1 of 5 | Simu Liu stars in “The Copenhagen Test,” premiering Saturday on Peacock. Photo courtesy of Peacock
Physicality was one of the challenges Simu Liu faced in his new streaming series The Copenhagen Test, premiering Saturday on Peacock. Liu, 36, plays Alexander Hale, an intelligence analyst who gets thrown into field work when his brain is hacked by covert operatives.
The hackers can see everything Alexander looks at and hear everything he hears. In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Liu said this predicament made him aware of how Alexander uses his body to take the power back.
“They think that I don’t know what’s happening,” Liu said. “When I control what I see and what I hear, I can control the flow of information.”
Alexander always wanted to be a field agent. Writer and executive producer Jennifer Yale said the hack allows him to fulfill his potential.
“It’s the ultimate mission,” Yale said. “It’s the mission that no one else has ever had before and I think that is exciting for that character and for us to watch.”
Liu has had physical roles in films like Jackpot, Atlas, Barbie and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, a role he will reprise in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. When Alexander is forced to defend himself, he does not fight like Shang-Chi’s martial arts.
“Alexander comes from a much more brutal and much more realistic place,” Liu said. “Being someone who’s ex-Green Beret really informs his physicality. It means everything is close quarters, everything is designed to end a fight as quickly as possible, and meant to hurt or incapacitate.”
In the espionage community, the people in Alexander’s life may or may not be who they appear to be. Melissa Barrera plays Michelle, a bartender who soon reveals she is aware of his condition.
Even Alexander questions her motivations. The show later reveals Michelle’s briefing during which she and her handlers discussed the character she would play to endear herself to Alexander, similar to how Barrera, 35, prepares for her acting roles.
“It usually happens on set,” Barrera said. “You take direction, you try a thing, you see if it feels right, you see if it feels truthful. You see what kind of reaction it elicits from your scene partner.”
The show periodically revisits scenes from other angles to show how other parties were manipulating the events Alexander and the audience first saw. Sinclair Daniel plays Parker, one of the operatives behind those orchestrations.
“These moments would pop up where you would realize that Parker had his hand in something,” Daniel said. “That was a lot of fun.”
The Copenhagen Test creator Thomas Brandon said those flashbacks helped clarify the complex story and all the parties involved.
“Then we understood more about those characters and what they wanted and where they were going,” Brandon said. “So because we had that clarity, we were able to build an arc that was fireproof.”
The writers took a suggestion from Barrera and let her perform a scene in the fourth episode in French. That choice informs Michelle’s ability to play different roles.
“This is an opportunity to showcase the range of the life that she’s lived and where she’s been,” Barrera said. “I thought it would make it more interesting and thank goodness Thomas and Jennifer went for it and helped us make that scene.”
Alexander works for The Orphanage, a fictional intelligence agency the show says was established under President George H.W. Bush by St. George (Kathleen Chalfant). Peter Moira (Brian d’Arcy-James) is Alexander’s direct handler.
D’Arcy-James, 57, shared a backstory that does not appear in the show, but informs Moira’s loyalty to St. George.
“He was in a particular situation in a different organization and was left out to hang out to dry,” d’Arcy-James said. “She, for all kinds of different reasons, brought him in out from the cold and gave him the spot.”
The world of espionage has seen many developments since the Bush I presidency. St. George is dealing with those, including the brain hack.
“She has lived through all these generations,” Chalfant said. “She is, as I am, 80 years old and stepping into a world that is the world of AI, the world of surveillance, a world that is entirely different than the world she began in.”
Some threats even come from within The Orphanage. Mark O’Brien plays Evan Cobb, another Orphanage agent on Alexander’s trail.
“He’s trying to find out the truth and no one’s really listening to him,” O’Brien said. “He doesn’t suffer any fools at all. This is serious business and anyone who doesn’t look at it that way is just simply wrong. That can ruffle some feathers and rub people the wrong way but at the same time it’s honest.”
For Alexander, it is an opportunity to prove to The Orphanage that he is ready to be a field agent. Liu said there would be no show if his character just decided to remove the hack and go on about his life.
“I appreciate that he basically figures out a way to take advantage of the situation and takes it as an opportunity to prove what he’s capable of,” Liu said. “It’s that turn that allows him to, rather than becoming a bystander in what’s happening and a passive player, to take on an active role.”
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