It’s like Groundhog Day all over again in this gripping, heartbreaking, time-traveling drama. Paapa Essiedu, from HBO’s I May Destroy You, stars as George, an average guy who finds himself in an extraordinary situation when he starts to relive the same few weeks over and over again in TNT’s long-awaited The Lazarus Project (Sundays at 9/8c beginning June 4).
George learns he’s a “time jumper” and gets recruited by The Lazarus Project, a top-secret multinational organization dedicated to preventing and undoing mass extinction events through diplomatic or scientific means. In other words, their job is to save the world from destroying itself at all costs — even if it means going back in time and changing things to do so.
“We shot this show during peak lockdown back in January 2021, so it was like no one was allowed to leave their house, a real sense of existential threat in the world,” Essiedu tells us. “This show was initially called Extinction, so it felt apt to be jumping headfirst into it. I fell in love with this script from the first page, from the first episode. … The writer, Joe Barton, has a very unique, idiosyncratic, genre-spanning and genre-jumping voice.”
While The Lazarus Project is willing to reset the clock after events like the dropping of an atomic bomb, civil wars and worldwide viruses, it refuses to help George when things get personal.
“You’ve got to remember that this is a super-normal dude. He’s an app developer who finds himself in a very extraordinary situation. He’s riding high off of [being recruited into this group], until something happens that takes something away from him, that personally affects him. And he’s put in a position of, basically, do you do your job, or do you look after your personal life?
“When you’re forced to choose between the people that you love and your sense of responsibility for the world at large, it’s super, super hard,” Essiedu concludes. “We see George go on a roller-coaster journey of chaos until we finally get an answer to on what side of the line he lies.”
Put your seat belts on, and remember, turning back time is not always a good thing!
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