Despite his wife Marilou not watching the series as she’s not a lover of horror, Mark Hamill can thank his wife for persuading him to take the role of Arthur Gordon Pym in Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher, a series that at first glance may appear to be outside the circle of a ‘usual‘ Mark Hamill role.“I was intrigued by the fact that they would consider me for this part,” said Hamill in an interview conducted in Spring 2022 “Why would they think of me? That’s thinking outside the box, and I love doing quirky, unexpected things and things that I haven’t done before.”
As Usher is inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Pym is pulled from the author’s only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. As a kid, Hamill first learned of Poe through watching films based on his stories, like The Tell-Tale Heart, but he didn’t return to Poe’s source material till Usher came calling. Flanagan didn’t insist Hamill read up on Pym’s namesake story, but Hamill thought, “Why not? I don’t think it’s even 200 pages long.” (Editor’s note: The Dover Thrift Edition is 176 pages.)
Hamill saw Pym’s journey to the North Pole in The Narrative as atypical of Poe, with the author mentioning so many details about the “species of flora and fauna and longitude and latitude,” he cited. “Although the ultimate Edgar Allan Poe moment is [when] they’re at a point in the story where it’s four survivors and they’re starving to death. So they decide to draw straws to decide who they’re going to cannibalize to survive. I said, ‘Oh boy, it doesn’t get more Edgar Allan Poe than that.’ ”
And if you’re not a horror fan, Hamill would still encourage you to give Usher a chance. “I love the idea it’s unpredictable,” he said. “You know, to a certain extent, that this family is doomed, but just the creativity with the way they dispatch people — it’s very clever and it’s beyond ghoulish, and it certainly puts your trivial everyday problems in perspective. You think, ‘Well, at least I’m not that guy.’ ”
- Hardcover Book
- Soule, Rosemary (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 48 Pages - 10/10/2023 (Publication Date) - Random House/Star Wars (Publisher)
