For obvious reasons, Karellen was not easy to bring to life. “It was arguably the biggest challenge of the show, for all of us,” says executive producer Matthew Graham. “We all agreed very early on that we wanted a real actor, and we also agreed we’d have to have a really, really good actor, and we were very lucky to get Charles Dance.”
“My fear initially was that it could be anybody underneath this,” says Dance, who spent roughly four and a half hours in the makeup chair each time he suited up as Karellen. “When I first looked at myself, I thought, ‘No acting required, really.’ I’m covered from head to foot in latex and prosthetics. I thought there was not much I could do other than speak the lines. The team who made this thing, they’re very clever. Despite having everything stuck all over me, it didn’t stop the muscles in my face from moving. It all worked. I was pleasantly surprised that I could actually recognize myself underneath it.”
Some of what viewers saw onscreen on Monday night was real, and some was added in after the fact. For one, the horns were real, and really heavy, according to Dance. Also, “We put Charles in prosthetics, but then we knew that, because Karellen is eight feet high with giant wings, it was just impractical to not have some kind of CGI augmentation,” Graham says. “Originally, we had real wings on him as well, but then there were like four puppeteers who had to shuffle behind Charles everywhere he walked. After a day of that, everyone was frustrated, including Charles, so we dispensed with the wings and put those in afterwards.”
We had a stunt double called Harley [Durst], who wore these amazing bespoke stilts that were built like deer’s legs, with the inverted knee bends,” Graham continues. “For the wide shots, Harley would walk around on these incredible stilts, and then we would change the stilts and turn them into legs in the computer. Very, very time-consuming, very complicated.”
It then became a complicated dance for Durst and Dance to match. “What I had to do when we were doing closer shots was to make my body move in the way his body moved, because walking on hooves is not the same as walking on feet,” Dance says. “Between us, we devised a strange rolling gait.”
Though Karellen’s depiction is polarizing, to say the least, there was no hesitation for Dance and Graham to bring him to life. “There’s no getting around it — you either do it or you don’t,” Graham says. “I mean, if we didn’t do it, I don’t know what we would replace it with. We did some early designs where he kind of looked a bit like the Devil, but more like something else, and it just felt confusing — it felt like it was going to make the storytelling a lot harder. It was better to just say he looks exactly like Satan, because that’s the point of the story. I think with someone like Charles bringing him to life, I think we have a good chance of persuading the audience to buy into him, because of Charles’ presence and his voice.”
Adds Dance: “It’s such a rich character and such a wonderful story that I thought this is a challenge, but I’ll embrace that challenge, and I’m glad I did.”
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/12/14/childhoods-end-karellen-devil-photos-charles-dance
Dance and Mike Vogel talk about Karellen's look and more - Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZLw7ofm93Q
executive producer Matthew Graham about Charles
Graham assures fans of the book that the mini-series version mirrors Clarke’s writing.
“He has not been taken figuratively, metaphorically in any way. It would be crazy to deviate from what Arthur C. Clarke had envisioned. Actually, having seen Karellen on screen a lot in the last few months, it’s lost none of its iconic power as an image,” Graham says.
Casting the right actor to play the character was the challenge. British actor Charles Dance was finally selected to play Karellen. Graham says the role needed someone who felt like a global voice, a strong intergalactic leader, a philosopher and a teacher, who was also a friend.
Mike Vogel about Charles :
What was it like to find out that Charles Dance would be bringing Karellen to life?
VOGEL: Man, I was intimidated. The voice of the gods, that guy has. He has a commanding presence, and yet he’s so sweet. He just roots for you and roots for you to figure it out in each scene. Getting to do that with him was fantastic. The cast is so deeply talented, but there’s also so many characters that it’s such a global story. There are entire main storylines that I never interact with once. I saw Osy [Ikhile] several times throughout filming, just in passing, but we never had a single scene together and we never had any interaction together.
VOGEL: Man, I was intimidated. The voice of the gods, that guy has. He has a commanding presence, and yet he’s so sweet. He just roots for you and roots for you to figure it out in each scene. Getting to do that with him was fantastic. The cast is so deeply talented, but there’s also so many characters that it’s such a global story. There are entire main storylines that I never interact with once. I saw Osy [Ikhile] several times throughout filming, just in passing, but we never had a single scene together and we never had any interaction together.
