VIEW THE VIDEO INTERVIEW HERE

Today, Alex Garland’s move from film into television debuts on the new “FX on Hulu.” Devs’ world is filled with people very clued into tech, science, and all its advances and the show itself sits pretty much right up against our own reality when it comes to the concepts and theories at play in the narrative. Want to know more? Check out what the cast had to tell us about their roles in the mysterious series.

Sonoya Mizuno, who previously worked with Garland on both Ex Machina and Annihilation, is the star of Devs, playing someone in an extremely difficult position almost from the get-go. “Lily, at the start of the series, is in what she believes to be a very loving relationship with her boyfriend Sergei. They work at the same cutting edge tech company in Silicon Valley,” she told io9. “And then she is thrust into this awfully horrible situation where her boyfriend dies. She’s quite an unusual character and the ways in which she reacts to his death and what she does kind of is what propels this story forward.”

io9 spoke with the cast and executive producers long before the first trailer was even revealed. Since then we’ve learned a decent amount about what to expect from the plot, meaning you may have already worked out what the Devs team is working on in that secretive cube of theirs. Though the crux of the work isn’t treated like some big twist, the drama between the characters is certainly intense.

Jin Han, who plays Lily’s ex-boyfriend who she runs to for help, told us about his excitement for tackling such a sticky pairing. “I think the relationship between Jamie and Lily is tremendously exciting for an actor because it was written with history that is not seen in the show. When the show begins we are introduced to Jamie and Lily as exes who haven’t spoken for two years,” he said. “That is the place, the emotional and psychological place from which our relationship begins and the TV show. So for me, that was thrilling, terrifying to try to, without any scenes of our prior relationship, to have that present in every scene that we do and that we do shoot for the show.”

Along the eight-episode journey, you’ll learn more about quantum computers and meet everyone else working at the company led by Nick Offerman’s character Forest. Karl Glusman, who plays Sergei, told us walking into the fictional tech company Amaya was “a little like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” He said, “[Offerman’s Forest is] kind of a mentor figure. But I have...my own ulterior motives. So it’s complicated between Forest and I.”

Devs also stars Alison Pill (Star Trek: Picard), Cailee Spaeny (The Craft), and Stephen McKinley Henderson (Dune). The first two episodes are now streaming on Hulu.

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Jill Pantozzi

The Cast of Alex Garland's Devs Divulge Their Character Motivations