The Expanse Interview: Cas Anvar Talks About Being Alex Kamal
From the very first episode of The Expanse I was always intrigued by the pilot of the Canterbury and eventually, the Rocinante, Alex Kamal. The character developed massively over the course of 2 seasons and I wanted to catch up with the man behind the Martian, Cas Anvar, and find out what inspired him to play Alex the way he did and what he thinks about the future of the series.
All images belong to Syfy and The Expanse.
How did you approach playing Alex?
The Alex character was a very exciting character to play because the description was a Mars born fighter pilot of Pakistani East Indian with a Texas accent and that gave me such a huge pallet to play with. When I auditioned I said, you know what, that’s gotta be me. So I explored a little bit of Texas culture trying to incorporate a little bit of that warm Southern humor into the character.
What were your inspirations for the character development?
Alex is very shy and introvert and I do share a lot of qualities with him so I was able to bring those aspects of myself into the character and one of the things I really wanted to explore and develop with him is bringing humor to the show. The show is so dramatic and dark and dangerous we need to find as many little moments of humor as we can and Alex has a great opportunity to do that.
All images belong to Syfy and The Expanse.
These guys are all young, they’re all hot-headed, they’re all very volatile, got a very damaged background, they’re all ready to break apart, Holden, Naomi, Amos, Miller, all of them, they’re fractured. Alex is the only guy who’s got common sense and a calm head prevailing. He’s the only guy who has real military training and has probably been in some rough spots before.
What were you funniest moments filming season 2 of the Expanse?
In season one I love the donkey balls episode that was a lot of fun. In season 2 I really enjoyed lasagna, the wet willy, the Hank Williams and slingshot episodes.
One of the ongoing memories with Thomas Jane is, as anyone who has any experience with him knows, is that he doesn’t like to wear shoes. I did the red carpet with him at the Toronto Film Festival, we went and did the InStyle party and you’ll see a photo online of me, Dominique Tipper and Thomas barefoot on the red carpet. So, that was a source of constant amusement, especially since we were shooting in the middle of winter in Canada.
Who is the funniest of the Rocinante crew?
In the show? I think the award for funniest of the Rocinante crew is a tie between Alex and Amos except the difference is Amos Isn’t trying to be funny. I love working with the Roci crew because we’re all great friends and we all have an amazing chemistry together. That’s always fun when we have our big kind of foursome scenes.
How far do you think The Expanse can go?
We’ve got seven novels written so far and at least another two in the works so if the fan base demands that we have a decade of material available to us. It’s really exciting to see where this could go. It’s not going to be a ‘Lost’ situation; it’s very much like Game of Thrones.
Thanks Cas!
All images belong to Syfy and The Expanse.
