"It felt like we were given both a mandate and freedom to make something a little new."
Taking on a role made famous by another actor is already intimidating, but one Tom Hanks made famous? That's a whole other deal. But Ashley Zukerman, who plays Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon in the new Peacock series The Lost Symbol (September 16), took it in stride. "I loved the films, and Tom Hanks is one of the greatest actors of our time. This should have been more daunting than it was, it just felt like I could launch into this from myself." In this version, which author Dan Brown executive produced, we see young Langdon, years before we originally met him in The Da Vinci Code. "We get to explore what made him the person everyone knows. So we lean on the love everyone already has for the material, but we tried to take it back a few steps." Zukerman actually hadn't read the books before being cast. "It wasn't by design that I hadn't read them. I had just missed them." But from the very beginning, Brown made it clear that Zukerman had to make Langdon his own. "It felt like we were given both a mandate and freedom to make something a little new."
Was it intimidating taking on a role that's so well known?
By every metric, it should have been. For some reason, it wasn't. Perhaps for two reasons. One is that the show uses the third book as a jumping-off point. It's very much a prequel. We get to explore what made him the person everyone knows. So we lean on the love everyone already has for the material, but we tried to take it back a few steps. The other thing is I think the writers have made something very, very new. Dan Brown is involved, so it felt like we were given both a mandate and freedom to make something a little new.
How does the show differ from the films?
I think we have more time to delve into the characters and what they're experiencing. In the pilot, you start to get a sense of it. I think something that's consistent in the books, and what Dan Brown told me, is that Langdon would love to have faith but there's something in him that can't allow it. Even half a season in, I'm learning that with Langdon, he has told himself he cannot believe something to be true just because he feels it. The fact is that he becomes a zealot the other way, where he just won't allow himself to believe anything just because he feels it, that's a pathology in itself. Because he does feel it. So that's touched on in the books. We get to spend 10 hours on it.
Dan Brown's work is not really polarizing. It speaks to religious and secular people. Did you see that in the show, too?
That's true when reading the books, it's a reflection of whatever you yourself were experiencing or thinking about in that moment. People of faith read the books one way and people of fact—if that's the opposite of faith—read them another way. I think what the show does is it tries to marry the two into the experience of the characters, and especially of Langdon himself. We see him going on that journey.
Were you a fan of the books?
I hadn't read the books until I got the audition. Of course, now I've read them all. It wasn't by design. I had just missed them. That's a pretty fascinating experience to read five books imagining being able to throw myself into the experience quite literally, like looking for clues into the character I'm about to play. That was a very unique experience. So I'm sort of retrospectively glad that I hadn't read them before so that I could only read them through that lens.
Tom Hanks' hair from the films basically became a character. Were you worried about your hair?
No. But I doubt Tom Hanks was concerned about his hair, either. I'll wait to see what the hair reaction is and what that subreddit is about. [laughs]
Did you watch the films and were they an influence at all?
I loved the films and Tom Hanks is one of the greatest actors of our time. This should have been more daunting than it was, it just felt like I could launch into this from myself. This is a unique experience. I'm not immune to being daunted. But for some reason, this just felt like a very personal journey.
Dan Brown is great at finding a way to say very academically, complicated things and make them make sense. Did you find that to be true?
We talked about that. The experience of reading is very interesting because you put yourself in the character's shoes and everything they're discovering, you marry the experience. What clicked for us was that it's character-driven. He's rougher around the edges, even though he doesn't look rough around the edges in the normal way we're used to; the threads are a little looser with him. He's not as put together, he's not as in control of his neuroses. He's most comfortable when he's arguing, or when he's lecturing when he's speaking about something he understands completely. He's most uncomfortable speaking about faith when people are challenging him or when he's claustrophobic in every sense of that. I think it creates an interesting character.
Your take on Langdon is rougher, more complicated and certainly more confrontational. Was it important to you to put your own twist on the character?
The book we're jumping off from is such an ideal book to start a TV show with because it's a personal story. He's invested emotionally from the beginning. He's not as in control of his faculties or of understanding other people's points of view. So that is going to make him angry, inconsiderate, and somehow his hubris and arrogance will come out in ways that won't be as noble. I also watched a lot of interviews with Dan Brown, and he said he thought the process of turning his books into film and television naturally have to go on, they have to change, which I thought was very generous.
What was that like shooting during the pandemic?
We were going to shoot in March 2020. We were all ready, sets were built and the schedule was set, we were ready to go. Then we all got flown back. We didn't know where the show was going to end up; in this climate, it's hard to know what happens at that point. But we got the call saying that we'd go back in October. I guess it's a pretty common experience now, shooting through a pandemic, it's become second nature. It's quite moving because a film crew is, by its nature, so resilient anyway and so inventive. I actually find it's one of the things that lifts me up every day coming to work and just seeing people always overcoming. That's something that I think a film set does so well all the time.
You played a couple of great villains on Fear Street. Do you like playing villains?
I think the characters Nick and Solomon, the characters on Fear Street, were definitely further from myself. But I think ultimately I do try to look for the gristle in every character. So the approach to Langdon is that he's not a hero, that the people around him are actually far more heroic than he is. I think I always try to look for the darkness in someone in a way that grounds me. It's a funny experience, but the experience of doing either doesn't feel that different. When the material is strong, that's the key.
