Why Josh Hartnett couldn’t resist Newfoundland and Netflix’s Below

Josh Hartnett didn’t need much convincing to dive into the eerie world of his new underwater thriller Below — Newfoundland did much of the work for him.

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“I was just in love with the concept of shooting in a place that was so unlike any place I’d been in North America,” Hartnett told Postmedia during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. “It seemed to be outside of time, in a way.”

The new limited series, which debuts on Netflix on Oct. 8, casts Hartnett, 48, as Newfoundland fisherman Calvin Penney, who becomes embroiled in a struggle to save his family and his coastal town from a sea creature lurking off the shores.

Created by Jesse McKeown (The Umbrella Academy), the six-episode limited series also stars Charlie Heaton (as Calvin’s son Wade) and Mackenzie Davis (as an underwater researcher).

Hartnett said he was immediately drawn to the role when he learned how much Newfoundland was going to play a part in the story.

“That whole idea of being somewhere that you don’t have to force or pretend that it’s different or creepy, it just is that way naturally … was exciting to me,” he said. “The place itself was a major draw.”

“I just always felt like I wanted to set something here, that this would be a great place for something big and something kind of epic,” McKeown added.

When Hartnett set out to pursue acting nearly 30 years ago, he made a promise to himself. Fresh-faced and just out of school, the then-18-year-old gave himself two months to find success in front of the camera.

The gamble paid off quickly.

Hartnett broke out in the late 1990s with Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and The Faculty before appearing in blockbusters such as Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down. He later alternated between major studio productions and smaller independent projects.

He knew if he wanted to have sticking power on screen beyond his initial heartthrob status, he would need to build a resume that showed he wasn’t afraid to take risks.

Now, looking back on his career, the dad of four says he’s “incredibly lucky” to have crafted such a diverse acting resume.

His role in Below comes amid what fans have dubbed the “Hartnett-aissance,” an era that has found the actor assembling a recent body of work that includes roles in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, three seasons of Penny Dreadful, recent episodes of Black Mirror and The Bear, M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, and last year’s bruising thriller Fight or Flight.

In addition to Below, Hartnett, who is married to actress Tamsin Egerton, continues his recent career resurgence with Verity, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel in which he co-stars alongside Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway.

In the film, now playing in theatres, Hartnett plays Jeremy Crawford, the husband of a best-selling thriller author (Hathaway), who hires a young writer (Johnson) to finish his wife’s last book after she suffers an accident.

“I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate to be able to live kind of the most diverse and fun life, and able to have a career in this business, where I am able to play lots of different types of characters and work with people of the calibre that I’m working with,” Hartnett said.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I first got into this, because I never really intended to be an actor full-time. But I will say that it’s kind of worked out well beyond my wildest dreams,” he said.

Nowadays, success has come to mean something different to him. It’s not about magazine covers or box office; it’s about challenging himself.

“Success means being able to approach different projects with an openness and have the knowledge that it will be released in a good way,” he said.

Hartnett, who is no stranger to horror-themed projects, said that aside from the Newfoundland setting, he was drawn to the Netflix series because he didn’t know where Calvin’s story was going.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen. It obviously has mystery elements to it. It’s a family drama in its own way. It exists in a place you probably don’t know much about. And there’s something going on that involves legend. But everything that you think you know from the first two episodes, you don’t,” he said. “It’s going to surprise you … That’s the kind of show I want to see.”

Before landing in Newfoundland, Hartnett said he only knew “bullet points” about the province.

“Like how early on, transatlantic flights would stop there to refuel,” he said. “And when the Titanic sank, rescue ships were sent from there. People got stuck there on 9/11. That’s pretty much everything I knew. It was these little weird, historical bullet points, but I didn’t know about the culture.”

When he arrived, Hartnett took part in a “Screech-In” ceremony, in which locals welcomed him by having him kiss a cod and take a shot of Newfoundland rum.

“Everybody got screeched in,” he said, laughing. “What I love about being there is that everybody seems to be somehow involved in the arts.

Everybody has, like, five jobs, but, like, one of their jobs is usually acting or reading poetry or something like that. And I love that. I just think that’s such a cool atmosphere to grow up in.”

In addition to filming in St. John’s, Below employed more than 1,000 people and shot in Petty Harbour, Brigus, and Pouch Cove.

The production generated more than $90 million in economic activity for the Canadian economy.

“I did feel like the people there, the community was so welcoming to us, and they really wanted us to perform it well and make sure we represented the culture of the place, correctly. So we were spoiled for choice on what to do with our characters,” he said. “It was a really nice experience.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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