Jake McDorman on the Excalibattle and his Hopes for Season 2


[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Mrs. Davis.]From co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez (who’s also the showrunner), the Peacock original series Mrs. Davis follows Sister Simone (Betty Gilpin), a nun on a mission to destroy a powerful artificial intelligence that is determined to have her complete an epic quest. Begrudgingly participating with the goal of ending the AI in return, Simone is forced to deal with her past, in the form of her ex-boyfriend Wiley (Jake McDorman), who’s part of an underground resistance, while figuring out how to defeat an all-knowing enemy.


During this 1-on-1 interview with Crumpe, McDorman talked about telling such a bonkers story, what helped him understand his character, the show’s shifting genres, the Excalibattle, the very memorable moment between Wiley and JQ (Chris Diamantopoulos), finding out about Wiley’s final outcome, and just how much more bonkers the series could get in a possible second season.

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Crumpe: This show is so bonkers that I thought it actually really helped that there are a number of times when the characters are shocked and surprised by things that are happening because it gives comfort to the viewers, knowing that the characters think everything is just as bonkers as they do. Did that help you, as well?

JAKE McDORMAN: Absolutely. We would have guest stars and recurring people that came in, and since you can’t give away too many spoilers, they’d only have the scene that they were doing in that episode. One of our favorite pastimes, Betty [Gilpin] and I, was after they finished filming their day of work, we would ask what they thought our show was about. We had people that were at the rodeo that were like, “All right, you can tell me, honestly, is it the Yellowstone spinoff?” And we were like, “No.” Today, it kind of is. And then, there was a British woman in episode three that was in a proxy scene with Mrs. Davis, where she had the earbud. All she had was her scene to go off of, she did it, and it was great. Betty and I were like, “Thank you so much for doing our show. You were so great.” And she was like, “I’m a hologram, right?” And we were like, “No, but if that was your motivation, you crushed it.”

Image via Peacock

So then, what was your way into this guy? How did you understand him? What helped you get there?

McDORMAN: The show, in and of itself, was so bonkers. Like most auditions, especially for auditions that are projects that have level of secrecy around it, you generally get only the material that you’re auditioning with, with no context. In that context, I had no idea what to make of it. I had worked with Damon [Lindelof] on an episode of Watchmen, which was also a heightened alternative reality set vaguely in the future, but that had the graphic novel and Alan Moore’s characters, as a jumping off point and a point of reference. Mrs. Davis is just completely the freak brain child of Tara [Hernandez] and Damon. My audition was the scene under the rock, in the first episode, with Betty. All I had was, “This is your ex-girlfriend. She’s a nun. There’s an evil AI that controls everything. You’re being pursued by Germans. And you’re under a giant rock. Go!” I was like, “Okay.” And reading the scene, I was like, “There’s comedy here. This is your ex-girlfriend, you’re in what seems to be a high-stakes life-or-death situation, and you’re bickering about the mustache on your face. There’s definitely a thread of comedy, but at the same time, it has a science fiction element that feels very high-stakes.”

It wasn’t until I got the full script of episodes one and two, that I then got to put it into the world of the entire show, which only made it that much more crazy. I really liked the idea that he thinks he’s the lead character. He presents that way, and I think he really wants Simone to think that. He has become the leader of some underground resistance that’s hellbent on taking down this AI, but he’s also trying to look really cool in front of his ex. Everything down to his mustache and the clothes he wears and his motorcycle were trying to put forward this vibe of Han Solo, who’s the hero of his own story. And then, she just starts to dismantle that idea, bit by bit, like only an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend could because they have so much history. Just the idea of him wanting so badly to be perceived as this leading man, but with all of his idiosyncrasies and quirks was one of the ways I found the tone.

Part of why this show is so hard to describe is because it shifts a lot, in each episode. It feels like it keeps reinventing itself, throughout the season.

