#The Expanse’s Steven Strait Looks Back On James Holden’s Journey To The Series Finale [Interview]

This must be a big day for you, now that the last episode is finally out.

It is, it is. It’s really hit me in the last 24 hours. I’m so proud of the season. I’m grateful that it’s out and people are able to see it, but it’s bittersweet, for sure. It’s definitely a bittersweet moment.

Absolutely. I know in our first conversation, we talked a little bit about some of your scenes in season 6, but we didn’t really get to dig into the end of the series, and Holden’s big moment when he becomes president of the Trade Authority, and he turns it over to Drummer. Can you just talk about that scene, and what you think it means for Holden as a character, and how you approached it?

It was a scene that I was looking forward to, one of the scenes I was looking forward to the most this year. I think it’s really emblematic of the kind of evolution Holden has made from the time we meet him on the Canterbury. He never stops being an idealist, but his version of idealism matures over time. 

I think by the end of the story, his particular kind of strength is very much one of humility and empathy. He’s a hero who chooses not to kill more often than not. He’s someone who turns away from violence most often. It’s a very different kind of masculinity than we often see in these kind of stories. His empathy and humility is the linchpin that allows all these sides to come together in the end. They look to him to be the figurehead of this because he’s neutral, because each side knows that, ultimately, Holden has humanity’s best interest at heart, not any one side. He has frustrated the hell out of all of them at different points in the series, but he does what he always believes is the right thing.

[Holden] has a moment to really cement the change that is necessary to break the wheel of violence and oppression, and he takes it. It’s a moment of real courage and bravery and strength. He knows two thirds of the system will hate him for this, but he knows it’s right. That, to me, is the thing about Holden that I’ve always loved playing with over the years, as an actor, because that quality in him, as much as it always remains there, really does evolve. He’s naive in the beginning. He’s an idealist, but it’s a naive idealism that is shaped through hard, awful moments of experiencing genocide, and blowing up doctors, and connecting circuits that sees vast death of an entire civilization, and all of this stuff that almost breaks him. And he always finds a way to pick himself up and learn from it and move.

Through the years, I think his world view gets more and more solid in his decision making, based on his sense of empathy. I think he knows that if humanity’s going to have any chance of dealing with things that are truly existential, it has to be that quality that guides us there. Holden represents that in the story. He is the personification of that within the story structure. So for me, it was showing that in a realistic and believable way, so that by the end of the story, we believe this man is capable of being in this place and doing these things, and then stepping away because it’s the right thing to do.