.
It would be months later before it resumed production at Toronto, Canada.
Patel, who starred in films like Tenet and Yesterday, recalled further of the surreal experience and of his own emotions during lockdown: “I was kind of reeling for a while of just the similarity of what I was seeing, compared to what I just shot.
“And then just the constant anxiety for my own safety, to some degree safety of my loved ones, especially the ones who I couldn’t be near.
“It was, you know, it’s nothing that no one else has experienced.
“But, you know, in a way, there was a collective sense of anxiety. And I think that it’s going to take a long while for us to sort of get over but we’ll get there.”
The plague in Station Eleven is called Georgia Flu, and it manages to wipe out 99% of the earth’s population in a matter of weeks. Delving on just a handful of characters, the series alternates on different timelines – before the outbreak, the first year after the plague hit, and 20 years later when survivors have settled into a different life.
During the same interview session, co-star Mackenzie Davis (Terminator: Dark Fate, Blade Runner 2049) described Station Eleven as a show “that exist in a dystopia but it isn’t a dystopia”.
“It’s also not a utopia. It’s sort of an argument for human survival that goes beyond building a spacecraft and going to Mars,” the 34-year-old Canadian mentioned to the international journalists.
“It’s like what happens when you can reset and build again? Do you reset and build again? And what does it look like?
“(In Station Eleven) it feels like it’s driven by art and community and I assume some really inventive sort of greenhouse farming.
“But yeah, there’s something lovely about it because, fair enough it’s set in a dystopian world, but it seems far more optimistic ... and just sort of grounded in what it might be like.
“In this show, they put such an emphasis on nature, having come back and reclaimed the earth after human interference have gone away.
“And I thought that was so beautiful.”
For stories centring on the “Year 20”, Station Eleven showcases a group of survivors who call themselves The Traveling Symphony, which is made up of theatre actors.
This Shakespeare troupe is managed by Kirsten Raymonde (Davis) who was a child actor (portrayed by Matilda Lawler) before the devastating flu hit.
These artistes travel from one community to another, which have popped up over the years, performing stage plays to both share this form of art and to keep it alive.
Davis surmised: “The Traveling Symphony goes around and really, it doesn’t just perform but it gives hope and life back to the people that it visits. And that’s just such a telling thing
“Because even during the pandemic, we were all really clamouring, waiting, for not just movie theatres, but actual life theatres to open.
“Whether it was a concert or a live theatre experience, you get the feeling that this is what it means to be alive; that I’m happy to be alive.”
With art presented as a means to uplift human spirit in this post-apocalyptic world, it’s little wonder that the two actors chose art as the thing they’d like to see being sustained even if civilisation was on the verge of collapse.
Davis elaborated to StarLifestyle: “I think art is like a big catch-all umbrella for humanity and empathy, and in trying to understand people who are foreign to you and trying to get inside mindsets that you can’t quite grasp immediately. I mean, that’s reading and acting...
“I think these things that sort of transcend differences are probably the important things to keep alive ... you can commune through music when everything else is falling apart.”
Patel added: “Yeah, I agree. That’s the first thing that pops to my mind – art and music. Like Station Eleven shows, even when everything’s gone and there’s no electricity, you can still perform, and you can still play music.
“That will never go anywhere. So, in a way ... it just will stay alive.”
Although the characters aren’t many and the locations are few, Station Eleven digs deep into stories about relationships and realising what’s important when life hangs in the balance.
In episode three of Station Eleven, the focus shifts to another pair of characters introduced in Episode One – company woman Miranda Carroll (Danielle Deadwyler) and movie star Arthur Leander (Gael Garcia Bernal).
It shows how the two arrive where they do when the audiences first meet them.
It also details the early stages of the outbreak. And, hey, it is set in Malaysia... there are even phrases and words that are spoken in Malay.
While the episode itself wasn’t filmed in Malaysia – imdb.com lists filming locations as the United States and Canada – Davis and Patel both shared that they would have liked to have come to Malaysia.
“I wish I could say yes, but there was this pandemic,” replied Davis to the question if they had a chance to visit this part of the world.
“Yeah, we couldn’t get out. I’d love to though, I really would,” continued Patel.
Davis also shared: “The woman who worked in the electrical department, Jane, she’s a Malaysian and she’s so lovely.
“She gave me a novel by a Malaysian writer at the end of the show. But she has really whet my appetite for visiting Malaysia.”
Station Eleven is available on HBO Go. New episode will be available every Thursday.
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