Marvel's Helstrom is something of a "miracle baby" in the MCU. Marvel Television, the studio responsible for all of the MCU-adjacent TV shows, from Agents of SHIELD and Daredevil to Runaways and Cloak & Dagger, has essentially been closed down, with the next wave of Marvel shows on Disney+ aiming to be more connected to the movies and featuring many of the same cast members from the theatrical adventures reprising their roles. With that in mind, Helstrom on Hulu feels like the final chapter in the pre-Disney+ era of MCU TV shows.
The horror-tinged series features Alain Uy in the key role of Chris Yen, accomplice to the righteous vigilante, Ana Helstrom. Uy is arguably best known for his role in HBO's True Detective, though he has myriad credits across film, television, and video games, including the upcoming indie martial arts adventure, The Paper Tigers, which was just acquired by Well Go USA for a release at some point in the near future.
While promoting the release of Helstrom on Hulu, Alain Uy spoke to Screen Rant about his career in Hollywood. He talks about the joy of starring in a series as unique as Helstrom, and shares some Marvel-related perks he was gifted during production of the show. He also discusses how his production company, Them Too, has been impacted by the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Finally, he talks about an early role in the short-lived law drama, Just Legal, and shares some sweet stories about working with series leads Don Johnson and Jay Baruchel.
Helstrom is out now on Hulu.
There's something I've been asking around town, and I want to get your perspective. When you've got a project, like Helstrom, that comes out now, you don't generally get to go to the parties with the guys bringing food around and free cocktails and all that. Does that take the wind out of your sails, or is that not exactly why you do it?
It's certainly not why you do it! (Laughs) But I'd also be lying if I didn't tell you I was a little bummed out that we weren't able to really enjoy some of the victory laps, so to speak, of the work that we did. So, yeah, there's a lot of things I was looking forward to once we wrapped, but it is what it is. I can't complain too much, I suppose!
With that in mind, do you have anything that you're doing to celebrate the launch of Helstrom and your movie, The Paper Tigers?
What I have done in the past is never celebrate. I'm more interested in "what's the next thing?" Only in the last year or two have I really taken the advice of a lot of my friends who have been around for a lot longer than I have. They've always said to me, "Take the time out to breathe and take it in." Because it's really important. You work so hard to get to where you're at. Obviously, for me, I wallow in the defeats more than I celebrate the victories. The advice they would always give me is to make sure to do the same for the successes you have.
That's some great advice!
So what I tend to do, and this is something really simple, and it's not as glamorous as most people think, but I take the time to breathe and enjoy the moment. I try to slow it down as much as I can. What I do in the morning, especially of the premiere... I spent the first hour of the day not checking e-mails, not doing anything, and just basically thanking the universe for the opportunity. I enjoyed it that way. And then I had breakfast with my wife and my son and just made it about family. That's all I really did for celebrating the moment, so to speak.
That's probably the best way. I'm too obsessed with the material and the free cocktails.
(Laughs) Right.
I know you have your own company, Them Too. What are you doing to keep the ball rolling at all during this Covid thing?
I try to stay positive. Everything shut down in the beginning, and there was no real end in sight. We were all hopeful that we could go back to work. There were a lot of productions we had to punt down the field and see if they would ever come back .We're now in October, and a lot of those projects have been cancelled. A few have been rescheduled for next year, but those cancellations have affected us, obviously financially. But at the same time, it allowed for me and my creative team to develop the personal passion projects we were working on. The time we've spent away from production, be it a commercial, a photo shoot, or the narrative stuff we were producing, it definitely has allowed us and myself to write more original content and original scripts and develop other ideas I've always had on the back burner, and now I'm picking it up and really cooking it and seasoning it and hopefully it can be served, so to speak! Only recently, we've started production again, we're starting to get warmed up again and following all the protocols. It's been tough, but you've gotta keep pushing. The show has to go on, somehow.
Your show, Helstrom, it's a miracle baby, because we weren't sure what was going to happen!
(Laughs) Right!
It's got this cool, kinda heavy-metal aesthetic. It's a different take on this jolly universe we've seen from other angles. But being in a tangential corner of the Marvel universe clearly gave you the freedom to do some wild things. But my super important question is: did you get free comics and stuff?
