For Harold Perrineau, life has gone from one puzzling series to yet another, from the landmark unsolvable mystery of “Lost” to the infernally and eternally trapped town in “From,” whose third season streams Sunday on MGM+.
Years have passed and townspeople remain stuck in the tiny Midwest hamlet where they can drive in but never, ever leave. Perrineau’s Sheriff Boyd Stevens is still hanging on even as everyone seeks safety behind locked doors each night which is when ghouls come out to torture and slaughter those available.
What’s clear is that “From” is not a polite sci-fi series questioning man’s place in the universe. Rather it’s an old-fashioned monster movie, a series whose appeal is clearly to see who’s next and how spectacularly awful their deaths might be.
“Look, John Griffin always calls our show, ‘A character study masquerading as a horror series.’ Do you know what I mean?” Perrineau, 61, said of the show’s creator in a Zoom interview.
“So for me, it’s been really great, because we’ve been able to bring real people, real characters in a real situation (or what feels like real situations), responding as honestly as they can in this thing that’s wildly fantastical.”
The ghouls are indeed scary, precisely because they’re so ugly, so vicious, so frighteningly unkillable.
“It’s crazy,” Perrineau, acknowledged, “but these people, that’s what they’re really tuned in to. That’s what really makes the show great. And I’m loving being part of that.
“And while I do think that that’s exactly one of the things that people tune in to see, here’s the caveat.
“We tune in to see that but we then we tune to see, ‘Now, what do you do?’ Like, What’s the effect of that?
“It’s terrible to see something happen to a character but personally I look to see how it lands on everyone else. That’s probably worse than watching the terrible things that happen. That’s why I think it’s really interesting for people to watch.
“For sure, they do want to see blood and guts and gore. But then, ‘How that plays’ is really good.”
Perrineau’s sheriff has had an unending share of troubles over these three seasons.
“He’s being destroyed. There’s no raising him up anywhere. The town is fully bullying him.
“They’re just like a mean bully and every time you think, ‘Oh, here’s a win,’ they do something even worse. Like, they just kicked him with steel toes. And now it just keeps getting worse. They keep bum rushing him.
“But he keeps bullheadedly marching forward. Still trying to get everybody out of the town, save his son and everybody else that he can bring with him.”
Season 3 of “From” streams Sunday on MGM+
