Netflix Series Preview: Sense8 

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Created and written by The Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, Sense8 tells the story of eight strangers around the world who experience a violent vision followed by the ability to connect with each other’s thoughts, actions and emotions. Suddenly, these eight people must piece together how and why this happened before a mysterious organization hunts them down and destroys them.

Executive producer J. Michael Straczynski talks about the series and working with The Wachowskis.

Straczynski: “Sense8 is really a game of pieces, in every sense of that word. If I were to tell someone in a sentence why they should watch, the answer would be, ‘Because you will see things in this show you have never, ever seen before.’

“When we told people what we wanted to do with this story – the sheer scale of it, the overlapping elements of the story, the locations – practically everybody we met told us it simply wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be done and if it could be done it would probably kill us in the doing. So we took a deep breath, collectively acknowledged that what we were about to embark upon was impossible … and did it anyway.”

“Neither Lana nor Andy nor I wanted to just do a television show. We wanted to do it if we could jointly do something no one had ever done before and address themes that have rarely been addressed in mainstream TV and never this blatantly in a nominally science-fiction series: issues of gender, identity, sexuality and politics. We wanted to talk about the strength of the individual, but also about the belief that we are more than the sum of our parts.”

Edited for space and content.

Meet the Characters:

As an otherworldly figure named Angel, Daryl Hannah helps jumpstart Sense8’s universe with a powerful opening scene in which she makes an emotional sacrifice in a Chicago church.

As Jonas, Naveen Andrews portrays a determined and inscrutable man who tries to bring the eight strangers together. He intersects with several of them along the way, including Brian J. Smith‘s Will, a Chicago police officer and Jamie Clayton‘s Nomi, a transgender woman in San Francisco.

Will

Nomi

In London, the visions strike Tuppence Middleton‘s Riley, an up-and-coming Icelandic DJ. In Berlin and Max Riemelt‘s Wolfgang, a conflicted man with a criminal past. In Mumbai, they hit Tina Desai‘s Kala, a woman poised to marry a man she does not love.

Riley

Wolfgang

Kala

Aml Ameen‘s Capheus is a young and determined bus driver who needs life-saving medicine for his mother.

Capheus

Miguel Angel Silvestre is Lito, a successful and closeted actor. Doona Bae is Sun, a Seoul businesswoman who harbors some surprising secrets.

Sun

Lito

All 12 episodes of Sense8 will be available on Friday, June 5th at 12:01 am PT on Netflix.