I did! I got gifted a giant Marvel Encyclopedia of every Marvel character that was there, who ever existed. And then they also gifted us a comic book for the Son of Satan series. It was in this beautiful framed setup, and I took it out and had everyone sign it! I was like, it's probably blasphemous for me to take it out of this sealed packaging and have someone basically graffiti all over it, but I was like, I have to do it. I'm too much of a fanboy to not do that. There were a few other things that they gifted, too, which was super cool.
And you've got your movie, The Paper Tigers, which I'm very excited to see. But that whole independent film festival scene has been thrown into disarray. I know they have digital events now, so has that stabilized at all that you're aware of? Can filmmakers make the connections they need in the festival circuit to get their art in front of as many eyeballs as possible?
I think so. There's a lot of film festivals that immediately took to the virtual side of the festival circuit. The first one was Fantasia. That was where we were going to premiere our movie. Right off the bat, they were like, "We're gonna have to shut down the in-person festival, but we're going to do this virtually. That, to me, was the signal to everybody else that might have been watching, saying, "What do we do? How do we adapt?" They were fantastic in setting that up. I think, in some ways, a lot of other festivals may have looked at that model and gone, "Oh, this actually works. And it might work better, since they might not have seen our film if it was done in person like last year." So, in many ways, it's created a bigger buzz for our movie. A lot more people who were reviewing these types of films had access to it that they wouldn't have had if it wasn't virtual. In a lot of ways, it's been positive. obviously, you don't get to have that in-person meeting and bask in that adulation (Laughs), but at the end of the day, it's about the work. For people to see it is a blessing. We were fortunate enough, after the first film festival, that Well Go picked it up for distribution. That's amazing to us, that we were able to get a buyer, literally in the first festival. I know other international film festivals are screening it now, Busan Film Festival is screening it. And they're doing it in-person, as well. Unfortunately, we couldn't fly out because I think we're on the restricted list of countries that can't come... But it is what it is.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but it looks really cool and I can't wait to check it out.
It's a lot of fun.
I've got one more thing to ask you. It might be a little out of left field, but you were on an episode of one of my favorite TV shows, and I'd like to think that maybe our readers will get a kick out of it, and if they don't, too bad for them. You were a show I really liked that got cancelled after just a few episodes, called Just Legal.
Oh my God! Woah! Wow. Yes. Yeah. Oh man, that's a throwback!
It's never come out on DVD, it's not streaming anywhere, there weren't enough episodes for syndication, but Don Johnson is my all-time favorite actor,
It's Don Johnson, man! What a great person to work with. I'll tell you, we were shooting our episode when the network informed everybody on the cast that they weren't moving forward with the show. I think we had another four days left to shoot. So, you know, being a guest star on the show, I was thinking, "I guess that's it." But the producers were like, "We're gonna finish the episode." They were super generous, and they put me up on the series trailers for the rest of the show. And I remember talking to Don Johnson about it, and he was like, "You know, this is how this industry goes. But you know what? If we're gonna go out, let's go out swinging." I do remember him buying a huge, giant spread for lunch. It had lobster and steak and all the bells and whistles, and it was just from him. I thought that was the sweetest thing. I remember I became really close to Jay Baruchel, who was the other lead on it. He was like, "Man, Don's a stand-up guy. He knows how this industry is and how things may not get picked up. I'm bummed about it, but what a graceful way to go out." I really admired him, and the producers too, for saying, "We got cancelled, but let's have fun for the next four days and have a blast with this!"
That's so cool.
Wow, I'd totally forgotten about that shoot, man! Thanks for bringing it up!
Don bounced back, Jay bounced back, and you obviously bounced back, so everything's alright now!
Exactly, everything's alright. There's one other memory I'm reminded of. There's a scene where Don was supposed to slap me to knock some sense into me. And, you know, he wasn't supposed to get too close, but he did slap me pretty good on the take that they used. And I remember thinking, like, "Oh my God, Don Johnson just slapped me, this is so cool!" I told all my friends about it, and they just got a kick out of it. They were like, "Oh man, you got slapped by Don Johnson, bro! You made it in life!"
Well, thanks for taking the time to indulge me, I really appreciate it! The Paper Tigers looks fantastic, and Helstrom is really cool. I hope there's a future for your corner of the Marvel world, one way or another.
Yeah, we do too. It's something new that Marvel is trying, or at least Marvel TV was trying, and it feels like the fans are gravitating towards it and I hope that we start to build that momentum. You never know. We're all hoping for a second season, and we're all hoping to be coming back to this world. It's really up to the audience at this point, and we can only hope for the best.
And if you go down, you're going down swinging.