The Lesser Dead - The Lesser Dead - Bonus Episode - Danny Huston as The Hessian

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

A behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Lesser Dead, featuring the team of directors, producers, and writers who helped create the series. In this episode, we explore the character of The Hessian, played by Danny Huston.

And now for a behind the scenes look at the making of the lesser dead, featuring the team of directors, producers, and writers who helped create the series. The Hessian is the epitome of that white colonial strong powerful man, right? And that is what he's carried forward. Executive producer Mark Stern, he is old money in every sense, literally as well as figuratively. These Germans would hire out his mercenaries to the British Army, so they came over here and they were fighting on the other side of our revolutionary war. That's Christopher Buleman, author of the lesser dead. He represents that old school way of we on the world, right?

We're the white men who on the world. And it's so I think into that combs Margaret and her band of al-casts and marginalized diverse people co-resont Freos and everybody else who are bit of an affront to that power structure. You come here saying perhaps I commit an abomination, I say, of course I don't, but also, what if I did? I'm just curious. Let's say hypothetically, I am turning children into vampires for fun. I keep a little dead king, Elgarten, in the basement of Studio 54. Every horrible thing you seem ready to imagine about me is true.

And so, what can you possibly do about it? I think Danny's brilliant performance as the Hessian originates in the fact that he saw the Hessian on far more human terms than just a monster. That's Josh Mauer, executive producer of The Lesser Dead. He seemed to me the deep, deep down and finds the root causes of his actions in the character's humanity,

not in the character's sense of monstrosity. So this didn't happen on purpose, but there is a line where the Hessian declares that there isn't any God. I will close your eyes to the daylight and open them to the night. God, forgive me. You'll have to forgive yourself, I'm afraid. There is no God.

Interestingly, this is the second time the Danny Houston has played a vampire, at least the second, because he was in a film, one of my favorite vampires, I was called 30 Days of Night, and he played the leader of this really feral, nasty group of vampires up in Alaska. And there's a scene where his character declares there is a god. There is no god. The Hessian has his own mixed history with Margaret. He created her, he's her maker. And so she, in essence, has a certain debt to him and they at one point had a romantic relationship even. But I think that as as Margaret started to assert herself, she realized that, you know, this guy's never going to change.

It does not explode yourself just yet. I like you once. I will give you some advice. Free advice. The worst kind. But it is honestly meant for your benefit. After all, But it is honestly meant for your benefit. After all, a maker owes something to his creation. Yeah. Get out of those tunnels, Margaret, like Manis. You can down there too long. It's not good for what's left of your humanity. And it is not safe.

Not anymore. There are consequences to everyone's actions. and it is not safe, not anymore. There are consequences to everyone's actions. What's interesting about the story is that those consequences oftentimes don't appear immediately. It takes years, decades, generations for that, but they do appear. I know where it is. you