Dan Stevens‘ career arc after his turn on Downton Abbey as the awkward, romantic, and ultimately doomed Matthew Crawley has been surprising. Clearly, he wanted to avoid being pigeonholed into any one type of character—although what has emerged is a performer who dearly loves challenging himself with genre projects.
His latest is playing a deeply troubled man who’s plunged into terrifying circumstances in AMC and Shudder’s Ridley Scott-produced anthology series, The Terror: Devil in Silver. Before that, he was a maniac with Terminator-like determination in Adam Wingard’s The Guest, Beast in Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, a former missionary on an anti-cult quest in Gareth Evans’ The Apostle, an over-the-top Russian pop star in Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, a German-speaking humanoid robot in I’m Your Man, a scene-stealing veterinarian in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (reuniting him with Wingard), and a crook-turned-vampire-prey in Abigail.
Those are just some of Stevens’ big-screen performances in recent years—we didn’t even mention his TV triumphs in Legion, Solar Opposites, and many more. Devil in Silver, based on the book by Victor LaValle, looks to be another addition to Stevens’ list of strange and unusual projects; it focuses on a man confined to a psychiatric hospital, where he faces frights that spring from his mental health issues (and the dubious treatment he receives), as well as a possible supernatural threat.
In a new interview with Variety, Stevens spoke about his new series, calling it more than just a “straight up horror show with a monster” since it has “a social critique going on underneath.” He also talked about what attracts him to the genre sphere.
“I love the genre space because it affords a great deal of creativity and playfulness,” Stevens told the trade. “What interests me within that space is the opportunity to, in parallel, have a conversation about something that needs a different lens on it … we need to shed some light on it. We need to throw the conversation into a different paradigm in order to look at it.”
He continued. “Another thing I enjoy about genre is the dialogue within the genre itself. There’s a push for originality by definition. Filmmakers within the space are in dialogue with each other: like, ‘You did your zombie movie, your shark movie, your whatever it is movie like this, I’m going to do it like this.’ There is a very strict set of rules, but it’s like, which ones are you going to break this time in order to surprise people?,” Stevens said. “That’s something that excites me about about genre. We want to be constantly showing you things that you haven’t seen before and championing that originality. Genre really invites that. Audiences are learning that. And ultimately, distributors, networks will follow. They have to.”
The Terror: Devil in Silver premieres May 7 on AMC+ and Shudder.
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