In new sci-fi series Earth Abides, based on the classic novel of the same name by George R. Stewart, Jessica Frances Dukes plays Emma, one of just a few survivors of a virulent and deadly plague that sweeps across the planet.
And Emma is the kind of person you want – make that need – to survive an apocalypse. She’s smart, knows her way around a weapon, is fearless but full of love and can even skin a cow.
“She’s a formidable force, she’s wonderful,” says Dukes, who is best known for her role in Ozark.
Inhabiting a woman at one with nature delighted Dukes who sat down with WHO over Zoom to give us the rundown on the anticipated series. Dukes says she was flooded with memories of her own outdoorsy childhood when she first read the script. “I was like, ‘I finally feel like I get to play me,” she says.
Tell me about your character, Emma?
We meet Emma after a year of being isolated, after losing everything that she knew, and she goes on this journey with Ish [another survivor played by Alexander Ludwig] and she teaches him how to plant, she teaches him how to hunt. She teaches him how to skin a cow and cook it up. Emma is trying to teach him that the only way to move forward is to accept where we are right now – and the only way we can do that is by being one with the earth, not fighting it and listening to what it needs. So that’s Emma in a nutshell – she’s strong, she is so multidimensional. She will hunt animals and at the same time care for her loved ones with a soft touch.
Were those sorts of outdoor skills and camping part of your childhood?
One thousand per cent! When I read the script, I was like, “I finally feel like I get to play me.” I remember reading the first little sequence where you meet her and I was just like, “Oh this is it! This is me, I get to be me!” I grew up running down the boat dock and doing the pose from The Karate Kid on the big pole in the water and diving into the lake and swimming next to beavers and horse riding at camp every summer – I grew up like that. Even though I grew up in the city, my parents wanted me to have that sort of alternative experience because they came from the country and they want me to experience that.
Where did you shoot this?
Beautiful Vancouver. It was stunning, it was the perfect place.
Emma is described as “fearless in body and in mind”. Do you think you’re personally fearless?
I wouldn’t say I’m fearless, but I love operating through fear. I think that it’s somewhat impossible to be fearless. It’s about how you move through that fear and how you work with that fear, how you use that fear for positive gain. And I think that
I grew up with parents that taught me how to do that. So I wouldn’t say I’m fearless, but I definitely am able to move through it and conquer it.
You’re shooting Season 3 of The Gilded Age at the moment. That must be a completely different ball game?
It’s wonderful. I was coming out of Earth Abides and I wrapped on a Friday and by the next Tuesday, I was in my first fitting for The Gilded Age and having that corset tied and I was like, “I’ve just had chickens in my hair!” and all of a sudden it’s the 1880s in upstate New York.
And what’s it like to be a part of that drama series?
Coming from theatre, it is a theatre royalty cast, it’s wonderful. To be able to sit across from Audra McDonald, as a girl who just wanted to be on Broadway all her life, be across from six-time Tony Award-winning queen Audra, and then right next to me is Phylicia Rashad [best known for playing Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show], who was America’s mother growing up. That experience, I just sat there and absorbed [it] and that’s pretty much all I can say about
it – but it was a magical experience as well.
What is Earth Abides about?
According to the synopsis. Earth Abides is based on George R. Stewart’s classic sci-fi novel of the same name. When a plague of unprecedented virulence sweeps the globe, the human race is all but wiped out. In the aftermath, as the great machine of civilisation slowly and inexorably breaks down, only a few shattered survivors remain to struggle against the slide into extinction.
Who is in the cast of Earth Abides?
Alongside Jessica Frances Dukes as Emma, Vikings star Alexander Ludwig stars as Ish. The impressive cast also includes Aaron Tveit (Blade: Trinity), Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Elyse Levesque (The Originals, Orphan Black), Luisa D’Oliveira, Birkett Turton, Hilary McCormack and Jenna Berman in the brand new series.
Where to watch Earth Abides in Australia?
Earth Abides is now streaming on Stan, with new episodes dropping every Monday.
