Actress Chloe Grace Moretz did not sign onto the Prime Video sci-fi series “The Peripheral” lightly. As her first series regular role on a TV series, the “Carrie” star knew the substantial commitment involved, which made it all the more important for her to connect with her character.
“A lot of thought went into it, I think I was really – I wouldn’t say trepidatious, but I was really aware of the undertaking of doing a TV show,” Moretz told TheWrap in an interview about the show. “You’re talking about 600, 700, 800 pages of a character. Eight episodes is eight hours of content to have to film, and I was aware that that was something that you have to be able to live with the character for that amount of time.”
Moretz plays Flynne Fisher in the adaptation of the William Gibson novel, which hails from “Westworld” executive producers Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy as well as creator Scott B. Smith. Fisher lives with her brother and ailing mother in the near-future, but when she plugs into what she thinks is an AR game, she discovers her consciousness is actually being transported into a far (and post-apocalyptic) future, piloting a robot body.
“I was really, really in love with the idea of the story, I really felt connected to Flynne Fisher as a person and I saw a large amount of similarities between myself and her,” Moretz continued. “It was an opportunity for me to, I think, peel back layers in a lot of ways. For me, it was a very vulnerable character. I think I was able to show a lot of myself within it, which was exciting and very scary at the same time.”
Moretz co-stars with Jack Reynor (“Sing Street”) who plays her older brother in the series, and the two became fast friends. They met on a FaceTime call that lasted three hours and talked “nothing about the show,” she says, adding they had an “uncanny amount of similarities” in their upbringing and how each thinks.
When they showed up in London ahead of production, each had 14 days of quarantining to do for COVID protocols, during which time they continued to chat on FaceTime.
“The first time we physically met each other in the real world, we already knew each other very well,” Reynor added. “Deeply. It was crazy.”
And as for the story ahead, given Nolan and Joy’s penchant for keeping a tight lid on spoilers? Moretz says since she’s in nearly every scene, she’s been told what lies ahead.
New episodes of “The Peripheral” drop Fridays on Prime Video.
