The Big Picture

Season 4 of Apple TV’s For All Mankind takes us into unexplored territory with new challenges for Ed Baldwin and the Happy Valley crew. Joel Kinnaman discusses how Baldwin’s character arc has stripped away his “all-American hero” facade throughout the seasons. Kinnaman teases an epic “asteroid heist” in the Season 4 finale and praises his co-star Krys Marshall’s standout performance.

In Apple TV’s sci-fi series For All Mankind, Season 4 has drifted into, for the most part, unexplored territory, just like Goldilocks is drifting in to stir up trouble among our cast. As we travel deeper into the season, ahead of the finale, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to speak with Joel Kinnaman about playing one of the show’s original characters throughout the decades, Ed Baldwin.

From creators Richard Moore and showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, Season 4 jumped us ahead on their alternate timeline to the early 2000s. With Happy Valley now established on Mars, the world turns its eyes to a new conquest: mining asteroids. The possibility of reaping invaluable resources and cashing in trillions poses a new obstacle for Baldwin and Happy Valley’s commander, Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall), who’ve had tension for decades. Now, having to face his inevitable aging, a physical condition that hinders his performance on top of his attitude, and personal tragedy, Baldwin is grappling for control.

During his interview, Kinnaman discusses how much he knew of Baldwin’s character arc before stepping on set for Season 1. He talks about how his “all-American hero” front has slowly been stripped down throughout the seasons and how Baldwin has to face it in Season 4, in particular. While their characters may frequently clash, Kinnaman says working with Marshall has been a highlight on set throughout the series getting to watch her performances evolve, he shares his 6-hour makeup routine, and teases the Ocean’s 11-style “asteroid heist” Season 4 has been building up to. Check it all out in the interview below.

For All Mankind Exploring the possibilities that might exist if the global space race had continued and where humanity would be now. Release Date November 1, 2019 Main Genre Sci-Fi Rating TV-MA Seasons 4

COLLIDER: I like throwing a curveball before we get started. You’ve done a lot of cool stuff in your career already, what was the most nervous you’ve been the night before filming began? Day one of a project, it’s the night before you’re getting ready to go to bed, what’s the thing you’re like, “Oh what have I done?”

JOEL KINNAMAN: The weird thing is it’s more like doing late night talk shows for some reason. I don’t know why, but those get me much more than going to work. Actually, it goes back to being on stage, going on stage. Even if you’re just playing for 300 retired people in a retirement home in some little town in Sweden, I’ll be more nervous going on that stage than shooting a big scene with Steven Spielberg, or whatever. Not that I worked with Spielberg yet, but you get the idea. For some reason, it’s just tougher. It’s always like the first days. I don’t really get that nervous to do film, but it’s usually the first day.

Maybe it was first day on James Gunn’s Suicide Squad. There were just so many actors on there, so you didn’t really know what was going on or if there was gonna be some bad egos you have to deal with. Then like five minutes in you realize, “Oh, this is gonna be great.” But yeah, the talk shows, they really get me for some reason. Then I almost always enjoy it while I do it, but it’s fucking always anxiety before.

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Yeah, the key is having your stories and the things you want to share before you sit down in that chair.

KINNAMAN: Yeah, exactly.

I love how people just don’t realize that all these talk shows, they’re not rehearsed but they’re rehearsed.

KINNAMAN: Yeah. No, there’s definitely an outline.

Joel Kinnaman Breaks Down Ed Baldwin’s All-American Hero Archetype

With For All Mankind, Matt, Ben, and Ron told me that they originally had like a six or seven-year plan, like a basic outline of where it was all gonna go. When you signed on, how much did you actually know about the arc of Ed? How much did they tell you?

KINNAMAN: I knew quite a bit, but it was very much an outline so it was a basic idea of where the character was going. But what really drew me to this, and the part of their pitch that really got the hook in me is that he is, like, on his face this American archetype, but then, even in the first season, what happens to a person like that, this sort of all-American hero type where his son dies and he can’t deal with emotions, he can’t deal with his own rage, he has a lot of deficiencies in his inner life and the way that he processes emotion. Then, over the course of the show, we start tearing down this archetype, and it starts to culminate in the fourth season where his physical inabilities start to show themselves, and his confidence.

