PASADENA, Calif. — Captain America is giving up his bulletproof helmet and star-studded shield for jurisprudence and fatherhood. Chris Evans, best known as the superhero in the “Captain America” movie series, takes a dramatic turn. He stars as a stalwart district attorney and father of a boy accused of murder in the suspenseful “Defending Jacob,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
Evans says he was in no hurry to pick a new project when “Defending Jacob” came along.
“I’m not an actor that works all the time. So maybe if I were somebody who liked to fill my schedule from January to December with constant work, maybe I’d find that it was a bit more of a struggle. But I’m a little more mercurial by nature, and I kind of take my time,” he says.
“And so luckily it’s always felt like when I felt the impetus to work and a call to work, luckily there was a piece of material that fit my creative appetite.”
The creative appetite was whetted with the show that questions how far loving parents are willing to go in shielding their child. The eight-episode series costars British actress Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary of “Downton Abbey”) as Evans’ wife and Jaeden Martell as their son.
Dockery, who’s played a grubby Western pioneer and a slick con artist since “Downton,” admits she’s attracted to quirky roles.
“I was drawn to her because she’s very different from any other character that I’ve played,” says Dockery of her role in “Defending Jacob.”
“I love her journey throughout the story. Without giving too much away, I think that was something that really intrigued me from the start. You know, I like doing accents, so I liked playing another American,” she smiles.
Dockery says she was intrigued more by the characters than the plot.
“It’s not about the mystery of who did it so much as it’s a real kind of exploration into, how would you respond as a parent? Certainly, for me playing Laurie, that was what I was really drawn to is this tapping into how you would react as a parent, and what lengths you would go to to protect your child. And I’d never really read anything like this before about family, and I was just so instantly drawn to the project.”
The series was adapted from the bestselling book by William Landay and was originally meant to be a film. But writer-executive producer Mark Bomback says he saw it in a different light.
“I understood the impulse to turn it into a film,” he acknowledges. “However, I was really inspired by a lot of limited series that were coming out around that time. And I said this feels to me like you could 20, 30 years ago this is a movie that we all know is in the multiplex it feels like now this train is being better served in limited series space. And my mind just started racing … there’s all these avenues within the story that would have gotten short shrift if they were a film,” he says.
“In eight-hour storytelling, we have all this space to really explore the characters so that ultimately you’d get a thriller,” he says.
“I don’t love the term ‘elevated thriller.’ I think it’s a bit condescending sometimes. But in this case, it IS an elevated thriller in that we’re really diving super deep into the characters’ journey … My favorite kind of genre is the genre that is obeying the rules of a genre, but is ultimately about something. And that’s what this does.”
While they were enacting turbulent emotions onscreen, the actors were able to form a homey kinship off, says Dockery.
“Like with any role, you have to immerse yourself in the character and … you kind of observe others. I felt like it was very easy for us to sort of become a family on set,” she says.
“We all had a really lovely time together in spite of the intensity of the subject matter. We had a really fun time together … I feel like we bonded very quickly, and I think that comes across on screen. And I think … you really believe that we are a family.”
For Evans, his facility with comic book fantasy quickly morphed into reality. “It was the first time I’ve been able to play a parent and, I don’t know, I loved it,” he says.
“I think there’s a whole there’s body language there, there’s postures, there’s so many things that at least I drew from my own childhood of what a dad looks and feels like. I really, really, really enjoyed it, actually, because it really does lend itself to the complexity and depth of the film.
“I think being a parent, I would imagine, unlocks depths of love that you didn’t know you were capable of. And I think that only raises the stakes and makes things more interesting. So, for me, it was a fun place to start off with that kind of blinding love at times and (explore) how far you would go to keep it pure.”
