AMC’s new drama “Halt and Catch Fire” premieres on Sunday. It’s another industry period piece, but unlike “Mad Men,” “Halt” tackles the ‘80s and the computer industry. In Austin for SXSW, we spoke with Lee Pace and Mackenzie Davis about their characters in the tech drama.
I’ve been saving my interview with their costars Scoot McNairy and Kerry Bishe for the premiere. You’ve seen Bishe on CraveOnline before in my Cannes interview with her last year, and she remembered. McNairy comes fresh off the Oscar winning Argo and the Marvel One Shot All Hail the King from the Thor: The Dark World DVD.
CraveOnline: Tell me about your characters and their role in this company?
Scoot McNairy: Who I play is Gordon Clark. He’s an engineer that Joe has found in the past and come to him with his idea, his vision of building a new computer. I am the hardware guy who kind of takes his ideas and tries to make them work. I’m sure you spoke with Mackenzie and she is the one who actually writes the code that I need to make work.
Everyone has their role in this company. 30-some years later, do you think there are people who do it all, or is the industry still divided into people with specialties?
Scoot McNairy: That’s a wonderful question. You have Steve Jobs who didn’t really touch anything. He just had ideas and somebody like Steve Wozniak who actually made it. But then there’s Bill Gates who would sit down at the age of 17, 18-years-old and just code all day long, but he could also build. It’s very similar to filmmaking now. We have guys who come in who can do special effects, editing, shooting, writing, directing. It’s like a one-stop shop.
Kerry Bishe: Like a techno-auteur.
And your character, Kerry?
Kerry Bishe: I play Donna Clark. I’m married to Gordon Clark. I work at Texas Instruments in the debugging department and I do the cooking and the cleaning and the child care, and hold down a job at Texas Instruments. It remains to be seen how involved I become in the Cardiff Electric project.
Between which characters do most of the conflicts happen?
Scoot McNairy: All of them.
Kerry Bishe: All of them. With all of them. We’ve met before.
Yes, when you were at Cannes for Max Rose.
Kerry Bishe: That’s so crazy. We’ve been in the south of France together! How weird is that?
So the Clarks have kids?
Kerry Bishe: We have two daughters.
How does this new endeavor affect family life?
Kerry Bishe: It’s hard. It’s really hard.
Scoot McNairy: I think it’s part of the throughlines through these characters. I think you get to watch the trials and struggles of a family who doesn’t have a lot of money trying to make a name for themselves and what that entails with their home life.
Kerry Bishe: I think it’s an interesting and pretty universal question, and a pretty modern question too of whose career gets priority? Who does the work at the house? Who deals with the kids? I think these are questions that are very much living now for couples. There are more two income couples now than ever.
Since it is set in the ‘80s, are there certain words you can’t say because they weren’t in the vernacular yet?
Scoot McNairy: Absolutely.
What do you catch yourself flubbing?
Scoot McNairy: What was that word that came up?
Kerry Bishe: Awesome?
Scoot McNairy: No, I had a scene with Joe in the parking lot. Oh, dumped. “Don’t dump on me.” When I heard that, I was like, “This is so stupid. We don’t say dump.” And Jeff [Freilich] was like, “Dump was a word in the ‘80s.” Then when I thought about it, I do remember saying that in third grade. So little things like that come back.
Kerry Bishe: One of the things I think about too is Texas dialect stuff. We had a scene where I talk about spilling a Coke on my motherboard, and Coke didn’t pass legal because it’s a brand. I made the argument that in Texas, they say Coke for all sodas. So we’re trying to make that case to legal. But I love that stuff. I love those really specific technical things. I think they’re really good texture and I think everyone’s really aware and trying to keep an eye out.
