(Warning: Our David Alpay interview continues major spoilers for FROM Season 4, up to and including, Episode 5 “What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been.”)
After cracking the bottle tree code and learning about his past lives at the end of Season 3, Jade (David Alpay) has spent FROM Season 4, just desperate to unlock more of his memories and bring everyone home. Meditation fails—miserably. So, despite knowing anything he finds in the forest could actually be deadly, Jade tries another way to unlock his mind. Donna put it best in Episode 4, actually: He ends up “taking magic mushrooms that he found he found in a haunted forest.” And, at one point during our interview with Alpay, he revealed that there’s a version of Donna’s warning to Jade from that same episode that was more intense than what we ultimately saw.
MORE: Hannah Cheramy on a “pivotal moment” in Julie’s storywalking journey.
On the song the past versions of Jade play in FROM Season 4 Episode 5
Before getting to that point, though, we had to talk about the music. During Jade’s trip, he hears a piece of music he forgot about playing when he was 12, the day his grandmother died. That draws him to his younger self, who acts as a sort of a guide for the rest of the hour. And, for some reason, the piece sounded familiar. It’s obviously an important one—not only did he play it as a child, but three of his past selves also play on the porch of Colony House (the fourth is, uh…incapacitated) when he learns how they all died. But should viewers recognize the song?
Although “it’s a brand new melody, brand new song that [series composer] Chris Tilton wrote…for the episode,” Alpay didn’t discount the possibility that “they’ve peppered it in. And I know that they do that sometimes, where they’ll take a harmony to the melody and then just layer it underneath something. So…by the time you hear it sort of expressed and focused on, you’re familiar with it.”
On making sure Jade’s experience “grounded in reality”
When we asked him what it was like playing a Jade who’s not in his right mind in a different way from what we’re used to, Alpay broke down the process. It started with research. He had conversations with people. Here, he noted, “it’s funny how…a lot of people fully disclosed, ‘yeah, like I’ve done mushrooms, and this is what it feels like.'” And he was “like, ‘cool, tell me more. Like, how does it feel? What does it look like? More importantly, how are you perceived by other people when you’re doing mushrooms? Like, what does that look like?'”
He also “even went on YouTube and found people doing mushroom trips, and walking around in the woods, and kind of reacting to things, which I thought was kind of cool. But everybody’s experience of it is obviously going to be different. And it’s very subjective.” So, getting back to the specifics of Jade’s trip in FROM Season 4 Episode 5, David Alpay explained, “at the end of the day, what I wanted to make sure, was that what the audience sees isn’t some dramatic, over the top, ridiculous, like clownish performance. I wanted it as much as possible to feel like just a slight offset of reality.”
That way, viewers wouldn’t be “so distracted by the performance of Jade on mushrooms that we miss the importance of what he’s experiencing.” Alpay explained that he knew the way the episode was filmed was going to really help viewers get the perspective of Jade’s hallucinations. As he put it, “I knew that, sort of, with the camera rig and everything that we were doing, like the locked in rig, that it was going to be very POV. And there was going to be enough with…distorted visuals and stuff to kind of simulate that kind of outer space kind of feeling,” but Alpay “wanted [Jade] to feel very grounded in the moment—very alert and very receptive to what was happening.”
Here, David Alpay pointed out Jade “sacrificed so much to do this.” Referencing that Episode 4 warning from Donna, he added, “Donna says, you know, ‘you do this trip, you might not come back.'” And “a moment that was cut right after that is…she gives me this hug.” It’s like she’s acknowledging to Jade, “‘you might not be my favorite person, but there’s a really good chance I’m never going to see you again…something’s gonna happen to you. You’re not gonna be the same person coming out of this.’ So, [Jade] takes it very seriously” when he “goes on this trip to find these answers. And I needed the audience to come with me and to feel like this was really happening, and that we were grounded in reality.”
MORE: Julia Doyle on FROMville’s new resident in FROM Season 4.
Watch our full David Alpay interview here
Alpay’s tease for the remainder of FROM Season 4: “Jade’s committed to getting out of there. I think that his commitment, whereas [it] might have been a little bit more selfish before, I think he’s a little bit more connected to the people in town now. I think he feels something for them in a way that he didn’t when he fights now. He’s not just fighting for himself. We’ll say that. That’s probably all you need to know.”
But can Jade get everyone out of FROMville? We’ll have to wait and see.
To find out, don’t miss David Alpay as Jade Herrera in FROM! New episodes FROM Season 4 release Sundays at 9:00pm ET/PT on MGM+. (After a break the week of May 24, Episode 6 premieres Sunday, May 31.)
