(Warning: Fangirlish‘s interview with Robert Joy and Scott McCord contains spoilers for FROM Season 4, up to and including Episode 8 “Heavy is the Head.”)
Ever since learning about what the Man in Yellow did to his wife Miranda, Henry Kavanaugh (Robert Joy) has been struggling to cope. After drinking with the Big Bad’s innocent disguise Sophia in Episode 6, Henry has started having visions of a totally different world. These began as short flashes in FROM Season 4 Episode 7. But now, in Episode 8, we see Henry spending more and more time there. He learns all sorts of things about a Victor (Scott McCord), who didn’t grow up in the nightmare that is FROMville. And this other Victor shows none of the signs of trauma that “ours” has carried for 40 years. Vision Victor has a son. Eloise is alive. It may as well be heaven.
Back in FROMville, during an emotional moment at Miranda’s grave, Henry pours his heart out, wondering “could I really be so…lost.” Mid-breakdown, he visits the alternate reality yet again. This time, his dream world’s doctor tells him how he can stay there, away from the nightmare of FROMville, forever. “Kill the anchor.” That’s her advice. What will Henry choose, and how? We’ll have to wait for those answers. But when Fangirlish interviewed Robert Joy and Scott McCord, the actors shared plenty of insight with us about what it was like to create these scenes and build these versions of Henry and Victor.
Joy described what Henry is going through as “an existential dilemma and ‘dilemma’ in a literal sense. A dilemma—two things. You have to choose between one reality and another. So, he was very uncertain about who he was at all. And it had already been confusing, obviously, for Henry to arrive in Season 3 in FROM Town and have to deal with that confusion.” But now, he’s “faced with the possibility that it’s a dream” while his “brain is being played with.”
So, Joy told us, “I think it was the most challenging emotional situation I’ve been in as an actor, quite frankly, on stage or screen…because you don’t get to face those things…Maybe Hamlet does a little bit, you know, ‘to be or not to be.’ But pretty much, it was a big challenge and, consequently, very exciting.”
Asked how he approached the version of Victor in Henry’s visions—someone totally new or the same character, just in different circumstances—Scott McCord told us it was a combination. “Yeah, all of the above, for sure,” McCord told us, adding “I wanted to challenge myself, certainly, with that. And I think that there was a certain amount of it that was open because we were just getting it in pieces, of course.” As he reminded us, “we get everything with each script.” He had some discussions with creator John Griffin. “But it was really about…how do I bring that person into a, you know, a three-dimensional space.”
Here, Joy highlighted that Victor’s a father in the visions, whereas he’s “very much a son, otherwise, in FROM Town.” After some back and forth, we dove into the interesting fine details of how this alternate universe in FROM Season 4 came together. “One of the things that got to me,” Joy said to McCord, “was you had to choose a necktie. At first, you didn’t want a necktie in the wardrobe. But then it’s referred to. Henry says, ‘and Victor wears a shirt and tie'” during Henry’s scene at Miranda’s gravesite in FROM Season 4 Episode 8. “And so, you had to decide what your profession was. Didn’t you decide that it was an art teacher?”
Scott McCord confirmed, saying he “created a whole backstory. I had to, you know, for myself in order to establish myself in Maine where…this story would have been taking place.” Adding that he and Robert Joy did a lot of “off the page” work, McCord shared that one of the things he did that “helps sort of create that [dream] world” was “just writing letters to my dad.”
Joy also brought up his costar’s artwork. “When I went to run lines in Scott’s apartment,” he told us, McCord had “art all around [him].” It was all about McCord “getting into that side” of Victor. And, Joy added, “I thought it was such a beautiful choice that, you know, Victor, who’s drawing all the time in FROM Town, in the other reality, would be…” and here, McCord finished Joy’s sentence with “an art teacher.”
MORE: Don’t miss our FROM Season 4 interviews with Elizabeth Saunders, David Alpay, Hannah Cheramy, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Julia Doyle.
Watch our full FROM Season 4 interview with Robert Joy and Scott McCord here
Don’t miss Robert Joy and Scott McCord in FROM Season 4! New episodes release Sundays at 9:00pm ET/PT on MGM+.
