‘Constellation’s Creator Says There’s More to Explore for Future Seasons

[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Constellation.]

The Big Picture

• With the Apple TV+ series ‘Constellation,’ the core of the story sees space exploration combined with emotional depth and a mother-daughter dynamic.
• Production of the series was a collaborative effort, requiring support and faith from Apple TV+.
• Zero gravity scenes were challenging to shoot, and involved innovative techniques and a dedicated team.

Created and written by Peter Harness (Wallander, Doctor Who), the Apple TV+ series Constellation follows Jo Ericsson (Noomi Rapace), an astronaut who returns to Earth after her team is struck by tragedy while in space. Having deeply missed her husband (James D’Arcy) and their daughter (Davina Coleman and Rosie Coleman), Jo begins experiencing mysterious symptoms, leaving her to wonder whether she’s just having a hard time readjusting, or if her reality has been altered in some way.

While space travel is always an interesting story element worth exploration, the mother-daughter dynamic at the center of this series provides a relatable emotional tapestry. Jo has been gone long enough that she almost feels like a stranger in her own home, navigating the joy and grief her child is experiencing upon her return while also wanting nothing more than to reconnect and find her own place on the ground.

During this interview with Collider, executive producers Harness, who was also the showrunner, and Michelle MacLaren, who also directed the first two episodes, talked about how this series evolved out of a ghost story, falling down the research rabbit hole, wanting the audience to feel a connection with the characters, getting the support needed to pull this off, the importance of casting, shooting scenes with zero gravity in space, and that there’s still plenty more story to tell.

‘Constellation’s Creator Reveals the Series Was Inspired by a Ghost Story

Collider: Peter, what did this series start with for you? Do you start with a particular character, or is it about the ideas and themes that you want to explore? Where do you begin when you do the writing?

PETER HARNESS: It began with me being on holiday in a cabin in the woods in Sweden and hearing a little girl’s voice crying out, “Mama!,” in the darkness one night. We heard her a few times, and we didn’t know whether she was real. We could never find out where this little girl was or whether she really existed. That little ghost story stayed with me. I kept wondering who that little girl might be. And then, I was asked if I’d like to write something about astronauts and returning to Earth, which became the story of a mother trapped up there in space, unable to get back to her daughter. That little lost girl in the forest became the daughter trying to get back to the mother. Those things went together, and then I had to work out how they’d each got to that point. That was what the story became. A lot of things fell in as I was going, but it was really the anxiety of being separated from your parent or your child, and how parents and children can be separated and brought back together again.

How much research did you do into space exploration and astronaut psychology? It feels like something where you could just keep falling down a rabbit hole unless you eventually draw yourself a line somewhere.

HARNESS: I’m still falling down that rabbit hole. It’s a very deep rabbit hole and it’s very interesting. Almost anything that you can imagine or any situation that you could dream up actually has some real-world corollary. People have seen things up there. People have seen angels floating outside the capsule. They’ve heard dogs barking. They’ve heard voices that they can’t explain. People have taken recordings of missions that have never been admitted to. There’s a whole spookiness about it. Leaving aside the whole psychology of what it is to be an astronaut and the effect that it has on you, to leave the earth’s atmosphere and then return, it’s limitless. We did a lot of research because we’ve always been very keen to ground it in reality.

Michelle, when a project comes your way, what do you look for? Do you look for something you haven’t done before? Do you look for an emotional connection? What was it with this?

MICHELLE MacLAREN: I would say both those things. First and foremost, I want to connect with the characters, and I want to be drawn in by them and curious about them. I love to be challenged by something I haven’t done before. And I would like it to be a world that I’d like to go live in because I have to embody it for such a long period of time. I found this world fascinating. At the root of it, this is a character-driven show, and I love that. I love the mother-daughter relationship. I love the challenge that Jo is faced with. I was fascinated by the idea of, what if you wake up one day and the world that you’re in looks familiar, but it feels off and it feels completely wrong? How would you deal with that? I found it very relatable.

Apple TV+’s Belief in ‘Constellation’ Was Crucial to the Series’ Success

Because it is a big undertaking to take on a project like this, with so many layers to this story and so many things happening, what was the thing that you each felt like you had to have in place, in order to know that this was actually going to work?

MacLAREN: Money.

HARNESS: Yes, that’s probably true.

MacLAREN: What you need is a studio and a network who’s going to believe in the creative and who’s going to let you go do what you hope to achieve with a project. Apple TV+ and Turbine and Haut Et Court let us go make this the way that I feel it needed to be made. You never get everything you want, and you never have enough time, but we got what we needed on a very big scale, and also had the freedom to be really creative with it. Peter wrote a nonlinear, very different script, and it’s out there. In the most fantastic way, it was a leap of faith. So, you need people that are going to support you in making that.

HARNESS: We’ve been extremely lucky with Apple TV+, and the producers, and the whole cast and crew. It felt like every one of them has really believed in it, and it has meant something to each of them. They’ve recognized the challenges in it, and they’ve been desperate to meet those challenges and find new ways of doing things and inventive solutions for all the things that we faced. It’s been a huge production with hundreds and hundreds of people working on it, and they’ve all delivered, far more than we could have possibly asked.

