Jared Harris on Reawakening, Mad Men memories and how independent cinema has changed

"On the surface level, it's a kind of suspense film or thriller," Harris says of the project during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com. "But on a sort of deeper level, the interesting thing that you're looking at is the way that the parents are handling the situation. What it is that they choose to believe?

"The mother chooses to believe in an emotional reality, and the father – he's very typical of the male mind. He wants to know the facts, he wants the details, he wants... he arrives at the truth through facts, and she arrives at a truth through feeling."

The plot of Reawakening is in many ways reminiscent of a real life stranger-than-fiction story that was the subject of the excellent Oscar-nominated documentary The Impostor, in 2012.

That film explored the 1997 case of French confidence trickster Frédéric Bourdin, who successfully posed as a Texan boy who had gone missing three-years earlier at the age of 13.

Despite a relatively sizeable age difference and a variety of other inconsistent features – including the fact that he spoke with a French accent – the missing boy's family welcomed Bourdin into their home as their lost son, with several of them seemingly taken in by the deception.

It goes to show the extreme lengths parents will go to in order to cling on to hope in events such as this one, and Harris explains that the story was one of many "in the periphery" of his co-star Stephenson's vision during filming. But while research was important to the project, Harris himself wasn't too concerned with digging deep into these similar cases.

"I have to say I think that acting is an imaginative exercise to me and the research is important, but the reason for the research is... it doesn't have an end on itself," he says.

"It's there to spark your imagination. So, I mean, I found that the script was just so powerful and it was all there, that I didn't really feel like I needed that crutch of the research. It was pretty easy to allow one's imagination to enter into this world."

In addition to coming on board the film as an actor, Harris also serves as an executive producer on Reawakening – something that he says allowed him to have a greater creative input in the film.

He says that writer/director Virginia Gilbert was very open to collaboration and that she and the cast would have productive discussions every morning before filming, which has by no means been the case on every project he's worked on.

"Normally, what happens is you come on board as an actor, and sometimes you're invited to give insight and opinion on the script. But quite often that's resented, they don't want to know," he says.

"So I think coming on board as a producer allows you then to be part of those conversations. It's sort of a weird thing to me, that the people who have had a history and experience of telling stories to strangers wouldn't be asked their opinion about the material, but that's just the way it is."

Harris has been involved in a great number of independent films in his career – going back to his very early days as an actor – and he says that "independent cinema has changed completely since then", in large part due to the modern day viewing habits of audiences.

"[It's] largely a result of the way that we can now consume everything," he explains. "It's much harder for independent films now because it's a real challenge for people to know that you've made the content that you've made. There's just so much of it."

But in terms of actually filming projects, he says that very little has changed. And he also takes issue with people who claim that there is a big difference between making television and film.

"There really isn't," he says. "I mean the equipment's exactly the same, the lights are the same, the sound equipment's the same, the cameras are exactly the same, the crews are the same.

"You end up with this sort of similar amount of time, like three or four takes, and then you move on, even on the big movies – everyone except for David Fincher, who would regularly do into double digits takes on everything.

"But otherwise, it's all done exactly the same way. There used to be a difference, but there isn't any more. In terms of the way that the content is created. There's no difference between the way it's created for television or film."

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When it comes to television, it must be said that Harris has a pretty exemplary record for choosing winning projects.

He's been in several of the most acclaimed shows of the 21st century – from Mad Men and Chernobyl to The Crown and the under-watched but widely praised The Terror. So what is his secret to picking so many series that have clearly struck a chord with viewers?

"It's about the writing," is his simple response. "If you're not interested in the story, why do you think anyone else will be? So when you're reading it, I always give it the first 30 pages, and if you're gripped by it, you'll want to keep turning and come to the end, but if you're finding that you're looking at your watch, and you're having to sort of plow through the script...

"I mean, the only times you say yes to stuff like that is, we all have rent to pay, we've got mortgages to pay and stuff like that," he adds. "So sometimes you say yes to stuff because you need the money. And they always tend to end up the same way. They're always disappointing experiences, and they very rarely end up being something special. There are exceptions to that, but they're not often."

He continues: "So to me, it's about the writing. It's about the material. But that doesn't mean... some stuff I've read was incredibly well written and it still didn't work. It's a mystery.

"I think if there was some way to guarantee that every single time you knew what the end going to be.... if one person knew that, they'd own the planet. And if everybody knew it, we would become bored by the content. The hit and miss nature of it is what keeps us all coming back again."

Of all the roles that Harris has taken on over the years, perhaps the best and most memorable of the bunch was Lane Pryce on Mad Men – a part he played from the third to the fifth season of the beloved '60s-set drama.

The show had already become a huge hit before his involvement, but his time on the series arguably coincided with its strongest run of episodes, while his character was involved in one of the most tragic, heart-wrenching storylines in the show's run – and perhaps even in television history full stop.

Harris becomes especially animated when reminiscing about the series, talking about his very fond memories of that time and explaining that he's still in touch with its creator, Matthew Weiner.

"We walked the picket lines together during the strike," he says. "Any time I bump into the people who were involved in it, it's always a big hug and catch up. And, you know, Jon Hamm handed us the Emmy for Chernobyl!

"It was a great place to work, I mean it really was," he recalls. "We knew we were working on something that had hit that nerve. By the time I joined, it had already hit that nerve. It won back to back Emmys, back to back Golden Globes. It was universally acclaimed. You could go into the store and buy Mad Men-inspired suits and outfits for women.

"It had affected the culture, men were dressing differently. Cocktail culture came back. That is an incredibly rare thing to happen for anything, for a television show, a piece of entertainment. And everybody knew that when they were working on it."

He also loved that fact that – unlike most shows these days – the series was filmed one episode at a time, which meant that he and the rest of the cast and crew experienced the story similarly to the audience.

"We didn't know what was going to happen next," he says. "You got the script the day before you're going to start shooting the next episode and the cast and crew, you'd see them... the scripts would be handed out at lunchtime, and during the lunch break, the crew would be reading the script for the next episode that they're going to start shooting next day.

"And it was very exciting, the level of the detail and the thought and care about it that trickled down to everybody else," he adds. "[Weiner] wanted everybody else to care about it, the same passion that he had. So when you opened a drawer at a desk, the magazines on the desk would be from the month that this episode was taking place.

"If you open the drawer and there's stuff in there that was anachronistic – and you'd very rarely find that would happen – that stuff would all be thrown out. Even the sweets were period sweets. I mean, it was amazing, the detail. Everyone cared that much."

Harris, clearly, also cares about Reawakening, and was delighted with the response it received when it debuted at Dublin Film Festival earlier this year. Now he hopes that it can also find an audience in cinemas.

"It's a pretty powerful story and it kind of grips you quite early right from the beginning," he says. "And takes you on a very big, emotional journey, that's satisfying in the end, in that it doesn't leave you hanging. It doesn't go for an enigmatic ending.

"So the sort of superficial questions that one has about the story... your questions are answered in terms of the mystery. And it leaves you with something to think about afterwards that's really interesting. About what would you prefer, would you accept that reality or not?"

Reawakening is now showing in UK cinemas.

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