2 l October
4 - 10, 2020
Northeast Oregon TV Weekly
BY JAY BOBBIN
The suspense series “NEXT”
premieres Tuesday on Fox.
An artificial hyper-intelligence
may be Fox’s ‘NEXT’ big thing
If you’re already dazzled or baffled by artificial
intelligence, wait until you see what’s next.
Technology runs amok – with dangerous
implications for virtually everyone – in
“NEXT,” a Fox drama series originally slated
for last spring, but now helping to fill the
network’s pandemic-impacted fall lineup as it
debuts Tuesday, Oct. 6. “Mad Men” alum John
Slattery stars as a tech expert who finds that one
of his own creations has gotten away from him,
reaching through the internet with the potential
to invade and manipulate the lives of anyone
who’s connected. Fernanda Andrade (“The
Devil Inside”) plays an FBI cybercrime agent he
joins to fight the threat.
While Charlie Gogolak, John Requa and
Glenn Ficarra of “This Is Us” are amiong
executive producers of “NEXT,” so is “24”
veteran Manny Coto, who also created it. “The
whole premise of the show started because of
Alexa,” Coto says of that device. “My son woke
me up one morning, and I was like, ‘What’s the
matter?’ And he said, ‘My Alexa started talking
to me at 3 a.m. out of the blue, for no reason.’
He claimed this had happened a couple of
times, so I didn’t know if he could set an alarm
or what. We never got down to the mystery, but
those things kind of seem to have a mind of
their own every once in a while.”
Slattery agrees by noting, “You have a
conversation with someone, and the next day,
your phone is blowing up with ads for whatever
you were talking about. Every time you look at
Instagram and you hit something, then you’re
loaded up with ads for whatever. It’s obviously
watching ... I just feel like I’m not necessarily
doing anything interesting enough to worry
about it.”
Additional “NEXT” cast regulars include
“Ozark” co-stars Michael Mosley and Jason
Butler Harner as well as Eve Harlow (“Marvel’s
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”) and Evan Whitten
(“The Resident”). Though the artificial-
intelligence concept might suggest the characters
stand around and do a lot of talking about it,
Coto was determined from the outset to make
the series more than that.
“If a group of people found out about it, it
would not strike in large, huge assaults,” he
reasons. “It would go after them in the smallest
way possible so as not to be detected, which
inherently led to a story whereby this AI –
which knows everything about our characters –
is actually attacking them through their personal
lives and slowly trying to destroy their lives and
their careers, so that they can in turn not attack
it. It was a challenge, but research kind of gave
the idea of how this series could progress.”
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