1 week Ago By Dessi Gomez
SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for the entirety of Surface Season 2 . Following his famous footballer role of Jamie Tartt on Apple TV+ ’s breakout comedy Ted Lasso created by Bill Lawrence and Jason Sudeikis, actor Phil Dunster brought a very different role to life in Season 2 of the streamer’s drama series Surface created by Veronica West and produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. Dunster’s Quinn Huntley emerged as a compelling character in the second season of the show, which constantly turn any attempted perception of its main character Sophie Ellis (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who sometinesgoes by an alter ego Tess Caldwell, on its head, challenging everything viewers think they know about her as well as those closest to her like her husband James (Oliver Jackson Cohen) and her estranged childhood best friend Eliza Huntley (Millie Brady), Quinn’s sister.
Related Stories ‘Ted Lasso’ Star Phil Dunster To Star Opposite Steve Carell In HBO Comedy Series ‘Surface’: Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Psychological Thriller Series Gets Season 2 Premiere Date, First-Look Photos Quinn adds a very unpredictable wild card element to Sophie’s already ever-shifting narrative, making Season 2 even more of a slippery slope down to the finale episode which arrived Friday. Down to the wire of the very lavish ceremony at the Huntley estate, Quinn grapples with the past actions of his father (Rupert Graves) and grandfather, who covered up gruesome deaths of women to protect their family reputation. Halfway through the season, he starts to speak up about this while the nuptials to his fiancée Grace (Frieda Pinto) draw nearer.
Watch on Deadline “That inner conflict became external, and so within that there is a resentment. It’s so vociferous because he resents it so much, because it’s not his decision that he’s in this weird, double-edged privilege, where it’s like, ‘I didn’t choose to be, so why am I denigrated for being privileged?’ and yet, [he has] all the trappings of privilege,” Dunster told Deadline. “In the same way, it’s his hereditary personality, all that comes with being a Huntley is that conflict.
That’s the fun thing about any literal drama is just two opposing forces, and it’s like trying to accept it and lean into it while still hating it.” The actor, who can also be spotted singing Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” in the Prime Video rom com Picture This and who will soon star alongside Steve Carrell in another big comedy series from Bill Lawrence at HBO, unpacked his character’s complex family ties, why he thinks Grace ultimately walks down the aisle to commit to Quinn (with a reference to The White Lotus ) and whether or not he sees a future for Quinn Huntley should Surface get a Season 3 in the below interview. DEADLINE: How did you navigate the headspace for Quinn this season with all the things he does and his unpredictability? PHIL DUNSTER: He’s a roller coaster, man, isn’t he? It’s quite nice in that it’s really well laid out for what his conflict is.
He spent the first half of the season going “We want to have a new trajectory for the family, for my relationships within the family, and I want to be good. I want to do good in the world,” but within that, he now has something to lose with Grace. The reality of that sets in, and in order to protect her and still have a family to do good in, he realizes that he has to protect that, and in doing so, he realizes then what his dad and what his [dad’s] dad has had to do in order to protect that.
Well, not what necessarily they have to have done, but what they did do. That’s key. The sins of the forefathers repeat again.
And so how I navigate that, I suppose, was that just playing the — god, honesty of it — playing the reality of it, but also finding — it’s the thing I’ll come back to a few times in our conversation — variety’s what I love, and any actor, really, I suppose, wants to do that. I guess that’s why we all became actors, because we’re so desperate to get away from away from who the hell we are. We pretend to be loads of other people.
So, yeah, really, it was about leaning into that and finding the moments that it starts to come through — it’s sort of unpredictable, but what are the moments that that darkness starts to seep in, much like venom. DEADLINE: There’s the reveal that Sophie is Quinn and Eliza’s half sister, and his relationship with his full sister is complicated too. How did you navigate those and where did those end up for you? DUNSTER: I mean, my relationship with Millie [Brady] could not be further from Quinn’s relationship with Eliza because they are very adversarial.
They’re quite, quite cheeky at times. And I’ve really enjoyed that, because it’s mostly the two of us just taking the piss out of each other, really. I suppose they are the only two people who understand what the other one is going through.