McDORMAN: Yeah, it really does reinvent itself like that. Especially with the cliffhanger at the end of the first episode, you’re like, “Oh, this is gonna be the arc over the course of the eight episodes.” And then, it does a complete about-face to something else. And then, at the end of episode two, it’s revealed that the whole stunt on top of the laundromat with the fake Germans was not algorithm, but it was the Resistance posing out of the algorithm. So then, you’re like, “Oh, okay, I guess Wiley is gonna be the villain, working in tandem.” But then, by episode three, you realize that’s not the case. Now, they’re in Scotland touching a giant sword. Because it does that, as far as wish fulfillment for an actor in a role, you get to have moments of sincere adventure, like National Treasure or Indiana Jones, and then oscillate into a rom-com, and then into a touching drama with a backstory, and then the whole thing is embroiled in sci-fi. You’re lucky, if you get a role that asks you to do 10% or 20% of what you’re capable of, and this show really demanded 110%, from not just the cast, but from every department. It’s one thing to read this level of bonkers on the page, but then to actually get a cast that can bring it to life, and also have every department, from props to set design to wardrobe, take that big 110% swing, really makes it work. If anybody had pulled punches or was hesitant to let their weird flag fly, we would have fallen a little short. That was the high wire act that Tara and Damon established on the page, and everyone was eager to go full-on.

Jake McDorman as Wiley in Mrs. Davis
Image via Peacock

What was it like to get the script and learn about the Excalibattle, and then get to go shoot it? What were you thinking while you were trying to prepare for something like that episode?

McDORMAN: Episode three was a Wiley heavy episode. I got the third script before we started shooting anything, so it was nice to have that backstory and see Lizzie and Wiley before Lizzie becomes Simone, when they were a couple and were happy and had these plans together. And then, knowing that, we could reverse engineer these characters into the future, with episodes one and two, knowing that they had that kind of that history. That’s a perfect example of something you read on the page and you’re like, “How the hell are they gonna do that? A giant sword?” Another thing about that episode was that book ended the entire shoot. We shot all the rodeo scenes, the board meeting, and anything that didn’t take place abroad was shot chronologically when we got to episode three. And then, we hit pause on that episode, went through the rest of the season, went to Spain, and then finished with all the Excalibattle stuff. That final confrontation in episode three, when we’re in the rain, with the sword and the lightning, and it’s flashing back to the rodeo and then back to us in the rain with the sword, was a real cool collage of all these different parts of when we shot the actual season. It jumps throughout time, narratively, it was actually literally jumping throughout time, as we shot the show. It was cool. There were a lot of background actors in the Excalibattle scene that legit thought that was a competition. They were like, “Wow, so is the real Excalibattle okay with you guys using this stuff like in the show.” We were like, “Oh, no, that’s not real. That’s just some weird idea that Tara and Damon came up with.” It was wild. It was just another example where it was like, “It reads cool. How the hell are they gonna put it on the screen?”

I love how then episode five is basically storytelling hour with Ben Chaplin. So much of what is going on with the quest is explained in that episode, but what’s that like to do, as an actor, when you have to make that interesting?

McDORMAN: It’s honestly one of my favorite episodes to watch because so much of it had nothing to do with Betty and I. We were able to shoot those scenes in a few days in Spain. The rest of that episode was all shot in Spain with Ben and Katja [Herbers] and Mathilde [Ollivier]. It was really enjoyable for Betty and I to actually see it together because we had the least amount to do in it, on the page. One of the challenges of that was, “All right, when it cuts back to us, what part of the story are we in? How many different ways can we react to this?” There’s probably a gag reel with a whole kaleidoscope of different reactions. It was like what I imagine Fred Savage’s shoot for The Princess Bride would have been because you have this whole film playing out with Mandy Patinkin and Cary Elwes, but he’s just sitting in bed, cuddled up listening to this story. That’s an episode where our characters are finally on the same page. It’s been revealed to Simone that Wiley betrayed her, but he apologizes. The algorithm brought them back together at the Vatican, and from that point forward, they’re in this together and are not bickering exes, all the time. It was fun to find little opportunities in that, where you see glimpses of their old dynamic and the old flame being rekindled. Up until then, they’re like a couple kids pulling each other’s hair. It was fun to have that shift back into that special connection we have and hearing this crazy story.

