The Big Picture

Lewis Pullman’s face has been everywhere this year, from The Starling Girl to Lessons in Chemistry, where he plays Calvin Evans, the love of Elizabeth Zott’s life. Pullman’s character in Lessons in Chemistry is a jazz lover, and the music reflects his chaotic but pattern-seeking approach to chemistry. Pullman is interested in playing more romantic leads and enjoyed the unique twist on romance in Lessons in Chemistry, which deviated from traditional storytelling.

Lewis Pullman has had a hell of a year. From the premiere of The Starling Girl at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to working with the late William Friedkin on The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, his face has been everywhere on streaming and in theaters— most notably, in Apple TV+’s hit series Lessons in Chemistry, the Brie Larson-led drama following a chemist who gets pushed out of the lab and into a very different line of work.

In it, Pullman plays Calvin Evans, a fellow chemist who is not only the emotional core of Elizabeth Zott’s (Larson) world but also the love of her life. Though his physical presence in the series is minimal, Calvin’s impact on the story is unmatched, both for Elizabeth and for Harriet Sloane (Aja Naomi King), who are brought together by their affection for a singularly kind, intelligent man. With the show now in the rearview, Collider was excited to sit down with Pullman to discuss the series and his experience working with its nearly all-female creative team, including his relationship with Larson. Over the course of the interview, we discussed how he relates to Calvin as a character, the music he associates with the jazz-loving chemist, and whether he’d want to play more romantic leads going forward, a sentiment the internet is sure to agree with.

Lessons In Chemistry In the 1950s, Elizabeth Zott’s dream of being a scientist is challenged by a society that says women belong in the domestic sphere; she accepts a job on a TV cooking show and sets out to teach a nation of housewives way more than recipes. Release Date 2023-00-00 Cast Brie Larson, Lewis Pullman, Aja Naomi King Main Genre Drama Genres Drama Seasons 1 Creator Lee Eisenberg

I know that you’re also a musician with your band Atta Boy, aside from being an actor, and as far as Lessons in Chemistry goes, Calvin is a massive fan of jazz. Were there any songs or any kind of music in particular that you associated with him?

LEWIS PULLMAN: Wow. That’s a cool right off the bat question. Well, it’s interesting because initially in the script, Calvin was more of a fan of… I think I have a playlist. Let’s see what I’ve got on here. He was more a fan of Frank Sinatra, so I started off listening to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and Louis Armstrong, but Lee Eisenberg and Sarah Adina Smith and the rest of the writers I think had a great point, which was that Calvin…his strategy for chemistry and the way he works best is by kind of almost stirring up all this debris of chaos and then finding the patterns within.

And so there was something about the rhythmic nature of some of the more hectic jazz musicians that suited how he worked best, and suited also the contrast of how Elizabeth works best. So I had to kind of pivot in there, but I still did end up listening to some of my old playlist, ’cause the jazz, I personally don’t connect as much to the jazz, but the jazz was much easier to dance like an absolute fool too. So that was helpful.

Awesome. Just while I’m thinking about music, I was at the Atta Boy show in Brooklyn this month and I just wanted to tell you, you guys did a fantastic job.

PULLMAN: No way, Maggie. Oh my God. Thank you for coming. That’s so awesome.

Of course. And I hope you guys tour again soon. I would love to see you live again.

PULLMAN: We want to. That was so much fun. That was such a fun show. It’s such a sweet, welcoming audience.

Image via Apple TV+

For lack of a better word, Calvin really serves as the romantic hero in Elizabeth’s journey, and you also notably starred in Press Play last year with Clara Rugaard. Are romantic leads kind of a thing you’re interested in doing going forward, or is that a coincidence?

PULLMAN: No, it is something I’m definitely interested in. I think what intrigues me is that both of these were kind of disguised romances. That wasn’t the center. Press Play a little bit, but that was also a time travel movie, and then this is a series about Elizabeth Zott that happens to kind of get kicked off with this romance. I don’t know, maybe there’s something intimidating about just doing a rom-dram, or something [where] there’s nothing to hide behind. So both of those were really appealing to me, ’cause they just had a twist to them that wasn’t expected. Because in Lessons in Chemistry, it’s not your average trajectory. Even the way that the writers on this [wrote] the meet-cute and how Bonnie wrote everything, it’s not traditional, which I think is what makes it exciting. How to convey all the things that we know and love so much about a rom-com or a rom-dram in a way that feels new and unexpected was really appealing. I love getting hit by cars and vehicles.

Yeah. [laughs] It’s such a shocking moment. I had read the book, and still watching it, it was like, “Oh my God.”

PULLMAN: I know. Me too. When I watched it I was shocked also, and I did it.

I will say, I know about a million people who would love to see you in a romantic comedy or a romance drama. So if you want to keep doing that going forward, you definitely have an audience behind you for it.

