Justin Theroux calls it a “happy accident” that his latest project, the dramatic应用程序le TV+ series “The Mosquito Coast,” premiering Friday, April 30, wound up being a Theroux family collaboration.
In the tense adventure thriller about a Stockton family on the run from the law, Theroux plays the brilliant yet egomaniacal inventor Allie Fox. He’s an updated take on the central character in the 1981 bestselling novel by Theroux’s uncle, the master travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux.
Both Theroux men, the 80-year-old author and his 49-year-old celebrity nephew (HBO’s “The Leftovers”), are executive producers on the new series.
Paul Theroux originally created the character of iconoclastic Allie Fox in reaction to late-1970s disillusionment with American energy and economic policy. Harrison Ford famously played Fox in the popular 1986 film version ofTheroux’s novel, in which he drags his family to Central America to live a utopian off-the-grid existence.
In the Apple TV+ reboot’s seven-episode first season, Theroux’s Fox is convinced that slavish consumerism — and, now, addiction to technology — is throttling American ingenuity. He files moonshot patent applications, like for an ice machine powered by fire, and obsessively keeps his son (Gabriel Bateman) and teenage daughter (Logan Polish) away from mind-numbing diversions. No TV, cell phones or video games in the Fox home.
Allie and his wife, Margot (a terrific Melissa George, who worked with Theroux on “Mulholland Dr.” 20 years ago) are unconventional parents and fugitives on the run from the U.S. government for an undisclosed crime years earlier.
When the family takes off for Mexico, sneaking south across the treacherous Arizona-Mexico border where most migrants are heading the opposite direction, “The Mosquito Coast” becomes an adventure story with dark “Ozark”-like vibes.
Theroux knows people will assume his family connection to the source material inspired the project, yet he told The Chronicle during a video call from his home in New York that “what’s surprising is I heard about the project through the normal channels.Paul was already going down the (development) road with Apple. I don’t even know if I was the first choice. If I do have a leg up, it’s in having an intimate knowledge of some of the family members Paul was drawing on.”
Theroux describes his paternal grandfather, his uncle Paul’s father, as “in many respects a lot like Allie Fox, especially in his thriftiness.” In a scene in the show’s first episode, for instance, the family goes to a dump site, which Theroux says “was a regular thing growing up.”
“Most grandparents would take their kids to the park. My grandfather would take us to the West Dennis dump on Cape Cod,” he recalls. “He would get everything from shoes to books to parts to anything there. He was always flabbergasted by what people throw away.”
Likewise, the fictional Allie rails against materialism and is convinced America has sold its soul to corporations. (“Consumers. Do you ever think about how disgusting it is, reducing a human being to a word like that?” he says in a typical rant.)
Theroux says he enjoyed leaning into his character’s dark side, portraying the audacity and narcissism of a man “who’s so full of paradox, who’s essentially a very charismatic antihero.”
His uncle told Theroux he remembered news about Jim Jones and theJonestown massacrecirculating at the time he was writing “The Mosquito Coast.” (More than 900 people, mostly San Franciscans, died in the summer of 1978 at a compound in Guyana run by cult leader Jones.)
“I’m not drawing a direct line between Allie Fox and Jim Jones,” says Theroux, “but we’re definitely exploring how people can get lashed to their own convictions in a way that, if they don’t deviate from them, (it) can be unhealthy — not just for themselves but for everyone involved.”
“Allie is one of those people who is both cursed and gifted with a sense of waking up in the morning and knowing that he’s absolutely right,” adds British writer and showrunner Neil Cross,who created the BBC’s “Luther,”by video call from his home in New Zealand.
“贾斯汀,我走过去每一个脚本和黛比ate how much of an asshole Allie was going to be in any given moment. What’s really interesting is that Justin was always keen to embrace the asshole Allie, to push it as far as he can. That’s quite a courageous thing for an actor to take on.”
“The Mosquito Coast”(TV-MA) premieres Friday, April 30, on Apple TV+.