We’re days away from the finale of Foundation Season 3. Thankfully, we’ve sat down with Academy Award Winner Troy Kotsur, who portrays Preem Palver in the third season, to discuss his role in the AppleTV+ series. Preem Palver is the leader of the secret Second Foundation, which Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) and Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) established. Kotsur, starring in Foundation, opened up a new avenue for the series, allowing it to feature and spotlight American Sign Language.
Thanks to AppleTV+, we sat down with Troy Kotsur to talk about his role in Foundation Season 3 and what it was like joining the epic Sci-Fi series. Read on below.
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Who Is Preem Palver
Jack: Troy, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m really excited to discuss Foundation with you.
Troy: Likewise, thank you for having me. It’s really nice to have this chat with you today, Jack.
Jack: So, I’d like to start asking you what it’s been like being part of such a grand series as Foundation?
Troy: Well, it’s such an honour and a privilege because it’s such a massive production. You have an enormous ensemble cast, and you have all these A to B to C stories, so it’s about bringing all these stories together and these storylines, and it’s a massive production. But it’s incredible how seamlessly it comes together, and it’s really been a fun process for me.
Jack: So, Troy, could you tell us more about the character of Preem Palver?
Troy: Sure, absolutely. My character, Preem Palver, is the first leader of Foundation Number Two, and as such, it’s fitting that our first speaker uses sign language to communicate, which is really cool. So, basically, we’re trying to protect the galaxy. When Preem Palver meets Gale Dornick, we support each other and we try to make a better future. Preem has been a really fun character to play, and it’s been a great ensemble to work with.
Leading The Second Foundation
Jack: You get to spend a lot of time on screen with Lou Llobell’s Gaal Dornick. What was it like working alongside her in Foundation Season 3?
Troy: Lou Llobell, who plays Gaal Dornick, is amazing. She’s such an easy person to work with, and she has picked up sign language so quickly. We have two sign language consultants, Deanne Bray and Ryan Schlecht, who are both deaf and who both worked with Lou, and she was really a natural in learning sign language, and she really has the gift that makes it easy to work with her. I’ve worked with so many different actors and Lou is such a strong actress and she really carries the story forward.
Jack: So we find your character on the planet Ignis in Foundation Season 3, but I’ve got to ask, what is it like working on a set like this?
Troy: It was truly amazing when we shot my scenes. One of the scenes had a spaceship landing and so this spaceship lands and on set. Of course, you don’t see the spaceship landing when you’re physically there on set, but they brought over an iPad. They showed me exactly the position of where this spaceship would be landing and that really enabled me to imagine what that would look like and really helped my performance, even with the spaceship not physically there, even with the spaceship not physically there, and when I saw the episode it was so amazing to see everything put together and just as far as the set building and the set design, it’s absolutely amazing and imaginative.
Troy: My home planet is more like being out in the woods. There’s less technology, it’s a quiet and peaceful community, and there are a lot of Mentalics, which is kind of funny. You asked me the question about maybe I’m starting to answer your next question what did it have to do with mentalics or the ability to communicate with telepathy?
Troy: So the group of folks that Preem Palver is with, we have a different way of communicating, other than just sign language, so we can communicate as mentalics, through something similar to telepathy, and it’s more than just sign language.
The World of Foundation Season 3
Jack: What do you think makes Foundation different from other sci-fi series?
Troy: When I was the Tusken Raider in Star Wars, no one recognised me, of course, because I had a mask on, but my character in Foundation is Preem Palver. You can see my face. I’ve always loved sci-fi because it’s so much fun to create characters that don’t exist. So we’re actually storytelling and creating, for example, this character, Preem Palver, who happens to be deaf and communicates with sign language and telepathy, and as Isaac Asimov, of course, inspired all of the above, Star Wars, Star Trek and every original sci-fi series was based on Asimov’s books. So it’s such an honour to be a part of this. It essentially goes back to the beginning and the roots of science fiction storytelling.
Jack: I wanted to ask you what it is like having representation of sign language and deaf actors in a big show like Foundation? What does that mean to you?
Troy: Yeah, you know, I’ve seen so many sci-fi series and such cool stories that have been so popular through the years, but I had not seen any sign language or a deaf character in sci-fi series and worldwide. You know, deaf communities around the world love sci-fi and I’m so honored to be a part of Foundation because we’re able to reach the international market and it’s not just American sign language. We use elements of other countries’ sign language in the Series 2. We can pick and choose, because ASL or American Sign Language is not standardized or international. There’s over 300 types of sign languages worldwide, including British Sign Language.
Troy: So we have developed some signs that don’t exist and with our team of ASL consultants, we have two deaf consultants and we take a look at the spaceships or these devices that exist in our world and we created signs like this. So this was the shape of the spaceship, or another hand shape that looks like a Y. This is another spaceship, for example, and so we found different creative ways to develop the sign language in our series and I think it’s an experience that many folks have never seen before and I think they’ll be thrilled to see it.
Jack: Troy, thank you for joining us 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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