Minor spoilers follow for Season 5, Episode 1 of For All Mankind.
With the fifth season of Apple TV’s For All Mankind debuting this week, the show has undergone another 10-year time jump. That’s tradition for the series, which was created by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi. We’re now in the 2010s, which means Joel Kinnaman’s Ed Baldwin – who has always been the bedrock of For All Mankind – is now around 80 years old!
I talked with showrunners Wolpert and Nedivi about Ed’s status as the oldest astronaut ever, how the idea of legacy has come to permeate the show, and more. I always have fun talking to these guys, so enjoy!
Joel Kinnaman Returns as Ed Baldwin for Season 5
The fact that Joel Kinnaman is back for Season 5 as the one and only Ed Baldwin may surprise some, if only because as the show has jumped forward another decade, the character is now in his early eighties. That’s pretty old for the main character of a sci-fi series, but then again, this is the Ed Baldwin we’re talking about…
“He’s better than ever!” laughs Nedivi when asked about the NASA legend’s longevity. “The truth is Ed Baldwin is as much For All Mankind as any other character.”
And while Ed’s importance to the show goes without saying, the showrunners admit to some initial concern about whether or not they could sell the aging of the character at this stage in his life. It’s a question not just of the makeup prosthetics, but also the actor himself.
“With this season, I thought it was incredible … the work that our makeup team did with him and the prosthetics, but then even more what Joel did himself,” says Nedivi. “He took it on with a seriousness that was inspiring in terms of really capturing it. He looked at it, he thought about his dad a lot, he put a lot of thought into it. So it wasn’t just the four hours he spent in a chair every morning. … I think it pays off because you really, really believe when you’re seeing him, this is the 80-year-old Ed Baldwin walking around – frailer, not all there, but still inside, there’s still that guy we knew from Season 1, Season 2, the guy on the bleeding edge, the guy pushing the limit.”
Indeed, a key aspect of Ed’s journey in the new season is his having to face up to the limits of, well, his own mortality. He’s not the “perfect” human specimen anymore that got him into the Space Program way back when, and there’s no science that’s going to stop him from continuing to age.
That balance of still being who you are, but not having the body and the health to necessarily maintain that, is heartbreaking on the one level, and on another level inspiring. -Ben Nedivi
“I think that balance of still being who you are, but not having the body and the health to necessarily maintain that, is heartbreaking on the one level, and on another level inspiring,” says Nedivi. “And I think it’s so what the show is and the fact that he’s around with his grandkid to see him grow up just really brings together the whole show and what we’ve been trying to do since the beginning, which is show what the passage of time means, show the generational story, and just show what a journey this guy’s been on from the very beginning.”
Sean Kaufman Joins the Cast as Ed’s Grandson Alex
The grandkid in question is Alex, now played by Sean Kaufman and a graduating high school senior who, unlike his friends, is consigned to live out his days on Mars due to a health condition. The character is another example of For All Mankind’s exploration of legacy. We’ve seen the dark side of it, as with Tracy and Gordo Stevens’ children in past seasons, but we’ve also seen the beauty of legacy in characters like Kelly (Cynthy Wu), Ed’s daughter, who has taken her dad’s drive and ambition to the next level in Season 5.
“I don’t think we realized, when we first came up with the idea of these time jumps, just how that would impact generations of characters,” says Wolpert. “Obviously, you think about the characters in Season 1 and what they might be doing 10 or 20 or 30 years later. But then it really broke open for us when we had to cast Danny Stevens in Season 2. And it was like, ‘Oh, the kids of Season 1 are growing up into adults, and we’re going to carry those forward.’ And that’s just kept going and going that now we’re casting people’s grandkids. And so legacy is a huge part of that, especially with Alex.”
Casey W. Johnson played Danny as another potential “great man” like Ed or his father Gordo (Michael Dorman), but of course there are actually no “great men” – just regular men. Ed is and Gordo was extremely flawed, despite both being heroes, but Danny, despite his achievements as an astronaut, was not able to overcome his personal demons and paid the ultimate price for it.
Now Season 5 places a large part of this examination of legacy on Alex, who is naturally constrained by what he can or can’t be because of his status as a permanent Mars resident. So while his friends are gearing up to leave for college or the military back on Earth, he must figure out how he can live up to the expectations – and the image – of his grandfather, grandmother, and his parents.
“He’s 18, he’s sort of just coming into his own and starting to wrap his mind around, ‘What is my future going to be?’” says Wolpert. “And the pressure of [having] the coolest granddad, but he’s also got the most accomplished grandfather, the most accomplished grandmother, the most accomplished mother, the most accomplished father. He’s carrying the weight of all these great people in his family, and he’s like, ‘How am I going to measure up to any of that?’ And it’s kind of a fascinating crucible for that character to step into as he’s like, ‘What do I want to do with my life?’”
There’s a scene in the Season 5 premiere where Alex is using a VR headset to visit a beach. Stuck on Mars as he is, the prospect of ever again actually feeling the incoming tide wash over his feet is an impossible dream.
“We were really trying to wrap our minds around the character and what he was going through, and the heartbreak of him,” says Wolpert, “Everybody thinks of him as the Mars boy, and he obviously can’t leave this place. … He’s not going to go to college on Earth or whatever, and he’s got to put on a good face. And especially his grandfather is like, ‘This place is for you.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m excited.’ … I think that’s the evolution of his character over time. He hasn’t fully bought into that identity everybody else is putting on him of the Mars boy, and he’s maybe not as fully invested in his home as everybody else thinks he is. The arc of that over the season is something we really explore.”
The funny thing is, you can look at Alex as the “townie” of the Happy Valley Mars base… He’s the guy who’ll always be there when his friends come home to visit. So how can he make his own mark in that world?
“Mars is the small town,” says Nedivi. “To us the idea of Mars is so exotic, so like, ‘Holy shit, to live in a place like that, how would that be!?’ But to people who grew up there, who were born there… anywhere you grew up or were born, no matter how interesting it may be to us, to the person there it’s not nearly as interesting. And I think that’s what was fascinating, that the exotic thing to him, the thing that he would be like, ‘How does it feel to put my feet in the ocean?’ is as exotic to him as the idea for us that living on Mars is.”
For All Mankind Season 5 is streaming on Apple TV now.
