Foundation Season 3 is set just over 150 years after the events of the second season. However, there are other links back to Season 2, aside from the main characters, who reappear in each new season. One of those is Cody Fern’s character of Toran Mallow. For example, he is linked to Hober Mallow from the second season, who Dimitri Leonidas portrayed. Toran is a descendant of Hober and plays a critical role in the main events of Foundation Season 3, alongside The Mule (Pilou Asbæk) and The Foundation.
Thanks to AppleTV+, we sat down to speak with Cody Fern ahead of the Foundation Season 3 finale episode on September 12th.
🔷 Tómas Lemarquis Talks “Magnifico” In Foundation Season 3 – Interview
The World of Foundation Season 3
Jack: Cody, thank you so much for joining us to speak about Foundation Season 3. I’ve got to start by asking what it’s like being a part of such a grand series like the Foundation?
Cody: Oh, uh, it’s exciting. I’m not a sci-fi person, not in the sense that I dislike sci-fi, but rather that my brain tends to find sci-fi. You know, it’s not the thing that gives me chills generally, but being in the world of someone like David S Goyer is so much fun, he has such a lineage and, you know, such an extraordinary history of working on such massive scales that it was a lot of fun to dive into.
Jack: We’ve, of course, got to talk about your character of Toran Mallow. Can you tell us a bit more about him, what he’s like in Foundation?
Cody: Toran is somebody who allows people to project whatever they want onto him. He allows them to project their insecurities; he allows them to project their desires. He plays with their perceptions. He is a provocateur, he really is an entertainer, but he’s also disguising something you know he has.
Cody: As the series goes on, you discover more and more and more layers of Toran and more and more layers of depth. And that’s really his. The ace up his sleeve is that he understands that people judge a book by its cover, and so the cover that he is going to present is going to make him money and that he’s going to have fun with. I think also, one of the core elements of Toran that I would point to is that, you know, everybody is caught up in their little epic battle, and he sees a grander thing in it all.
Cody: He sees that his mind actually works. He’s very good with politics, so he understands how it works. And all of these people you know when he goes to see the foundation, and they’re all arguing and bickering about this or that or the other, and he really understands what needs to be done. I think there’s a kind of hidden smirk in Toran about how people perceive him and his tolerance of it, as he allows others to judge him because it suits him.
Blood Lines in Foundation Season 3
Jack: That builds into my next question, so that’s perfect. Toran, of course, is a descendant of Foundation Season 2’s Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas), which fans will remember. Did this make you approach the character differently, given he was related to somebody we’ve seen before but isn’t around anymore?
Cody: I watched Season 1 and Season 2. I think the thing that I would say about Hober Mallow is that there’s a kind of how something works through the generations over time, and how it reflects in each character. That exists in Toran with Hober, and I think it splits with him and Randu Mallow (Darren Pettie). In contrast, Randu really feels that he needs to reify, um, the notion and the idea that, you know, the traders are in this guerrilla war and they need to win, and this is what needs to be fought for, and that’s what, to a certain extent, Hober was fighting for. I think you know that Toran has inherited the kind of rogue spirit that sees all of this as a sham, a lie, and something to be rejected. And so it’s funny because between Randu and Toran, they both have some element of their ancestor, but it expresses itself differently.
Cody: But they really, you know, together they make one part of it, and the other thing was, you know, is Hober a liar, is he a cheater? Is he a you know how? Like what really happened with Hober? I mean, you know, there’s this whole point in the series where Randu was explaining who the traders are, and even Toran, you know, even Rando, was saying I don’t know if he did this or if he did that, he told a lot of lies, you know, or half-truths, you know. I think that’s the other thing that Toran has inherited: he understands that everybody’s telling a half-truth.
Jack: Oh, that makes sense, and they definitely find a bit of a common ground there later on in the season, which is pretty interesting to navigate. How was that for you, acting that out?
Cody: It was fun because of what it’s setting up. In this episode, I kill Randu, right, I think that one has just occurred!
Cody: I kill Randu, and so it was fun knowing that that was coming, because we had to really very quickly establish a whole history that has led to a pain in each of the characters and how they desperately need one another and how to calibrate that desperation coming together in one moment where we feel, finally, that they’re going to be together and boom, Toran has to kill Randu. It was extremely fun for me, because you have to chart both things, just like I do. We have to see his relationship with Randu mean something to him and that he deeply needs something from Randu. We need to get there, and then the moment that we get there, it’s like you know, it’s the genius of David again that you get to pull the rug out from underneath Toran’s feet and the audience’s feet and say, oh, he got everything that he ever wanted, and now he has to kill him. I loved it.
The Blooming Relationship
Jack: You get to share some fantastic scenes with Synnøve Karlsen in Foundation Season Three. What was it like working alongside her?
Cody: She is a dream to work with. I really love her very dearly. We’re amazing friends. You know, we had this little pod, of course, and so Synnøve, Tómas, and I formed a real bond throughout the show. And you know it was not hard to create chemistry with Synnøve. We instantly clicked. She’s an extraordinary actress. She’s so surprising, natural, and fun.
Cody: We had different styles, so it really worked very well together because, whereas I tend to come in more on the attack, you know, there’s something that I’m going after. Synnøve is more intuitive and is able, you know, really easily to explore things in a scene, and so you know there’s this dynamic played out within the characters. I think we brought it to the screen, which is torn, and it can be a little bit. He wants things to move, to happen, and Bayta is always a little bit more like, ‘It’s fine, let’s have a drink, let’s do this.’ You know they’re working with one another constantly, and I think we brought that to the characters, that there’s this kind of unspoken calming of one another.
The Dream Starship
Jack: Well, finally, Cody, I want to ask about yours, Toran’s and Bayta’s starship in Foundation Season 3, because this set looked fantastic and we already spoke to Tómas about it earlier, so I’d love to know what you thought of acting in Starship?!
Cody: I mean, they built this huge, extraordinary ship on set. So we had this, you know, heavily carpeted luxury ship, which was so much fun, and it really became our home for a segment of the shoot, and it’s so different from anything else that we’ve seen in Foundation. What I love is the idea that we finally get to expand the world and see, one of the things I’ll say I love about “The Chaser” as well, which ties into their character, is that if everybody is miserable in the universe. Everybody is constantly at battle, and everybody is constantly at war. In this season, we finally get to expand into a realm in which you see that there are other elements of the universe.
Cody: There are always people who profit off things. There are always people who feel the sadness of one or the other. Um follies of another. Well, there are always people who are Toran and Bayta, who are like, well, you know, if everything is going to hell, why not have a drink? Why not make some money? Um, uh, why not have some fun? You know, I think that’s what the chaser brings as well. Is that it? You see, it’s really like. Why not have fun, um, like, can we not enjoy ourselves while everything falls apart? And so, I love shooting on the ship because it’s a kind of symbol of who they are!
Jack: Cody, thank you for joining us to talk about Foundation Season 3 today!
Conclusion
Foundation is created for AppleTV+ by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman. Goyer serves as executive producer, with Bill Bost, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Matt Thunell, Robyn Asimov, David Kob, Christopher J. Byrne, Leigh Dana Jackson, Jane Espenson and Roxann Dawson also serving as executive producers.
The complete first and second seasons of “Foundation” are now streaming globally on Apple TV+. The 10-episode season will debut globally with one episode on Friday, July 11, on Apple TV+, followed by new episodes weekly, every Friday, through September 12. The Apple Original drama is produced for Apple TV+ by Skydance Media, not Skydance Television.
This Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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