Ben Barnes & Joe Freeman on ‘The Institute’: “You Have to Be Patient—It Adds to the Tension”

Stephen King’s works have been adapted into numerous films over the years, from Carrie to The Shawshank Redemption and from IT to the most recent The Life of Chuck. Whether it’s a full-blown horror movie or a more balanced drama, King is present in both bookstores and cinemas. However, even the smaller screen is made for his mind-blowing novels, as his The Institute is coming to MGM+ as a same-named series.

The series combines elements of supernatural horror, fantasy, and thriller in a way that effectively tells the intriguing story of a young boy (Luke Ellis, played by Joe Freeman) who is abducted due to his unique abilities. He wakes up in a mysterious facility called The Institute, where he meets other kids with similar powers. The head of The Institute, Ms. Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker), wants to use their powers for her own good. As Ellis fights to break free, the case draws the attention of a new police officer in town, Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes).

Ahead of the release of this highly anticipated series, Geek Vibes Nation had a chat with Barnes (The Critic) and Freeman about long days on set, what it’s like starring in a Stephen King adaptation, and shooting the most intense scenes.

Geek Vibes Nation: First of all, congratulations on the series. Joe, this is your acting debut and what an impressive debut it is. How was it for you to be part of this series?

Joe Freeman: It shifted my perspective on how the following year was going to go because I’d left school, and I was like, “What am I going to do?” I was auditioning, and it was the best feeling in the world when I received the phone call that I had landed the part. Since then, nothing has topped that. Working with such a talented group was terrific. They make you perform better. I did that for other people, and they certainly did it for me. The overall experience, not just the filming aspect but also that first proper bit of independence — living alone on another continent for four months — was all perfect.

GVN: Did you feel even more pressure because it’s an adaptation of a Stephen King novel?

JF: Everyone loves his work; my granddad is a big Stephen King fan. I’ve got to do well to please him because he is the biggest Stephen King nerd. Also, just because, again, the talent around me. I felt a lot of pressure, for sure.

GVN: And Ben, for you, it was also the first Stephen King adaptation you were in. How is it for you?

Ben Barnes: It’s one of those bucket list things for me because he’s such a prolific author. I’ve read many of his books and seen numerous film adaptations, and when I knew I would be involved in this project, I devoured the book. He’s one of those institutions. You want to make him proud. He has sat with these characters and with these stories, and they’ve been ruminating, and he’s been dreaming about them. I don’t know how long it takes Stephen King to write a book, but it takes him many months or years to put these stories on paper. He’s living with these people who might be fictional, but he has made them three-dimensional and real for himself. Therefore, you almost want to breathe enough life into it that when he sees it, he feels proud of it.

The fact that he had seen the first couple of episodes and then wanted to come on board as a producer of the show felt like a real boon. I felt proud of that. Even just after the first read-through, just sitting next to Joe, I went straight up to the showrunners and said, “This is going to work”. Mainly because Joe was just brilliant from the first second.

GVN: It takes a while into the series before your characters meet. How has it been to act together eventually?

BB: I was chomping at the bit by the time we got to that because we’d been hanging out a lot, because it was mainly just the two of us staying in Halifax for all these months, filming separately from each other and then meeting up in these coffee shops. We would be chatting about what we had filmed that week. It all sounded cool and exciting. It also mirrored the tension of the book, as the narrative alternates between these two characters, each with their own experiences and stories, creating a unique tension. You have to wait, structurally, for them to come together, and you have to imagine what that dynamic’s going to be and how that’s going to play itself out. When you’re watching the show, you have to be a bit patient with it, which adds to the tension.

GVN: Joe, your performance seems very physically and psychologically demanding as well. How did the conversations with Benjamin [Cavell, co-writer and co-producer] go to try and get the balance right and for you to also feel comfortable and safe with this performance?

JF: In my head, he’s written the whole script, so I was like, “Whatever you need from me to do, I’m thrilled because it’s what I’m here to do”. Although, it did get to a point where some of those things took a lot out of me. There were times when I wasn’t working for a few days, and it was needed. The filming requires a lot from you, especially in some of those scenes.

GVN: After such a demanding day of filming, how would you try to get into a calm headspace again and just put it all behind you?

JF: Honestly, most of those days, I would fall asleep after filming. There were long days, but I loved every second of it. And then going to sleep.

GVN: Ben, your character, Tim, joins the police force in a tiny town and eventually starts to investigate The Institute. However, Tim’s colleagues aren’t doing that. They tend to back away from major investigations. Do you think it’s because they’re afraid of what they’re going to find, for example, when investigating, or do you think there’s something else going on?

BB: I think that the Tim character has a real kind of trigger for and an awareness of injustice and things that don’t smell right. He has powerful instincts in that regard. In this genre, people often possess telepathic qualities or telekinetic powers, but Tim is a very grounded, non-magical person with instincts that have proven to be right. Sometimes, they get him into trouble, so there’s a wariness to him and a kind of solitude. It keeps him at bay from following his sort of wolf-like instincts to pursue justice. It’s that self-awareness that I found interesting about him. He also has a healthy level of awareness.

It’s essential for him to be a good person and also to see the goodness in others. However, he’s been burned enough to have developed a level of cynicism as well, and when you find him in the story, he’s trying to find some peace for himself, following his instincts towards a quieter life. He’s looking for a pause in his life before deciding what’s next for him. However, what he finds is so much more than he bargained for, and he realises that his mission in life is to be a fiercely protective man, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

GVN: Is that also the reason why your characters connect so well? Because he has the good in him, and he sees the good in everyone, even in people he has just met.

BB: I think both. What the characters have in common is that they are both fierce protectors of justice, and they feel injustice very keenly, just in different ways. Tim has been through a lot and has an awareness of the evil in the world, including how the powers and the systems in place can be oppressive. Stephen King writes about that stuff a lot, about preying on the vulnerable, and the systems that are in place are not necessarily to be trusted. I don’t want to speak for you [Joe], but Luke has a fierce sense of what’s right and wrong as well.

JF: When he’s inside the Institute, you can see that. He doesn’t want to be there. No one wants to be there. He turns up, and he asks what the rules are, and then when they don’t stick to them, he’s like, “Well, you set the rules”.

GVN: The Institute has various rooms. What would be the scariest one for you if it indeed existed?

BB: If I were in The Institute, it would be the one with the vending machine—all the weird snacks.

JF: Weird, weren’t they? They were weird. But I would say the deprivation room. The oxygen. That would scare me the most.

BB: Have you heard about this, the quietest room in the world?

JF: No.

BB: Have you heard about this?

GVN: No.

BB: I was reading about it the other day. There’s a room in the world with a sound level of minus 17 decibels, and if you could last in there for 24 hours, they’d give you a million dollars or something. But the longest anyone’s ever been in there is 45 seconds.

JF: Wait, why?

BB: I think it’s unbearable because all you can feel is your heartbeat and breath, and you can even hear the blood in your veins and stuff like that. It’s horrifying that no one has been in there for more than 45 seconds. That’s what my Instagram wants me to know about, anyway.

The Institute is out on the 13th of July on MGM+