When you’re working with a character who’s supposed to be an otherworldly being, do you think about that?
VOGEL: When you see Charles Dance in this show, you will realize how insanely intimidating and awe-inspiring it was. Anyone who’s read the book knows that the Overlords are described in detail, and you see it in all of its glory, wonderfully done, in this project. The first time I had to step on stage with him as Karellen, I near about pissed my pants. When you combine that voice with his presence, in the get-up that he was in, and it threw me. There was almost no acting needed or called for because it instantly threw you into that place. I think people are in for a real treat, especially those that are protective of the piece and that are into serious sci-fi. It goes there.
VOGEL: When you see Charles Dance in this show, you will realize how insanely intimidating and awe-inspiring it was. Anyone who’s read the book knows that the Overlords are described in detail, and you see it in all of its glory, wonderfully done, in this project. The first time I had to step on stage with him as Karellen, I near about pissed my pants. When you combine that voice with his presence, in the get-up that he was in, and it threw me. There was almost no acting needed or called for because it instantly threw you into that place. I think people are in for a real treat, especially those that are protective of the piece and that are into serious sci-fi. It goes there.
CBS Baltimore interview with Linh Bui
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQg6ni1WNqE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQg6ni1WNqE
from 2 reviews
Charles Dance (Game of Thrones' dry, acerbic Tywin Lannister) gives a rollicking performance as most lovable alien invader Karellen. He shows up one day with an armada of spaceships that station themselves over major cities
Charles Dance is the only truly inspired piece of casting in Childhood's End. He delivers a captivating performance that helps inform Karellen as someone who forms connections with these other characters despite always knowing the full plan for Earth. The character needed that kind of depth to make him a compelling figure especially since it takes awhile for the show to reveal what he truly looks like. That's the one thing that Syfy has asked critics not to spoil. I will say it's a pretty stunning moment once it finally happens. But the rest of the casting ranges from bland to forgettable.
Graham dissected Karellen’s frightening appearance.
Heavy in more ways than one"We built a prosthetic upper torso; it took about four to five hours to put on every morning. The face itself is a type of latex and is quite heavy. But Charles loves heavy rock music. [Laughs] So we downloaded all this heavy metal. He’d sit in the chair at 5 o’clock in the morning, play music, have a cup of tea and doze off while they worked on him. Then he’d open his eyes — and there Karellen was!"
Don’t mind his appearance"There were times Charles appeared to forget he was wearing it on set and you’d see him smoking a cigarette and chatting away about politics or something — and there he was dressed as the devil. [Laughs] I loved that!"
They didn’t hide everything"The careful design preserved something of the look of Charles because he has an amazing bone structure, an amazing face. You don’t want to obliterate that, so it was about finding balance."
Dance’s costume was at first too, um, restrictive"Originally he was covered from the knees all the way up around the crotch and over the chest. The problem with that was he couldn’t go to the bathroom. We decided to lose the legs completely. From the waist down Charles is wearing very attractive blue Lycra stockings so we could CGI things in afterwards."
Satan’s statuesque stand-in"The character’s supposed to be around 9 feet high. Every scene with Karellen you’d shoot close-ups with Charles. Wide shots involving walking around would be a stunt double, Harley Durst, in specially-designed stilts shaped like Karellen’s legs, with an inverted knee bend."
The eyes had it"Probably the most difficult for Charles was the contact lenses. He was okay for about half an hour, 45 minutes, and then they started to hurt. We went into the second hour of filming and his blinking would become much, much, much more rapid, and you realized that he was actually suffering. We’d take them out and he’d have a half an hour of recuperation."
Clarke’s book gave Karellen "little horns," but the series went big"We did look at designs with little horns, but they looked like a fawn or a satyr or a magical forest creature, and we really did want Karellen to look as imposing as possible. Little horns just looked like an apology for horns."
Shades were too comical"The other aesthetic of Clarke’s that we decided not to use was in the book Karellen doesn’t like sunlight and wears aviator sunglasses when he goes outside. We tried very briefly to see what Karellen looked like wearing sunglasses, and we decided that it was a little counterproductive to creating this dignified, God-like image. [Laughs] That would be strange. There were some things of Arthur’s that you try to honor, and there were other things you just have to say, ‘Maybe that idea just works better in a book.’"