Jake McDorman as Wiley and Chris Diamantopoulos as JQ in Mrs. Davis
Image via Peacock

Another very memorable moment is between Wiley and JQ, when you and Chris Diamantopoulos are outside and he’s telling you to strip. What was it like to have to get through that scene with Chris wearing a thong and you having to not trip over your own pants? How did you even do that without cracking up?

McDORMAN: We knew that scene was coming, for a long time. We got the script for episode seven, but then it went through a bunch of different versions. At one point, we were in the headquarters. It eventually got honed into being in the middle of the desert, standing there naked. It was not in the script, but it was just a product of getting there on the day and being in the reality of it. We were having such a hard time, not cracking up through the whole thing. The first big, wide shot that we did, where we actually stripped down, he kicks off all this stuff and he’s pretty much completely naked. As part of my wardrobe, I had these boots that are really hard to take off, so I was like, “I’m not gonna take these off. It’s gonna take 45 minutes for me to get take them off.” So, I just pulled my pants down around my ankles. By nature of the natural blocking, he walked away from me, and to close that distance, that’s when I waddled toward him. It was a happy accident of our wardrobe. We kept finding little tricks and jokes to do through the whole thing, which was great. And it’s 110 degrees in the desert, so taking all your clothes off was a welcome breath of fresh air.

How things might turn out for Wiley, by the end of the season, is up in the air for a bit. Nobody’s really sure what might happen with him. He has that expiration date, but nobody is really sure what that means. When you learned how that would play out, what was your reaction?

McDORMAN: He’s had this whole complex about cowardice. His biggest fear is that he’s perceived as a coward, after what happened at the rodeo. So, as an arc for him, I really liked it. I don’t think I even put it together, until we got to the scene where he decides to turn himself in. I don’t think I processed that how, even the Resistance and trying to bring Mrs. Davis down, there was a part that, that was him avoiding the consequences of his decision. He made a rash and emotional decision to take the shortcut and get the wings, knowing that the price was a bar code. Granted, I don’t think he knew how quickly it would ask him to turn himself into expire, but even still, if he were to shut off Mrs. Davis, this was still a workaround, where he could avoid having to face the music on making a decision, which is a version of cowardice. Him going, “No, this is how I earn my boots. I’m gonna blow up the Resistance and set these people free because I wedged them into my directive of weaseling out of a decision that I made, even if it has righteous justifications.” While Mrs. Davis is bad and there are all these different things you can point to for why something like this isn’t good and we should bring it down, if he’s being really honest with himself, it was still a fear-based reaction. He threw all the money he had from his inheritance, trying to avoid this mistake he made. And so, turning himself in, even if it meant death, was his first opportunity to truly be a hero.

Jake McDorman as Wiley and Chris Diamantopoulos as JQ in Mrs. Davis
Image via Peacock

Have you had conversations about what another season of this would even be? Do you know what crazy things Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez have thought about for continuing this?

McDORMAN: Yeah, I do. A little bit, yeah. I don’t know how permanent it is. Those things can change. They’re all so hypothetical.

Is it less bonkers or more bonkers, on the bonkers scale?

McDORMAN: On the bonkers scale, it could springboard into more bonkers, for sure. I think it’s nice that there is a resolution. You don’t wanna keep all the plates spinning into a cliffhanger, especially because the show spins so many, simultaneously. Hopefully, part of the charm of the show is that there’s MacGuffin after MacGuffin after MacGuffin. You hit the MacGuffin button so many times that it becomes part of the show’s identity. It’s not too different from algorithms and how they deal in cliches. I think it’s nice that we have an arc that answers a lot of the questions that people would have, after this first season, but there is definitely opportunity for them to take it further.

Mrs. Davis is available to stream at Peacock.

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