Some fan theories come close to solving The OA secrets

The actor admits he would bypass difficult ethical questions about a scientific discovery if it had potential to help a loved one

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As Jason Isaacs read through the script of supernatural drama The OA for the first time, he couldn’t believe the show had been given the green light.

It wasn’t that the British actor, known forever to a generation of movie goers as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, and who also played Captain Lorca in Star Trek: Discovery, didn’t like what he was reading — just the opposite — it was just so different from anything he had ever seen before.

Brit Marling as Prairie Johnson and Jason Isaacs as Dr. Hunter Aloysius "Hap" Percy in The OA.

Isaacs, 55, plays Dr Hunter “Hap” Percy, a type of mad scientist with an underground lab who is consumed by the phenomenon of near-death experiences and studies how that plays into curing death. He does this by kidnapping people who have had such experiences and keeps them locked in a purpose-built space in his isolated basement.

The decision to play this meaty role had to be made in a matter of hours as Isaacs wasn’t the first choice and got the call close at midnight the day before shooting began. He was annoyed at having to read through a script when he’d rather be asleep, but changed as soon as he had it in his hands.

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“Although I’m normally an insomniac, I was ready for bed and I was just dreading the whole thing and then time seemed to stop and I was completely transported when I read it,” he tells Insider. “My first thought was ‘I can’t believe this is being greenlit’.”

With an enviable resumé across television and film, Isaacs has read his fair share
of scripts, but this one, written by the show’s lead Brit Marling and director Zal Batmanglij, was something altogether different.

Isaacs was sucked in by The OA script.

“I’ve read so many scripts that get developed by television networks and they all seem to bear the stamp of the development process, slightly homogenised,” he says. “But this was so original and so fresh and so unpredictable — and so undefinable — I was stunned both by the story and by the fact that it existed.”

The first season began with a young blind woman, Prairie Johnson (Marling), returning home after going missing seven years earlier. She has horrible scars across her back and she can now see, but refuses to tell her adoptive parents or the authorities where she has been since she was seemingly abducted.

Instead she entrusts a group of young misfits and a teacher who she tells her story to each night in an abandoned house in their neighbourhood. It is during these wild stories that Hap is introduced — Johnson telling her new friends that he kidnapped her and held her captive.

While for most that would be enough to label Hap well and truly in the column marked evil, Isaacs is much more generous in his character assessment.

“Oh God he’s not evil at all,” he says emphatically.

The OA - Jason Isaacs in Netflix drama

“He’s not evil because he’s a scientist, he’s a driven, curious scientist who is on the cusp of uncovering and maybe mastering something that will change
all of humanity for all time.”

Hap understands what he is doing is wrong, but is doing it for the greater good, Isaacs says.

“He under­stands the moral cost of what he’s doing but he’s looking at the bigger picture and he thinks it’s worth doing,” Isaacs says. “But it’s something that he had to wrestle with and also something he has to cut himself off from, he needs to cauterise himself as it were, immune himself to the ethical implications of what he’s doing in order to get the work done.”

Of course if it were his daughters who were locked in those cages, things would different, he says, but if a great scientific discovery were made that could help save his loved ones, he might be willing to bypass the difficult questions about how it came about.

Isaacs, pictured with Tom Felton, played Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series. Picture: Jaap Buitendijk

“I lost my mum to cancer and if they said ‘you take this pill and your mum will be fine again’ or ‘nobody you love will ever have to
die again’ I might not want to know in too much detail how they’ve done that,” he says.

Isaacs has been involved with a number of shows with hardcore vocal fanbases: Harry Potter, Star Trek: Discovery and now The OA. With so many questions up in the air with this series, there are no shortage of theories online — and Isaacs loves it.

“I’m not one of those people who pretends they don’t read those things,” he laughs. “I read not only every theory, but I read every comment beneath it and I find it hilarious. Every now and then somebody’s got something right on the nose, but mostly not. But it doesn’t matter, all that matters is how engaged they are,” he says.

SEASON 2 OF THE OA IS NOW STREAMING ON NETFLIX