[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
How’s everyone doing after that premiere? The mind bending continues this week in the second episode of From‘s fourth season as the town makes a horrific discovery about their missing neighbor. Julie looks backward to try to find a path forward, or sideways, and seeks help from Randall. Tabitha and Jade wrestle with their guilt and Jade goes back to his board to search for answers about the new warning that “knowledge comes at a cost.”
Acosta starts to unravel with the latest tragedy. Ethan finds his own way to say goodbye. Elgin and Boyd come to an agreement about the official story of what happened in the S3 finale. And the creepy new wolf in missionary’s clothing, Sophia, makes a new friend as much as we wish she wouldn’t. Jack Bender directs a script by John Griffin based on his story with Jeff Pinkner.
In the second part of my conversation with series star and Harold Perrineau, he talks about the plot twist that surprised him the most, how the show has evolved, and getting to return for filming without a fear of frostbite.
In its first three seasons, FROM has had no shortage of OMGWTAF moments, and the reveal at the end of last week’s season premiere was another whopper. If you were gobsmacked to discover that the man in yellow is a) a shape shifter and b) now walking around wearing the meat suit of a seemingly guileless but very much not twentysomething woman, you were not alone.
“You asked what was the most surprising, and I’m gonna have to be honest, the man in yellow was like, ‘Wait, the man in yellow did what? He took off a suit and then he did what,” he laughs. “That was the most surprising.”
Perrineau loves that the show has moved from a singular hero story to a group hero story built on the people in Fromville finding a way to work together views. Longtime viewers will recall that when the series began, Boyd and Donna had established two very distinct and intentionally separate strongholds, with Boyd running the town and Donna controlling Colony House.
Over the course of the first three seasons, those boundaries have disappeared and the pair have become formidable besties. “One of the things that I think is really great about the writing is that, quite often you see stories [where] you have the hero and he stays the hero throughout and he saves everybody. And I just don’t think that that’s really real,” he explains.
“I mean none of this is real, I hope. Please, God. I hope not. We’re going through enough right now. We don’t need that, too. But what I love is that, I think that at the end of the day, the only way through is with each other. That’s it. No one person is going to come and save you.”
“You might have somebody who’s really strong and Boyd is really strong and he keeps going forward, even though he doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore because he’s out of his mind. But he still believes that he can do this. Really quickly, the other people jump in to say, ‘No, we can do this. And they all now can start contributing.”
“His son grabs him because his dad needs a hold. Jade comes in and says, ‘Wait, I think I have a way we can try to figure this out.’ He’s not there by himself. We’re all there. The only way through this is with each other.”
Like all of us watching trepidatiously at home, there’s a “but.” “I really love that about the writing in the show. And I love that about the direction that we’re going. Now. I hope it stays though. I can’t trust it,” he laughs.
When talking to the cast during Season 3, several of them mentioned the physical challenges of returning for filming during a wickedly cold winter in Halifax. They were very happy to go back into production for Season 4 during the much more temperate summer, albeit with the notoriously aggressive black flies. “I’ll take summers all day long. All day long,” says Perrineau.
“I’m going to be the first to tell you I don’t love the flies … and when [I have to swat them away] while I’m trying to shoot an emotional scene. I don’t love the tick check every 10 seconds.”
“But you know what’s terrible in freezing cold weather? Trying to push cows around. We shot for a week in December, went home and had Christmas and New Year’s and then came back and that first week, because I just wasn’t ready for it. I got frostbite.”
From Season 4 airs Sundays linearly at 9pm/8c on MGM+ in the US and streams Mondays in Canada on Paramount+ via Prime Video subscription channels. New episodes drop on the MGM+ app at 12:01 am ET Sundays. All S1-S3 episodes are available in the US on MGM+ online and via the app, and on Prime Video, and in Canada on Paramount+. ICYMI, all of our previous coverage — over 40 pieces — is here.
Here’s a sneak peek of “Fray.”
Photos and videos courtesy of MGM+.
