NBC’s latest drama, “The Philanthropist,” is a well-cast and lushly staged roman á clef of sorts, of an altruistic billionaire who consulted with the producers and actors for this effort.
THE PHILANTHROPIST -- "Nigeria" Episode 101-- Pictured: James Purefoy as Teddy Rist -- NBC Photo: Kelly Walsh
Only one episode was sent for review, and it is hard to say how this series will unfold and hold up based on the premiere. Given that Tom Fontana (Oz, Homicide: Life on the Street, St. Elsewhere) is showrunning this effort, it has great promise.
"The Philanthropist’s" biggest calling card for me is James Purefoy, who portrays flawed billionaire Teddy Rist, based on Bobby Sager, the real deal.
Purefoy captured me in the short-lived and dearly missed HBO series, “Rome,” as the swagger-filled Mark Antony, lover of Atia of the Julii (Polly Walker) and eventually Cleopatra (Lyndsey Marshal).
In fact, any person from that stellar production I always look for in any smallscreen efforts. Kevin McKidd did “Journeyman,” Polly Walker did “Caprica” and “Cane” and Ray Stevenson (Titus Pullo) has been wasted thus far on “The Punisher.” Someone needs to get him back on TV fast. Perhaps Tom Fontana can write him part on for “The Philanthropist” Same for Ciarán Hinds.
Damn you HBO for canceling that great series after only two seasons!
“The Philanthropist” aims to combine action/suspense with big heart-filled stories that underline the protagonist’s new raison d’etre; Rist must assuage his guilt for not being present when his son passed away by saving the world’s forgotten and discarded souls. There are many war-torn and blighted spots that ironically provide great natural resources and riches to further fill the coffers of corporate mogul Rist, adding more means to fund him righting the wrongs of society.
The show will premiere Wednesday, June 24 at 10 pm on NBC.
"Nigeria" Episode 101-- Pictured: (l-r) Lindy Booth as A.J. Butterfield, James Purefoy as Teddy Rist, Bonnie Henna as Chima Balo -- NBC Photo: Kelly Walsh
"The Philanthropist" star James Purefoy and writer/producer Tom Fontana spoke to Monsters and Critics and some other online journalists and shared inside details about the making of this new series, and the challenges it presented.
What do you like about the character? James from your perspective as an actor, and Tom from your creative point of view?
Tom Fontana: Okay well first of all the role that James is playing is inspired by an actual philanthropist, a man named Bobby Sager who was a businessman, earned a lot of money and at one point decided that he was going to go all over the world and try to fix things. And the character that James plays isn’t actually Bobby.
We obviously fictionalized the circumstances of his life. But the heart of what Bobby believes and Teddy Rist believes is that the solution to a lot of the world’s problems have to do with generating for people who are living below standards, that they should have a certain sense of dignity about their lives.
And that’s the best way for them to have dignity about their lives, is through them creating a situation where they can either create a business or have jobs that generate income and also benefit the others.
Bobby’s line to me when I first met him was “Yeah you can teach a man to fish, but if you teach a man to fish all he’s going to eat is fish. But if you teach him how to package the fish, and market the fish and ship the fish he can also get some potatoes and some meat and some other things.” So at his heart he’s a capitalist and this is true of Teddy Rist, a capitalist who is trying to fix the world in an innovative way.
James Purefoy: I mean that’s kind of it really. To me playing the part only really made sense to me when I met Bobby Sager and spent a bit of time with him. And this is a man who as Tom has said has made a great deal of money but now spends ten months of every year flying around the world to invariably very poor places because his money can work best and have the greatest effect in those places. But he also demands a very high return.
It’s not just about charity. He doesn’t just give money away, he invests in projects. So for an example he has invested in microenterprises in Rwanda where he’s brought women whose husbands are in prison for the genocide together with women whose husbands were killed by the genocide and created a microenterprise with those women.
So he brought two very polarized communities together and created a business with them of making jewelry, weaving baskets that he will then market - help market and sell overseas or local markets or local capital cities, whatever.
That actually has a massive effect on those group of women in Rwanda. And but also he talks about very just similar, small things. It’s about looking people in the eye and engaging with them and making people who feel often quite invisible, make them feel visible and seen.
So, it’s what he calls concrete baby steps. And that’s a shot all the way through the show. Teddy Rist does concrete baby steps all the way through. And they may be tiny small things or they may be very big things but they’re always conscious things.
Tom, I only had one episode to watch and I did enjoy it. Is all the action going to be centered in Nigeria?
Tom Fontana: No, no, no. It goes all over the world. We have episodes set in Paris, Kosovo, Kashmir, Haiti.
James Purefoy: Burma.
Tom Fontana: San Diego, California.
James Purefoy: Brahma, yeah.
