Himesh Patel on the Pandemic, Fatherhood and ‘Station Eleven’

Voting is underway for the 74th Primetime Emmys, and this week we’re speaking to a number of performing nominees. The awards can be offered on Sept. 12 on NBC.

“I’m somewhat little bit of a nerd,” Himesh Patel warned.

That was on a latest Tuesday night, on a video name from a red-walled room in his London residence. Wearing a black Adidas T-shirt, with a pair of white stripes snaking down every shoulder, he regarded much less like a nerd than somebody able to take the sphere.

That’s, till he started breaking down methods for hay and brick commerce offers within the board sport “Settlers of Catan.”

“You’re all form of making an attempt to trick one another into buying and selling the mistaken factor,” stated Patel, 31, in a British accent that may be surprising to anybody who had seen solely his efficiency within the post-apocalyptic HBO Max drama “Station Eleven.” The function earned him his first Emmy nomination, for finest lead actor in a restricted collection. His Chicago accent was flawless.

Hay and brick trades … Sounds … riveting?

“I do know,” he stated. “It sounds lame, however it’s actually enjoyable and there’s a lot of technique concerned.”

Patel performed a distinct type of settler on the HBO Max collection “Station Eleven,” primarily based on the e book by Emily St. John Mandel, which follows the survivors of a devastating pandemic of their efforts to rebuild society — with artwork and group greater than bricks and hay. When Patel’s character, a contract author named Jeevan, decides to soak up an orphaned younger actress, Kirsten (Matilda Lawler), he should additionally navigate the challenges of changing into a de facto mother or father.

Like Jeevan, Patel was an understated presence on the present, and his nomination — the present’s sole performing nod among the many seven it earned general, together with for writing, course and rating — got here as a shock to many, himself included. (He discovered on a prepare trip to go to his mother and father in London).

“I prefer it that manner,” stated Patel, who, like Jeevan speaks softly and slowly, weighing each phrase. “I’m not excellent at being on the crimson carpet.”

Patel grew up in Cambridgeshire in jap England, the kid of Indian mother and father who had been each born in Africa. (“I used to be a toddler of two worlds,” stated Patel, who grew up talking Gujarati.) He characterised his cultural upbringing as a cross between Bollywood movies and fantasy blockbusters like “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings.” (If he had not turn into an actor, he stated, he doubtless would have been a pc modeler.)

After spending his teenage years doing performs with an area youth theater, he received his first massive break when he was solid in “EastEnders,” the long-running British cleaning soap opera, when he was 16. He dropped out of faculty, then spent 9 years enjoying the function of Tamwar Masood from 2007 to 2016.

Though “EastEnders” made him a star throughout the pond, American audiences started to note him extra when he landed the lead function in Danny Boyle’s 2019 musical romantic comedy “Yesterday,” by which he performs a struggling musician who instantly turns into one of many few individuals on the planet who keep in mind the Beatles. Then he scored a job because the fixer Mahir in “Tenet” (2020), Christopher Nolan’s time-bending spy thriller.

Much more acknowledge him now due to “Station Eleven” and his most up-to-date movie function: Enjoying the journalist love curiosity of Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) in Adam McKay’s star-studded 2021 catastrophe comedy “Don’t Look Up.”

“If I’d instructed my 11-year-old self that, I feel he would’ve been like, ‘Shut up, cease taking the piss out of me,’” he stated, laughing.

“Station Eleven” episodes didn’t start airing till late final yr, however Patel started work on the collection in 2019, when the solid filmed the final pictures of Episode 1, by which Jeevan and Kirsten go away the residence and stroll by the snow towards the lake, in Toronto, standing in for Lake Michigan, in Chicago. Then the pandemic despatched them into lockdown. (They handed the time by enjoying board video games over Zoom, with “Settlers of Catan” that includes closely within the rotation.)

“We didn’t change the story to attempt to make it really feel extra related,” Patel stated. “However you might really feel the affect of the pandemic creeping in.”

The present’s creator, Patrick Somerville, primarily based the display screen model of Jeevan on the character in Mandel’s novel, although he stated he tailor-made the character to Patel’s performing fashion.

“He has a stillness about him that was important to the present really working,” Somerville stated in a video interview from outdoors the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, as Lake Michigan waves lapped within the background.

“I’m the loudmouth of the group,” he added. However with Patel, he stated, he discovered that “one line — or no line — might carry the burden emotionally of a scene.”

One explicit scene in Episode 9, which wasn’t within the e book, resonated deeply with Patel: A scene in a makeshift beginning heart, by which Jeevan turns into a birthing companion to a handful of girls. The episode was filmed lower than three months after Patel had watched his personal spouse give beginning to their daughter.

“I used to be within the early months of being a father and never figuring out the ins and outs of tips on how to do it once we shot that,” he stated. “It was so simply accessible as a result of I used to be going by it.”

Lawler, who performs younger Kirsten, stated she noticed a change in Patel after his daughter was born. “He had extra of a fatherly presence” of their relationship, she stated. (She had recommendation for him, too, she stated: Learn to braid hair, stat.)

In a video interview from sleepaway camp within the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, Lawler, who, as within the collection, comes throughout as a lot older than her 13 years, stated the bond between her and Patel was instant and easy — a chemistry that was mirrored onscreen.

“It’s an odd bond — we simply naturally understood one another,” she stated.

She provided another insights on Patel: He’s an incredible dancer. He’s unbelievable at Ping-Pong. He’s “taller than I believed” and “completely not intimidating as an individual.”

“It’s disarming how inclusive he’s,” she stated. “He at all times made everybody really feel actually snug.”

He’s additionally, she confirmed, “type of nerdy.”

Hiro Murai, who was nominated for 2 directing Emmys this yr — for the pilot of “Station Eleven” and for an episode of “Atlanta” — stated he and Patel had quite a few conversations about tips on how to stability Jeevan’s emotional intimacy and the comedy, notably in Jeevan’s relationship with Kirsten.

“There’s one thing very humorous a few man who’s type of a stunted adolescent making an attempt to care for this little woman who’s a lot older than him in spirit,” he stated. “The humanity was a very powerful half, and the comedy needed to come out of the character reasonably than leaning into situational jokes.”

Sooner or later, Patel, who not too long ago wrapped capturing in Southport, N.C., on “Windfall,” an indie murder-mystery comedy by which he stars alongside Lily James and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, wish to do extra producing and doubtlessly writing work, he stated; one thought is for a collection concerning the lives of the multiple million Indian troopers who fought for the British Empire throughout World Warfare I.

“These had been a tumultuous few years in Britain by way of id and folks understanding their cultural historical past,” he stated, “There are many tales to assist fill in.

“What excites me,” he added, “is the chance to have so many brown actors in entrance of and behind the digicam.”