‘Lessons in Chemistry’ star Lewis Pullman on the challenge of ‘portraying somebody written as a savant’ [WATCH]
“I appreciate chemistry, but it’s not how my brain really works,” Lewis Pullman readily admits while discussing his role as chemist Calvin Evans in the critically acclaimed Apple TV+ limited series “Lessons in Chemistry.” He tells Gold Derby’s Latasha Ford, “There’s something very intriguing about trying to portray somebody who’s written as a savant and a genius, when you’re not that. And so that was a good challenge.” Watch the full video interview above.
Pullman attended the “Lessons in Chemistry” Emmy FYC event at the Television Academy’s Wolf Theater on June 9 in North Hollywood, California. At a max-capacity screening and panel, the actor was joined by co-stars Brie Larson and Aja Naomi King, executive producer Lee Eisenberg and director Sarah Adina Smith.
As for learning all of the complicated chemistry terms, Pullman reveals how Larson “really had the load of that, and she’s like a savant as a person in real life — she can just read a full page of that stuff and be able to regurgitate it.” He then confesses, “I’m not like that. I need to spend a week and a half on it. But we had these great actual chemists on set, so that was really helpful. I would always be like, ‘All right, explain this to me like I’m five years old.’ I would also record them reading my lines, because it’s like a different language — it just looks like hieroglyphics to me.”
While Larson had “a lot of those really rough scenes,” both emotionally and physically, Pullman was “lucky” because “it was really fun to be able to kind of live in these very elated, blissful states.” He tells us that his character is “kind of experiencing these new emotions for the first time, so there’s this very childlike nature.”
The actor claims that the moment Larson’s character Elizabeth Zott leaves him, “That was probably Calvin’s lowest point and there’s nothing harder than leaving somebody without any answers.” Pullman remarks, “It’s worse than being broken up with or something, because your brain starts to create the worst possible scenarios, and you’re left in this kind of state of limbo. That was probably his most agitated, turbulent place, I would say.”
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