The stars of Amazon Prime's new 10-part series The Man in The High Castle have described the 'thrilling and terrifying' scope of the project which imagines a world in which German and Japan won World War II and now share occupation of the United States.
Alexa Davalos plays Juliana Crain, a law-abiding citizen who lives in the Japan-controlled Pacific side of the US, while Luke Kleintank plays Joe Blake, who early on joins the resistance in Nazi-occupied east coast, although in his case all is not what it seems.
Alexa spoke to What's on TV about working on the big-budget 'alternate history': "It was incredibly exciting for a myriad of reasons. I think [original novelist] Phillip K Dick was a massive draw... Just because he was incredibly productive. I was blown away by the fact the man could write five novels in a year, I don't know that that's very common. But the scope of this project is enormous, which is both terrifying and thilling... [It was] very exciting to work on this."
Luke was conflicted about how easy it was to imagine this scenario as an actor: "I think it was easy because of the sets they created and stepping into the outfits, I think that was the easy part. But having to pontificate on what it would be like to live in this kind of world, that was tough. You just had to go into your imagination, and separate yourself from your own reality, the reality we have today. That was tough."
Early on in the pilot episode of The Man in the High Castle, Juliana is given a package which reveals a film with newsreel footage that seems to show the Allies winning the war, NOT Germany and Japan, and it's this device that moves the narrative into a whole new world of mystery, suspicion, deceit and confusion about what's real and what's not.
The Man in the High Castle is available to stream on Amazon Prime from Friday, November 20.
Watch the interview with Alexa Davalo and Luke Kleintank, above."]