Tom Fontana: The idea is that Teddy is a character who will go anywhere partially for business reasons and then partially because...his heart goes where the rest of him goes.
Exactly. James - unless it’s really just deft camera work, you’re doing a lot of your stunts yourself, this a very physical role for you.
James Purefoy: I was.
Do you want to elaborate? I was really impressed with that fall off your motorcycle…
James Purefoy: Yes, I really did injure myself. I had a seven centimeter tear in a hamstring which forced the hamstring into a rather unsightly bulge behind my knee.
That was rather unpleasant. And then I was running across a frozen road in a street in northern Czech Republic about 2 o’clock in the morning, slipped on black ice. All the tendons on my ankle came off with bone attached.
And so that had to be operated on, set right and then I was wound up and sent back into combat.
Tom Fontana: I have to tell you James did the most extraordinary thing. We needed to do some reshooting and he was in London having his extremities taken care of and he very voluntarily, very willingly came back to South Africa to do this week of reshoots when he should’ve been on his butt taking care of himself.
James Purefoy: I got injections in my stomach that would give you - that - because you have to inject - if you’ve just had an operation, it’s very dangerous to fly so they are worried about you get deep vein thrombosis.
So one of the scenes we would often have is my lovely assistant (Renee) just going like “Come on, James, come on, it’s time to have your injection.” And I’d have to lift up my shirt and she’d ram a hypodermic needle into my stomach.
Tom Fontana: The only sad part is he wouldn’t share the drugs with the rest of us.
James, American women have been chomping at the bit since Rome, and that wonderful Mark Antony character you played, so we’re so happy to see you back on American television.
James Purefoy: Well I’m more than delighted to be back on television here.
If you had unlimited funds James, you personally, like this character what would you do with it?
James Purefoy: You know if I had unlimited funds I’ve been so affected by what Bobby does and what the work that Bobby does and if anybody get a chance go to www.teamsager.org and just have a look at him. There’s lots of video on there of him. He’s an extraordinary man. And I would love to imagine that I would embark on an adventurous life like he’s had.
Because it just makes sense, so much sense what he does. And it’s - it takes a man with a huge and elephantine heart to do what he does. And in a hard, tough world that we live in, for a billionaire to spend 10 months of his year in the most inhospitable places on earth, on his own often dealing with the shit, he’s, you know, breathtaking, really breathtaking.
How did this project originally come about. Did Bobby come to you guys? Did you go to him?
Tom Fontana: Bobby is friends with Charlie Corwin who’s one of the other Executive Producers and (Jim Chovenin) who also was one of the co-creators with Charlie and I. And they had an idea that this might work as a series and Charlie who’s an old friend of mine came to see me and he knew I had written this pilot for NBC many years ago about a charitable organization loosely based on the American Red Cross.
And he said “I know you’ve always wanted to do something about charity and giving.” And he said “Let me tell you this idea.” And I don’t know, he may have gotten five words out of his mouth where I went, like, you know, “Holy shit! That’s an idea. I was completely wrong with my other idea. This is the idea to do.” And from that moment on I was totally committed to doing the show.
Tom. What is the reality level of the tone of the show?
Tom Fontana: Well I would say besides the fact that the character Teddy Rist is inspired by a real human being who does go out into the world and puts himself in jeopardy constantly to try to do good. We’re not using actually any specific incidents in Bobby Segar’s life to do this but - in the show.
But he certainly - the level of danger that he puts himself into is much more than I would do, so it is realistic in that regard. And the other thing that’s realistic about it is all the stories we’re doing are stories about what is really happening in these countries right now.
So he doesn’t visit mythical countries like, (Fergustan) or - where, just was something we made up and then just kind of fashioned a reality for Teddy.
So in that regard it’s also realistically based. The specific incidents are things that are possible, whether they would happen in the sequence that we lay them out? I don’t know. But I never can tell that anyway.
It’s as realistic if not more realistic than Oz was.
James Purefoy: I think the other important thing that Tom - about this is that, in terms of the economic temperature that is around in the world at the moment, this is not something that is ignored in any way, shape or form.
There are constant references to bailouts to credit crunch, to, Teddy, do you really need to take the jet? Does he pay for it himself? I mean it’s very much rooted in the financial, economic reality that is present right now. So, probably this series is not going to be able to be watched in 10 years times because nobody is going to know what we’re talking about.
Tom Fontana: God, I hope that’s not true.
James Purefoy: We all hope that’s not true.
James, what is the key to playing the character?
James Purefoy: I think probably the key is that Teddy is totally unafraid about looking people in the eye. Now I know that sounds like a really small thing, but it’s about engaging with every single person that he meets on a very conscious level. You know, that he - that he’ll -- and it doesn’t matter who it is, whether they’re the leaders of the country or the generals of the country or the poorest people in the country.