MacLAREN: It’s so true. It’s such an incredibly dedicated and talented cast and crew. It was such a privilege.

This is a bit of a psychological story, which might not have worked for some people. You also had to find the right lead actress to follow because so much of it depends on you caring about her. And then, you have to find the right kid. It feels like this could have become a disaster so many times along the way.

HARNESS: It’s completely true. Finding the right actor to play Alice, we really lucked out with those two girls (Rosie and Davina Coleman) because if we hadn’t had them, the whole emotional backbone of the story wouldn’t have worked to the extent that it does. They are a phenomenon, those two. We’ve been very fortunate, every step of the way, to get the right people.

MacLAREN: Every cast member is our first choice, and that rarely happens. With Noomi [Rapace], we needed somebody who was powerful and strong, who you believe as an astronaut, and who also has the ability to be to be a mother and vulnerable while she’s fighting for her life and survival to get back to her daughter. You need to relate to her and care for her and invest in her. And that’s for all these characters. James [D’Arcy] and Will [Catlett] and Jonathan [Banks] and the twins all did a brilliant job.

Pulling Off the Zero Gravity Scenes in ‘Constellation’ Required Tricky Wire Work

How did you approach shooting all the scenes with zero gravity in space?

MacLAREN: There are many ways. If you got a room full of directors who have shot zero gravity, we’d all have different thoughts. Some things we’d probably agree, and some things we’d probably like to learn from each other. It was very complicated. (Production designer) Andy Nicholson built a beautiful replica of the ISS, but the ISS is meant to have people float in it, not walk in it. So, we had to build camera platforms and be able to peel off the set in pieces to get cameras and lights in. Martin Goeres, our special effects coordinator, designed and built a rig on the ceiling of the stage that allowed the actors to be hung from wires and moved backwards and forwards, as well as right and left. We would also hang him with a camera. He would sometimes handhold a camera. And then, we had various rigs that the actors could sit on and roll, or they’d be on their bellies and roll, or they’d mime, and they’d do all that while acting. It was incredibly challenging. And then, we had different camera rigs that would create a float for them. It was really challenging. Honestly, we learned as we went. It was a lot of research and a lot of trial and error.

Did it ever go exactly as planned?

MacLAREN: I don’t know if I’d say it ever went smoothly, but there were definitely some moments where you’d come up with these wild ideas, and then you’d go, “Oh, my gosh, that worked!” I shouldn’t have been so surprised because we had this incredible team of people that were helping to execute it. It was really exciting and very much out of my comfort zone, in a wonderful way. It was an incredibly collaborative, wonderful team of talented people doing it.

‘Constellation’s Creator Has More Story to Explore for Future Seasons

Things are definitely not wrapped up at the end of the season. There’s a bit of a shocking moment that made me want to know what that could mean moving forward. Are there plans for more story? Are you hoping to do a second season? Do you have more of the story living in your head?

HARNESS: I’ve got lots of the story living in my head. That initial separation of mother and child and how that happened and the emotional movement of that does resolve itself. You do get some answers and the puzzle box has resolved. But you’re quite right, obviously we do leave some questions hanging. It’s a very deep rabbit hole and there’s plenty to explore in all of those characters, and other characters too.

Did you have this all planned out from the beginning? Did you know where you would be ending and what you wanted to do with that moment at the end? Were there any major changes along the way?

HARNESS: No, not really. I play around with things a lot. I play around with where things might come in the narrative and how characters might experience things, how certain scenes go in and out or here and there. Eventually, after a lot of playing around, it drops into place and by the time I’ve finished the scripts, I’m fairly confident that everything is more or less where it should be. Actually doing something so logistically complicated and narratively painstaking, it had to be in a fairly strict order to enable people to navigate it.

MacLAREN: Peter is the sole writer of this, so all eight scripts had to be written ahead of time because this story was so intertwined, and we were cross-boarded, so there was a huge demand on him. Everything was written ahead of time, but there were some changes that came along. One of my favorite ones was the end of episode two, which didn’t actually end with the scene in the helicopter when both Jo and Alice disappear. It ended with something else that we couldn’t afford, and we didn’t know how we were going to end it. And then, Peter called me in Morocco and said, “I’m gonna send you a scene I’ve just written.” It was that scene, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh!” And so, it was a blessing in disguise that we couldn’t afford the other scene and that we got that scene. As prepared as you are, the stuff that comes up in the process isn’t necessarily always money-related. Sometimes it’s story related.

HARNESS: It’s always nice to leave a tiny little bit of wiggle room in the scripts, so you can respond to how actors are developing their characters, for instance. You can see if somebody is particularly good with somebody else or something really seems to be working. It’s nice to leave a tiny little bit of room, just to take advantage of that if you can. I tend not to 100% complete the very last script until we’re a ways into shooting because it’s nice to leave it different places to go if a certain thing seems to be catching fire.

Constellation is available to stream on Apple TV+. Check out the trailer:

Watch on Apple TV+