Peter Kramer/Netflix © 2022When Manifest landed on Netflix this season (after NBC canceled it), little Cal was all grown up. We had a sneak peek of Ty Doran playing Cal at the end of the third season.
Doran’s role looms large in the series’ 20-episode final season, which dropped Nov. 4 and is streaming now. The show about the passengers on Flight 828, which spent five years off any radar used on Earth, deals with their altered realities.
Since graduating from Northwestern in 2020 (though there was no in-person ceremony because of the pandemic), Doran’s been working in Los Angeles and New York City. He was a pre-med and theater major who loved Chicago. But growing up in Houston and L.A., he says, “Human beings aren’t supposed to live in places that cold.”
Doran, 25, was already auditioning for his next job but took a break to answer our “5 Questions” from his Manhattan apartment.
1. What can you share about Cal this season on Manifest?
He is kind of as lost as anyone else. Over the course of the season, he comes to realize that the reason he is older is so that he can fulfill his destiny, quote, unquote. Throughout the show, Cal has struggled with how much he knows, and how much he wants to help, and his age and ability to do so, and all these people trying to box him in and tell him what he shouldn’t be doing and what is safe for him. But in some ways, he actually knows more than his parents and the adults around him.
2. Can you tell us about a time when you were starstruck?
I was in the makeup trailer on the set of American Crime. I did run into André Benjamin, André 3000 from Outkast, and that was like the coolest thing. I was sweating. I was trying so hard to be cool, because that is one of the coolest people I think I’ve ever seen — both in real life and in my mind.
3. What three shows did you grow up loving?
The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, when I was a kid. I adored those boys. I found them so charming. Drake & Josh. Fairly OddParents was a big show for me because that was the one TV show that we couldn’t watch as kids because they said “shut up” in the theme song. You could maybe slip in a curse word at home, but saying “shut up” was the taboo.
4. Who would you have at a dinner party where anyone could attend?
Donald Glover. He’s just a really interesting Renaissance man. Shakespeare. What I want from Shakespeare is for him to be like, “No, you guys have been reading this wrong the whole time!” [Also] Malcolm X and FDR.
5. Have you had any other jobs?
I was pre-med in college, and that interest started in my senior year of high school. I worked in a plastic surgeon’s office. I was really interning, and every once in a while, we had badges, and I would walk in the operating rooms, and I would ask the surgeons, “Hey, do you mind if we watched over someone’s open skull?”
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