It’s about his heart being open to every single one of these people that he comes across and dealing with them in a very immediate way. So that’s I think probably for me the key. It’s also to do with, you know, the massive amount of pain that he was going through at the beginning of the series. He’s lost his son before the series starts and he has this gigantic void where his son was and his love for his son. And it was a void that a lot of people when they go through grief they try and deal with grief by burying their feelings under drugs and alcohol and womanizing and that kind of thing. And that’s what he was doing.
And then he found something that made him feel good, and it just happened to be helping people. And Bobby talks about it, he says this is not a huggie, hippy feeling. It’s about how he feels when he does it. It’s entirely selfish with Bobby. He does it because it enriches his life. It makes his life better and it makes him more interesting and more valued and more textured and just better. And that’s, I think a big part of what - to what Teddy’s about because it makes him feel good what he does.
Tom Fontana: ,,,I like this.
How difficult is that to kind of hit the right tone when you’re looking at and dealing with reality?
James Purefoy: Well for me, because I’m not a producer on the show. I’m not responsible for where the money goes, where it has been spent. But for me it’s just about being present on set.
Talking to people not behaving like a big TV star. And you imagine a big TV star might behave, locking themselves in the trailer and only coming out for their scenes and treating people with selfishness and disrespect. It’s about going to the set and engaging with every single person that you meet in front of that camera.
Or going and knocking on their trailer door and asking if you can go through the scene with them, it’s just again is my whole experience on this job is shot true, was shot true with Bobby’s philosophy of being open-hearted and being non-judgmental and taking every single person as they come and listening to their story and listening to them and working with them rather than at them.
Tom, from your perspective how difficult is it to hit that tone right? Or how much of a challenge was it?
Tom Fontana: Well I would say that we did everything we could to make sure that we left as small a carbon imprint as we could. And also, you know, as James was saying, treat people with dignity and respect. We did a screening of the pilot in...
James Purefoy: Caleche. When Peter Horton, he directed the episode of the pilot and a big chunk of it was shot in Caleche which was is an informal settlement - a huge informal settlement on the edge of Cape Town. About 1 million people live there, mainly in shacks. And they have an extraordinary sense of community.
They were unbelievably helpful to us. And when we finished the pilot and we finished cutting it and putting it all together, we had a screening of it in a -- I’m going to say church hall, but that is not going to give the idea of what this place was.
It was more just like a very big shack that was used as a church. And we had about 150, maybe 175 people come. We just put up notices around the place, around where we’d shot and said please come if you were involved in this. And they came and they came and enjoyed it immensely.
I mean it’s slightly troubling for me because the closer I got to death the funnier they found it. And it’s bites I got from snakes; that just rocked their socks off, they thought it was hilarious. And but I think that it was just us going back there even though we’d only been here, we’d been there six month previously and it felt like maybe we’d just gone. And we’d arrive one day, we shot for a few days and then we left. Well we didn’t.
We went back and showed what they’d done. And I think just tiny little things, you know, that again concrete baby steps about making people feel not ripped off but valued and thanked.
Do you think there’ll be a larger message people might take away from a show like this?
James Purefoy: Oh I really hope so. I do hope and I think it’s time for a TV show like this. I’d like to imagine that your president would very much approve of this show. I would like to imagine the president Obama would be very happy about the engagement process that this show is talking about.
About lots of different countries that the Americans may not be that familiar with. And there are problems and people in those countries that have problems just like people in America do.
And anything that brings us together rather than polarizes us has got to be a good thing.
Tom Fontana: But I’ll add this, I agree with everything James just said. I don’t want people to think that this show is preachy because we have really gone out of our way to not be preachy. The heart of this show is its humanity and its humor. And it is embodied in Teddy Rist.
James Purefoy: When most of the thing that happen on this show - when they happen to Teddy, they’re happening for the first time. It’s not like he knows what’s going to happen. So it’s not like he’s got any position to preach from.
Tom Fontana: Right. And his character is so flawed that he doesn’t feel he has a moral high ground to preach to anybody. He’s experiencing it, as James was saying, he’s experiencing it and he’s trying to assess it himself. So it’s not like, you know, a show like Touched by an Angel, which I’m not criticizing. I’m just saying that was a show that very specifically had things to say.
Whereas this speaks much more about the search in each of us to be the best human beings we can and do as much as we can. At one point Jesse Martin’s character says “You know, there are things to be fixed in Nigeria but there are also things to be fixed around the corner.” They live in New York. And I think that’s the heart of it. Any of us can - we don’t - you don’t have to be Teddy Rist, you don’t have to be a billionaire to effect change. All you have to do is want to effect change and you can.
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