#Foundation Star Leah Harvey Reinvents What An Isaac Asimov Hero Can Be [Interview]

I didn’t know about it beforehand, but as soon as I found out about the show, and was auditioning, I looked into the books. I got the books. I started reading them because I love sci-fi. I love watching sci-fi, and then I’ve now actually discovered while filming that I also love reading sci-fi, so I’m a new fan. I’m part of the group now.

As much as I enjoy Isaac Asimov, his writing is really heavy on ideas, and people talking about those ideas. Your take on Salvor is somebody who’s out in the action, in the thick of it. Can you talk about that transformation?

Yeah. I mean, as an actor, my job is to look at the material that I have, and work from that, and make it real. And so I had to read the scripts and very much immerse myself in that, so yes. The books have such incredible characters and incredible themes and cores of bits of the characters, and I think that we’ve managed to keep that character core. I’m really excited for the people to see how she develops into the Salvor that we will see. It’s a big journey that she goes on throughout the season, and I just can’t wait for people to see that journey. It’s going to be really cool. I don’t know how people are going to react because I still don’t know, but it’s going to be great.

All the old art of Salvor, all the book cover art and illustrations people have drawn over the years, it’s always a stodgy-looking white guy. I love that Salvor has been updated to be you.

I think that the core of it is what Salvor’s dealing with, which essentially is a crisis. And so as long as I, from an actor point of view, if I believed in that crisis, then I was going to be, hopefully, a really believable, solid character, and create a character that people can relate to. And also, Salvor’s really badass, so I got to play with that a lot, and explore my own badassery, if you know what I mean?

The costumes must help. There’s not a single frame of the show where Salvor doesn’t look cool.

I did feel cool. It’s funny, in the morning, I would get up and I would go and get my hair and makeup done, and then put the costume on. And obviously, I have a British accent, and as soon as the costume went on, my accent would just change, and I would just suddenly become the character. The costumes were made so, so well, and became, actually, my talisman, in a sense, for finding Salvor, was feeling the costume and the shoes and the outfits and the jacket and the gloves, all of these details that are so useful for me in making the character. But yeah, I would completely transform every day. And then, coming out of character, my hair is being undone, all this stuff, I’d go back to myself very slowly. It’s a process.

The thing that I find really compelling about the show is there are no easy villains and heroes. But, at the same time, the crisis is so overwhelming. There’s an overwhelming sense of doom. People are burying their heads in the sand and some people, especially the younger folks like, “We got to do something.” For something that was written so many years ago, it feels very timely right now.

It does feel really timely. And that’s, I think, what’s really cool about the show is that it’s super relatable in that sense for people of all ages as well, and all walks of life. Yeah, that’s really cool, actually. I think that like as well because it’s so vast, it’s reminding us that we’re actually small cogs in quite a big machine, us as humans, us too. and as long as we do our best in what we’re trying to do, then we’ll be fine.