And yet, as the story goes on, there’s more and more secrets that the two of them have separately, but in terms of that sense of privilege, that sense of upper echelon — and that’s that was slightly tricky too —t’s hard to know what that life is like because in something like Ted Lasso , I love football, and so I’ve watched football my whole life, and I love the culture of football, parts of it. Therefore I felt like I could certainly have a view into what that lifestyle was like of being a footballer. It’s different.
It’s a really interesting, intricate, complicated version of celebrity, of like gladiator sort of lifestyle thing that they have. But I don’t think there’s many comps other than, like The Royal Family, I suppose is what we have the most insight into there’s a lot of mystery about those sorts of that landed gentry, because they are literally an upper class. They sit in a different stratum of society.
You don’t really see into it. And I think that’s on purpose. They have high walls, and they have their private parties and member’s clubs and the whole point of this that you don’t see it.
So without wanting to — I never want to, ever in anything that I do — lean into pastiche or to cliche, it’s about finding what the human relationship was between the two of them. DEADLINE: Yeah Jamie’s like this anti-hero kind of, but obviously, in Surface , I don’t know if you’d say you’re more of a villain. There’s just a lot more sinister things going on.
DUNSTER: Yeah, and it definitely plays the differing styles of Surface and Ted that you can have more of an out. Anthony Head played Rupert, so delectably evilly that, well, I mean, he’s pretty wrong as a person. But it still wasn’t like, I mean, I’m thinking about all the things he did and being like, “No, he really was bastard.
” DEADLINE: The finale culminates in Quinn and Grace’s wedding. What do you think makes her go through with it and stay with him? There’s a point where she might walk away. DUNSTER: Just for the money.
She’s doing it for the money. No, I think she really loves Quinn. She loves Quinn also for the prior thing of trying to lead the family into a new era, and he’s trying to do that through the benevolent funds that they have, but also through a kinder version of himself, and maybe a cleaner version, rather than kinder, of the company.
But they are their own separate entity, and that, I suppose, is the conflict for Grace, and Quinn is that enmity with the family. Quinn’s mum is — it’s very interesting to see how Joely [Richardson] would try to — it’s that classic idea of mother-in-law, in trying to do the right thing, actually makes the whole thing worse. You see that play out sometimes.
And so why does [Grace] do that? I guess, the belief that he is good. And also, I don’t know if this is what Freida was playing or thinking, necessarily, but I think also, once you start leading a life like that, I think it’s probably very difficult to stop. There’s a brilliant line in White Lotus that Parker Posey has of like “I’ve lived so long being rich, I don’t think I can go back to being poor.
I’m sure that’s a somewhat dark component. DEADLINE : Everyone’s talking about The White Lotus . I love that.
DUNSTER: I’m still on like [episode] seven. DEADLINE: I could see you being in that. Just gonna throw that out there.
DUNSTER: Let him know. Let [Mike White] know. DEADLINE: I will! Okay last question, if it were to go to a Season 3, do you think Quinn would come back? Is he redeemable? Does he have a story, a future on the show? DUNSTER: Well, what I loved about Season 2 was how, how it really expanded so much, and it went on a totally different plane.
And I think that’s quite interesting thing to do with the TV series. I think there’s definitely more that you could look at with Quinn, and I’d be very happy to to have that discussion. But I think that there, it’s obviously, it’s Sophie slash Tess’ story, and she is this never-ending labyrinth of a person.
I just found it such an interesting expansion of the world to do that. I wonder if that couldn’t happen again, because we love those espionage style [Anthony] le Carré stories of the world is literally the stage, and it’s fun to see her in all those environments and how she manipulates, and how she inveigles herself into these different worlds. I also feel like that final conversation between Grace and Quinn at the wedding, at the reception afterwards, there is a pretty strong indication there of the way that it goes.
She’s not quite willing to accept that, but he’s just like, “Well, we tried. I don’t know what, what else you think we can do here, but that’s our fate.” RELATED: Ted Lasso’ Star Phil Dunster On First Emmy Nom & Competing Against Brett Goldstein For Outstanding Supporting Actor—”Brett Is So Loved”.
