We are thrilled to hear the news of The 100 earning a second season with The CW!  Congratulations to Jason Rothenberg, Ian and his cast mates and everyone involved with the show!  Second season here we come!

CW Renews The 100

“The 100, which is getting some of the CW’s best reviews ever, and the soapy Hart Of Dixie, both from Warner Bros TV, had been considered frontrunners to return among the five CW series……”

It is difficult to look into the hearts of men, and one can only make assumptions based on a man’s actions. When first introduced to Councilor Kane (Henry Ian Cusick) in the new CW drama series THE 100, his motives will seem murky and self-serving. But with each passing episode and, as the layers of the story are pulled back, there just may be something else going on entirely.

During press interviews at the Warner Bros. Mondo Television International Press Tour, star Henry Ian Cusick talked about Councilor Kane’s motivations and the need to make hard choices even if it makes you look like a villain.

What can you share about your character?
HENRY: [The show’s] set 97 years in the future and I play Councilor Kane, who is one of the Councilors on the ship, and their main thing is to keep the human race going. And, hopefully, one day we’ll go back to Earth and repopulate the Earth.

Can you describe kind of the relationships between the primary chancellors, Jaha and Kane, and Paige Turco’s character Abigail. There seems to be some political tension initially. Do they kind of align more, or does that friction kind of continue?
HENRY: Everything that happens on the spaceship ?? there’s always friction between the three of us, Chancellor Jaha, Councilor Abby, and my character. So we’re always trying to figure out what’s best and how to proceed, and not always, but there’s a lot of disagreements. And there’s an attempt on Jaha’s life, and we don’t know who did it, and people kind of think that [Kane] might have had something to do with it. . . So it’s very political. There’s a lot of intrigue and uncertainty on the spaceship and a very high body count.

Do you play the bad guy?
HENRY: No. Define “bad”; right? I’m doing what I think is right — that involves trying to make sure that the majority survive. Hard choices for everyone.

How are you most like your character, and what are the biggest challenges for you?
HENRY: I’m not very like this character. Not at the beginning. But as the show progresses, you see [Kane] have a nice change. And I’m more like the character towards the end of the show, I think. But I’m not as cold as Kane. I am passionate, and I think he is passionate and he makes hard decisions.

What are some of the challenges for you of this particular character?
HENRY: One of the challenges, I think, was not knowing where [the show] was going. You get that with every character in television because when you sign up to do a show, you do a pilot. And you think you know where the character is going, and then you read the scripts, and you think, “Oh, I didn’t think that was going to happen.” And it happened a lot, of course, during LOST. But I was a little bit more sympathetic or empathetic to where I was going, whereas with this one it was a little bit harder for me to get my head around about where he was going and what his motives were. That was the hardest part, to find out why he was doing what he was doing. His motives were a bit sort of obscure to me. But it kind of makes sense now.

Did being on a TV show like LOST prepare you in any way for this show?
HENRY: Being on a show like LOST has prepared me in many ways, just as an actor, that I can work fast and do it quick, and I know where the camera is. A lot of it is handheld, so you’re playing with the cameraman. I can see him and work around him, and doing LOST, there was many times the camera guy was holding me and moving me around physically. So yeah, that’s helped. There are elements that are LOST-like in the show.

You mentioned the elements that this show shares with LOST. Can you tell us any?
HENRY: Not so much for my character, but for the kids down on Earth. They’re basically trying to survive a hostile environment, and they don’t know where the dangers lie. It’s all new for them. In that respect.

What’s your favorite scene or moment, episode so far?
HENRY: There’s an episode coming up, the next episode, which I just read. I think that’s probably my favorite episode. It’s 111. I can’t really tell you too much about it because we’re coming to the end of the season. We only do 13 episodes. But that will be a lot of action. There’s also another scene, which I’ve never seen before on television. It’s quite a large catastrophe. It will be interesting. I’ll be curious to know how the audience takes to it because there’s such a high body count. . . [And] there’s some scenes coming up, which I’m curious to know, especially on a channel like The CW, how the audience will react. Because even I, reading it and I rarely get surprised by anything, was like, “Wow, they’re actually going to do that.”

This is a story of a society with very finite resources. Do you think there’s an ambition or an aspiration in the writing to make statements about the society we live in?
HENRY: Yes, I hope so. There’s certainly potential. So yes, there is and we do. And it might be subtle, but they’re there, and I hope we do more of that.

To see whether Councilor Kane is as dark-hearted as first perceived and how he fares, be sure to tune in for the premiere of THE 100 on Wednesday, March 19th at 9:00 p.m. on the CW.

By Tiffany Vogt on April 2nd, 2014

TVAddict.com

Henry Ian Cusick Previews Walking the Line Between Hero and Villian

The actor on his role on the CW series. Plus, the staying power of Lost, as it reaches its 10th anniversary.

by Eric Goldman  IGN

March 25, 2014

Debuting last week, the CW’s new post-apocalyptic sci-fi series, The 100, is set both on Earth, where the title characters have been sent — to discover if our planet is once more livable — and in space, as we follow the power struggle onboard the space station called the Ark, with the remnants of humanity. A key figure on the Ark is Councilman Kane, played by Henry Ian Cusick. The pilot established Kane as a man who is determined to save mankind by any means necessary; even if it involves the death of many, as the Ark’s capacity to maintain life dips dangerously low. This puts him into conflict both with the current leader, Chancellor Jaha (Isaiah Washington) and with Abby (Paige Turco), a fellow council member who has a very different viewpoint on what is right.

The 100 has now wrapped production on its 13-episode season, but a few weeks before they finished, I sat down with Cusick to discuss his character and where Kane is coming from. We also talked about the surprisingly dark places The 100 goes and the echoes the series has of Cusick’s previous series Lost, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

IGN TV: Your character obviously has his ambitions, but do you think he’s sort of single-minded in that? From his point of view, he wants to help save humanity, and he just thinks he knows a better, albeit more ruthless, way to do it.

Henry Ian Cusick: That’s absolutely right. You hit it on the head. His ambitions… You would think he just wants Jaha’s job, for no other reason than he just wants the job. But I think, if he is ambitious in any way, he just thinks he can do it better and that his way is the right way. That’s why he’s prepared to kill quite a few people, as opposed to Abby, who’s not playing with that one at all.

IGN: Is it interesting to put your mindset into that of a guy who is so honed in what he believes is the greater good?

Cusick: Yes, yeah, because that goes against what I’d do, how I think personally. But to think that way and to convince yourself, “You know what? Yes, there is a valid point…” Would you chop your arm off to save your life? Yes, if you could. So it is a very valid point, and to get into that mindset… I hope that some people can understand as well.

Entire interview here:  Henry Ian Cusick on The 100’s Dark Path and Kane’s Ambitions