In ‘Murderbot,’ an anxious scientist and an autonomous robot develop a workplace-trauma bond

Alexander Skarsgård was initially worried “Murderbot” would be too dark. The actor had come off a string of intense films, including “The Northman” and “Infinity Pool,” and he was looking for something more comedic. The title of the series, based on Martha Wells’ popular science fiction books, didn’t suggest it would be particularly funny.

“I wasn’t familiar with Martha’s novellas, so I just heard the title and I heard ‘sci-fi,’ ” Skarsgård says, speaking over the phone from Los Angeles. “If you’re not familiar with the books, you think it’s probably going to be an incredibly testosterone-driven, tough guy android kicking ass in space. But I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading [the script]. I had never encountered a character like this.”

The actor was so struck by the titular character that he not only signed on to star in the Apple TV+ series but also joined as an executive producer alongside creators Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz.

“Talking to Chris and Paul and getting to know them got me even more excited,” he says. “They’re so brilliant, and their vision for the character and for the show got me fired up.”

Season 1, which began streaming in May, is based on “All Systems Red,” the first book in Wells’ futuristic series “The Murderbot Diaries.” It follows a private security cyborg, known as a “SecUnit,” who hacks its governing module, allowing it newfound autonomy. An eclectic group of researchers, led by Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), are forced to accept the SecUnit as part of a planetary mission, and it slowly begins to learn the way of humans. The relationship between Mensah and their SecUnit, who refers to itself as Murderbot, is charmingly awkward. The pair are forced to trust each other as the mission goes awry, leading to an unlikely friendship. In “Command Feed,” the sixth episode released on Friday, Mensah saves Murderbot from destruction by reluctantly performing surgery on its wiring.

Alexander Skarsgård stars in “Murderbot,” as the titular autonomous robot in the series. (Apple)

“Is that what they call trauma bonding in this day and age?” Dumezweni says of the scene in a separate interview over Zoom from New York, where she is preparing to star in “Duke & Roya” on Broadway. “Filming it was extraordinary because the special effects guys were amazing. It [Murderbot] was literally in front of me, but that obviously wasn’t Alexander. It looked so real.”

“That dynamic was led by the script, and it was very interesting,” Skarsgård adds. “It was clear that Mensah would be an empathetic character. And Murderbot is not used to being treated respectfully by humans or even being treated as a sentient construct. He’s always been a piece of equipment. Noma and I talked a lot about it. It was a gold mine to explore because there’s so much comedy in their differences.”

Leading a TV series is a first for Dumezweni, who has previously been cast in smaller roles. She wasn’t convinced by the initial pitch at first because sci-fi hasn’t traditionally had a lot of major roles for actors of color.

“Usually I’d come in and play the receptionist,” she says. “I love to watch sci-fi. But I wondered: Who am I going to be in this sci-fi world?”

However, once she learned more about the world and the character, the actor changed her mind.

“It was an absolute joy to discover that there was nothing that Chris and Paul had to change to make it representational,” Dumezweni says. “It’s lovely not to have to fight for people’s positions in the world based on their skin color.”

“I love to watch sci-fi. But I wondered: Who am I going to be in this sci-fi world?” says Noma Dumezweni about her character in “Murderbot.”

(Apple)

Both actors were drawn to the series in part because of its unique tone, which lands somewhere between action, comedy and drama. Murderbot is stoic but awkward and unaccustomed to human emotions, which it learns about by surreptitiously watching hours of soap operas. Mensah’s Preservation Alliance team is composed of misfits, including David Dastmalchian’s Gurathin and Sabrina Wu’s Pin-Lee, who often confound Murderbot’s expectations. The laughs don’t come from intentional punchlines, but instead from situational circumstances and Murderbot’s dry voice-over, as well as its disinterest in dealing with humans.

“The writing was so surprising and different and had such a unique tone from the beginning,” Skarsgård says. “What works is that it has this instant combination of being a big, action-packed sci-fi show, but it’s also a workplace comedy.”

Because the voice-over is essential to the story, getting it right took a lot of trial and error. Skarsgård says he worried about how it would be incorporated during shooting, particularly because Murderbot is so expressionless and not very verbose in many of the actual scenes.

