Peter Jacobson was immediately drawn in by the script for Colony, and it didn’t hurt that the creative mind behind the show was Carlton Cuse (Lost). While some secrets about the hows and whys of the sci-fi drama won’t be revealed early on, Jacobson promises that quickly into the pilot, viewers will get the basic overall idea of what’s happened to the Los Angeles pictured in this series debuting this fall.
Jacobson says most people believe his character’s evil after watching the trailer, but he doesn’t think that’s necessarily true.
“I’m hoping to project – and I think the writers are trying to project – a character who we know is on the bad side but has a lot of different factors pushing him. He’s, like everybody who’s just a citizen, maybe just a vice principal in the suburbs, found his way into a very unique position,” explained Jacobson. “I’m not saying that could happen to anybody, but the question is what would you do if all of a sudden you were presented with circumstances way beyond you could ever imagine? What kind of choices would you make? So, I think he’s a good guy, a good man, but he’s in a really tricky spot and he’s doing the wrong thing a lot. Again, we’ll see as the show goes on that he’s got to be tough out of the gate, but I think we’ll see that he evolves.”
Jacobson also believes that part of the appeal and beauty of the pilot is that we don’t learn much about the actual invasion.
“I think what serves notice that it will be a great series is that the tension is really deep really quick, and there’s not a lot of knowledge. You get a family that we recognize as having breakfast in their house but there are little hints. There’s barbed wire, there’s a panned shot outside the house and you see there’s barbed wire on top of the fence. A normal family with three kids living in Los Angeles doesn’t have barbed wire on their fence. They hold for a while on the shot of the middle child and you realize he’s not there. There’s panic over a dropped egg,” said Jacobson. “These are things that indicate and hint that something is really, really wrong.”
Watch the entire interview for more on what to expect from Colony:
The Plot:
Set in the very near future, Colony centers on one family’s struggle to survive and bring liberty back to the people of an occupied Los Angeles. SAG winner Josh Holloway stars as former FBI agent Will Bowman and Satellite Award winner Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead) stars as his wife, Katie, in the series which takes place in a dangerous world of divided ideologies. While some choose to collaborate with the occupation and benefit from the new order, others rebel and suffer the consequences.
After being separated from their middle son during the invasion, Will and Katie are willing to do whatever is necessary to be reunited with him. So when the powerful Proxy Synder (Jacobson) offers Will a chance to get his son back if he will collaborate with the occupational government, Will and Katie find themselves faced with the toughest decision of their lives. They will have to go beyond whatever they thought possible, risking their lives and their relationship to protect their family.
