Warning: Spoilers for Sugar episode 6 ahead!
Collin Farrell says his big reveal in Sugar was originally meant for the show's very first episode, but moving it to later in the season made it all that more special.
"When I read the show, that reveal was in the first episode and then we just thought, the character is interesting enough as a human being. Let's just explore his seeming humanity before we reveal that maybe some of his innocence or some of his love for human beings is because he hasn't been exposed to the human condition through his own experience," Farrell tells 12DOVE.
"He has seen the monopoly of it from a very distant perspective. Other worldly perspective. Other planetary perspective. So I was glad that we moved it from the first episode to the sixth, but it meant that we didn't have that hook in the first episode that the show had to work just in and of itself without that device, which I hope it does."
When we first meet John Sugar, he's introduced as a Los Angeles-based Private Investigator with some quirks, some stranger than others. But as it turns out, these quirks had less to do with his personality and a lot more to do with the fact that he isn't from Planet Earth – he's just visiting.
"It seemed like good timing and the justification for it was quite simple. It's at a point in the show where he's kind of broken. His faith has been knocked down: his faith in his own people and his faith in human beings has taken a bit of a beating and he wants to return to his original form just for a brief respite. And it felt quite sweet where it was placed in the story. It felt quite sweet and I don't know if it'll come across that way, but yeah, it was all obviously done in CGI."
The eight-episode limited series was created by the I Am Legend screenwriter Mark Protosevich and directed by Fernando Meirelles, Protosevich, Donald Joh (Snowpiercer), David Rosen, and Breaking Bad writer Sam Catlin. The cast includes Kirby, Amy Ryan, Dennis Boutsikaris, Nate Corddry, Sydney Chandler, Anna Gunn, James Cromwell, and Miguel Sandoval.
Sugar hits Apple TV Plus on April 5, 2024. For more, check out our chat with Colin Farrell about the difference between Sugar and Batman spin-off The Penguin, or why Colin Farrell says Sugar was unlike anything he had ever read before.