“How would we juxtapose that with an inner monologue that is more expressive?” he says. “How do you find a fun and interesting balance between the way Murderbot speaks and the way he thinks?”

The voice-over became an evolving component of the episodes. On set, an assistant director would sometimes read the narration off camera if it felt relevant for the actors to hear during a particular scene. After filming, Skarsgård, Chris and Paul got together in Stockholm, New York and Los Angeles for several recording sessions to try out different versions of the voice-over lines.

“It was quite exhausting, but also quite fun creatively because you could see how much the tone of the scene changed when we tweaked the voice-over a little bit,” Skarsgård says. “You could have a moment where there’s no voice-over, and it’s like a non-moment where nothing happens. But then just by adding a little commentary by Murderbot, it suddenly pops into a funny little moment.”

Although the series adheres to Wells’ book, some aspects of the characters have been expanded. In the show, Mensah struggles with anxiety in a few vulnerable moments, which differs from her portrayal on the page. Dumezweni says she has observed some pushback from fans of the book about the changes, an experience she understands from playing Hermione Granger in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” when it opened in the West End.

“That’s what you have to do in film and TV,” she says. “You have to expand, not change. You have to fill in. I love it because only Murderbot can see what’s happening to her in that moment. None of her team can see it until Episode 4. I love those moments. For me, they grow her.”

For Dumezweni, these scenes give Mensah a point of connection for the audience, as does the way Murderbot is “autism-coded,” as some fans have noted. Skarsgård says the creators didn’t set out to make the character overtly neurodivergent in the series.

“It’s very clear when you read the novellas and the scripts that it is a character who is not always comfortable in settings with other people and can find interactions with humans tricky to navigate,” Skarsgård says. “To me, it was a character we hoped would be relatable to people in the neurodivergent community, but also in a lot of fans in the LGBTQ community. Murderbot not having a gender or being subscribed to binary sexuality could be relatable, but it’s natural to Murderbot. That was important — this is how Murderbot was created, and none of this [identity] is a big deal to Murderbot.”

“To me, it was a character we hoped would be relatable to people in the neurodivergent community, but also in a lot of fans in the LGBTQ community,” says Alexander Skarsgård.

(Apple)

At the core of the show is the concept of Murderbot’s free will, something that gets more fully explored in upcoming episodes.

“It’s now understanding it has free will truly and that there are choices to be made in the world,” Dumezweni says. “Meeting these people gives it a chance to understand that not all human beings are idiots.”

“For me, the inner journey for Murderbot over the course of the season is about what to do with that autonomy,” Skarsgård adds. “The character has unleashed something inside of itself by hacking the governing module and gaining this independence. The journey becomes: I have this autonomy now, but who am I? What am I capable of? What am I willing to do? What are my desires?”

Although “Murderbot” has yet to be renewed for a second season, there is a lot of source material available. Wells has written seven books featuring Murderbot, and Skarsgård is excited about the potential for more episodes.

“I love Murderbot,” he says. “I love playing Murderbot. Chris and Paul are not only supremely talented but incredibly nice and generous. If you talk to anyone who worked on the show, I guarantee that everyone had the time of their lives.”

The remaining four episodes will reveal the antagonist behind the attacks on the Preservation Alliance and whether they’ll successfully be able to escape the planet. They also offer essential backstory into characters like Mensah and Gurathin.

“I can’t wait for people to see each and every story,” Dumezweni says. “And what Alex does in the last two episodes is amazing. I don’t care if I’m in no more seasons, but Alexander Skarsgård has to carry on making seasons of ‘Murderbot.’ He does so much with the tiniest movement of his face. He is extraordinary and he honors the character beautifully.”

“Murderbot’s job will get harder and harder trying to protect these very lovely but also quite naive and inexperienced humans,” Skarsgård says. “It’s not a spoiler to say that eventually Murderbot will care about these humans, but we didn’t want to rush into that. We leaned in slowly. So much of the comedy results from the character’s absolute reluctance to save their lives.”