A person like Ed is very much driven and guided by confidence. That’s why he’s allowed himself to be impulsive over all these years because he’s always been so supremely confident that he’s gonna pull it out in some way one way or another, and he has. And then all of a sudden that confidence starts to break down, his physical abilities aren’t what they used to be, and he’s all of a sudden making these impulsive decisions. But things are not going his way and people have died because of his mistakes. Then that paralyzing existential anxiety starts creeping in and the fear of death becomes a central part of him. So, it was very fascinating to go through this journey and to get to play this character over the decades and really see him as an aging man and where his confidence is slowly starting to seep out.

I’ve seen the first eight episodes of Season 4, I’ve not seen the last two. I know that the last episode is an hour and 17 minutes, which means it’s a big one, so what can you tease people about the finale and perhaps an asteroid?

KINNAMAN: Oh man, I don’t know what I’m allowed to say. Am I allowed to say asteroid heist? I don’t know. I don’t think I can say that.

Listen, it’s all building towards the asteroid, the whole season.

KINNAMAN: It’s a crazy vision and it’s some kind of Ocean’s 11 in space that’s going on on a solar system scale. It’s a pretty epic ride that we get to go on.

When you read the script for that, I don’t know if Matt and Ben told you in advance what was coming, but this is a TV show, this is not a movie, and what they’re building towards is a fucking movie, you know what I mean?

KINNAMAN: I was joking, I was like, “Ben, are you also in the makeup chair? Because you look 10 years older, dude.” This season definitely put a lot more gray in the hair of those formerly young gentlemen. They’ve just been raising the ante every show, every season, and this season is by far the biggest one, and the finale is kind of bonkers.

Joel Kinnaman Says ‘For All Mankind’ Co-Star Krys Marshall Is “on Another Level”
Image by Jefferson Chacon

I really can’t wait. Do you have a favorite scene or sequence from the four seasons thus far, one that you were like, “This is just awesome. I can’t believe I’m part of this show?”

KINNAMAN: There’s a lot of it, but it’s funny because the experience of playing and then what you see is different, and usually the most exciting scenes to play aren’t the big action pieces that then might be the most exciting when you watch it. I would say my highlight was some of the scenes I had with Krys, when we go head-to-head. I love seeing her evolve as an actor and really step up, and I thought she showed a level in this season that I had not seen from her before. She really showed everyone what a tremendous actor she is. I mean, she was always great, but this was on another level. So, we had a couple of scenes that were really, really fun.

You had to wear makeup in Season 4 and I’m just curious, did you ever get to leave set wearing the makeup just to take it out for a spin so you could see people’s reactions to you being almost anonymous?

KINNAMAN: I should have done that, but they kept close tabs on me. Also, the thing with this makeup is it was a bitch, let me tell you. Very often I had midnight get-ups and I’d be in the chair at 1 AM and then be done by seven and start shooting at seven, and then you tack on a 12 to 14 hour day on there. I also wanted the long days because I wanted to sit in the makeup chair as little as possible. I don’t know if it was the right decision, but those days were really long. But then you spend six hours getting the makeup put on you, which is really annoying because someone is poking in your eye for six hours, but then the day starts and you’re constantly getting touch-ups because you gotta keep all this makeup on you. As soon as you do big facial expressions, or if you accidentally go out in the sun for a little bit, you get a little hot and you get sweaty, if you just walk fast, you get sweaty and then precipitation builds up underneath, and then it becomes a bubble, so it’s like this constant maintenance of it. Every minute that I’m not shooting, I’m just basically sitting, meditating, and trying to not scream at people.

Yeah, I don’t think people truly realize what it takes to pull off that kind of makeup making a series. Do you know what you’re doing next year, what you’re filming?

KINNAMAN: I do, but the past six months have just been constant schedule changes. So I’ve had a full year that’s had four different iterations at this point. So, I think I know what I’m doing next year, but we’ll see. Especially when a couple of these projects are independent, as well, and with independent films you don’t know if you’re shooting until the day that you’re on set.

For All Mankind Season 4 is available to stream on Apple TV+.

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