PULLMAN: Oh, that’s good to hear. I’d love to. I would love that.

Image via Apple TV+

You’ve had a fantastic year, with The Starling Girl out of Sundance and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, and then this, and you also shot Outer Range Season 2. That’s an insane amount of projects just for one year, but what draws you to a project? Is it a genre, a character, a director?

PULLMAN: All the things that you just mentioned are super different. A lot of it’s character and a lot of it is also, like Caine Mutiny, that was just the opportunity to get to work with William Friedkin, who’s an obvious film legend. But then, yes, it’s about trying to find my way into a character that feels like two things. One that, if I’m going to be able to bring something to it that I feel like scares me and intimidates me, maybe there’s a shade or a sliver of myself that I know is in there, but I haven’t retracted it or I haven’t excavated there.

That usually is terrifying, but also exciting and ends up feeling like a free fall that I kind of enjoy. That, and then working with people whose work I admire and not repeating any sort of characters. That’s something of late. I’m searching for things that feel new or feel unexpected and feel scary. But also, you never know, when a script lands in your lap, you just can’t really predict. I try and just have low expectations because sometimes that leads to great surprises and low disappointment, and you can only manifest so much.

Speaking of Outer Range Season 2, is there anything that you can give away about what we can expect from Rhett that season? It seems like, end of Season 1, he was the only one that came out relatively unscathed.

PULLMAN: I think every character’s journey in the second season is pretty surprising. I was pretty surprised to read what they had done with it in the best way possible. So I think there’s a lot of clues that can be mined and then there’s a lot of things that are coming out of absolutely nowhere and it’s going to be really exciting. And really, it’s got that metaphysical kind of bizarre buzz and energy to it. So I’m excited. I’m excited to watch it. I haven’t seen any of it.

Image via Apple TV+

When that got renewed, I was so thrilled because it ends on such a cliffhanger moment that I was like, “If this doesn’t come back for a second season, I will be so sad.”

PULLMAN: Yeah, I know. I would’ve been too. I was happy to be able to follow through with a lot of that.

Going back to Lessons in Chemistry, you have an entire episode dedicated to Calvin that’s pretty much new material that wasn’t in the book. So working on that, what was that like? Did you have any influence on that, or were you just given all of this extra material that wasn’t in the book to work with?

PULLMAN: Lee Eisenberg, the showrunner, really set up a good dialogue, and Brie [Larson] is so incorporative of everybody’s ideas and wants to make sure that everyone’s perspectives are included. So it was really an honor to be able to be a participant in some of those conversations. And then also, this is a beautiful feminist mythological tale. Not mythological. Odyssey of this woman, Elizabeth Zott. We were so lucky to have all female directors. So in a lot of ways, I wanted to be there to best serve the story and to best serve Elizabeth’s journey, and how to elevate it and to put gas in the tank of where she goes and what she discovers and what she accomplishes. And so I did a lot of that just by probably listening.

Image via Apple TV+

Speaking of lifting Elizabeth up, you’re obviously working very, very closely with Brie Larson. What was that like? What was it like getting to work with her in such an intimate setting?

PULLMAN: It was an awesome creative experience. It was just an incredibly enriching creative experience because she undertook this role with no…what’s the word? I guess she undertook it without taking for granted the weight and the responsibility of it. She works so hard. She’s insanely smart. She really also takes a lot of time and energy to make the set feel fun and safe, and she brings games on the set for everybody to play in between takes. She institutes Croc Fridays. That kind of an approach to working really kind of is an umbrella of tone for the rest of the cast and crew.

And so when somebody works like that, you really want to try and match them. And I think her wanting to do justice to Bonnie’s incredible story while also balancing this degree of gymnastics that you have to do when you’re adapting a book into a different medium, she really kind of used that challenge as an opportunity to further deepen the story as opposed to getting pigeonholed trying to do justice to every single storyline. I think she was constantly thinking, “How can we elevate this? How can we not just make this an exact replica of the book and how can we give it its own life?” Which I think, that kind of attitude is so rare to get to work with and so it was an absolute pleasure every day on set.

Calvin as a character resonates with a lot of people. Do you see any of yourself in Calvin or vice versa now that you’ve finished working on the show?

PULLMAN: I see things that are similar and I see things that I admire about him that I don’t have that I wish I did that I want to work towards. I think there are certain blind spots he has that I can relate to, where you have such tunnel vision on something that you can miss something entirely. And I think the way that he overcomes that is with such an open eagerness to learn and to accept and grow and I think he’s, in all honesty, a little [more] ahead of the curve than I am in that. I’m a slow learner. But that’s one of my favorite parts about Calvin is that beautiful openness to change and to shift your kaleidoscope of perspective willingly.

Check out Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV+.

Watch on Apple TV+