Is Eric McCormack one of Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue?
The Will and Grace and Travelers actor plays American doctor Kevin Anderson on the mystery show created by bestselling British novelist Anthony Horowitz.
Kevin is one of 10 people on a small plane that goes down in the Mexican jungle on a flight from Guatemala to the United States. After the crash, the survivors – whose identities are more complicated than they first appear – start mysteriously dying one by one.
The Globe and Mail checked in by Zoom on McCormack in Vancouver – where he says he's spending a lot more time lately: 'Let's just say it's nice to be home for a while.'
Crave gave me limited episodes – so I don't know if you're in the morgue yet. This has already aired in the States, right, on something called MGM+?
Yes. MGM+ Studios made it with Sony, but also in connection with Eleventh Hour Films, which is U.K.- based. So, it had this very international cast and crew.
Where was it actually shot, the Mexican jungle that you crash into?
On the island of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, which has zero greenery. It is a volcanic island. So most of the jungle was created in a state of the art studio. It was bizarre to fly halfway across the world to create Mexico on the Spanish island to tell a story about people trying to get back to Texas.
Is this just the way that TV works these days?
When I got started in television, in the States, anyway, everything was local. Will and Grace shot down the street from my house. Everything was so L.A.-centric. Then when a movie got shot in New York or Toronto, it was very exotic. Now, when I get an offer, I'm like, 'Where do I get to go?' It's exciting.
Nine Bodies is written a British writer and most of the cast is British and Irish and Icelandic and Canadian, playing mostly American and Mexican characters. The only characters that I trust so far are you and the British photographer played by Lydia Wilson as you're the only actors using something close to your own accents.
Oh, that's good. Well, we don't want you to trust anybody. Two years ago, I was on Broadway with a new show called The Cottage where it was six North Americans, but we were all doing English accents. So it was fun to reverse it where I was the only one not putting on an accent – with the exception of Lydia, doing her natural London accent.
I keep getting into these TV shows where there's a plane crash – and there's some mysteries that have to be unravelled, and then it goes on for season after season and stops making sense.
I can promise you that we end in six episodes, hopefully in a surprising way. There are no smog monsters.
The premise make me think of And Then There Were None – you wonder how people are knocked off and in what order. What appealed to you about a show where almost everyone gets killed off?
Anthony Horowitz – I didn't know him before, but he's a big deal in the U.K. He's written 50 mystery novels, very popular novelist. So his almost Agatha Christie take on this was fun. There's a very throwback feel to it. It's not as adult or sexy as The White Lotus perhaps, but it has a real old school whodunnit feel.
You're sexy in the show. Don't sell yourself short.
Thank you, I'll take it.
I'm watching a lot of TV right now that is completely disconnected from the real world, so it was interesting to see the American husband and wife characters – played by Irish actress Siobhán McSweeney and Icelandic actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson – who are self-proclaimed, adherents of the MAGA ideology. This would have been shot, I imagine, before the election?
We were shooting six months before the election. In fact, while we were shooting is when Joe Biden stepped aside and Kamala Harris took over. There was a lot of fear and then a lot of hope. But, also, I was watching it from a rest-of-the-world perspective. The problem with America sometimes is that they are thinking just within that box. They're not seeing what the rest of the world sees and hears, and I got to be watching it from the eyes of Spanish people, people from the U.K. So when the MAGA thing came up, I said just be careful. This will air when one or the other has been elected.
The line in the upcoming episode that kind of landed with me was, one of them says to your character: 'People like you looking down on people like us… You know what scares you? There's more of us than there are of you.' Certainly that proved to be the case.
We did discuss those things knowing that they could have a real ominous feel if things worked out the way they did.
You were on Broadway a couple years ago and you're always coming to Ontario to host a gala for and/or be honoured by the Stratford Festival. When are you going to do a season out in Stratford?
Artistic director Antoni Cimolino and I talked about it a couple of times over the last few years. The hard part is just how much time one has to take off because otherwise I'd love to be back on that stage. There's a few things we've tossed around. So it's in the air.
Thanks for your time. I hope you are the murderer.
Hmm, OK. Well, maybe I'm the hero, Kelly.
No, you can't be the hero. Everyone's dead. Well, maybe someone else is dead. There must be a twist.
There'll be a twist.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
New episodes of Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue air on USA Network on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET and then land on Crave Friday.
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