Ben Barnes: ‘I’ve played psychotic characters for years – now I’m making a change’

Before signing on to play virtually the only redeeming adult MGM’s new Stephen King adaptation, Ben Barnes was looking to make a change. 

This wasn’t as big a change as his recent foray into the world of music-making. But after a few years playing characters he described as ‘untrustworthy/villainous/psychotic’, the 43-year-old actor said he wanted to sink his teeth into a role that had a ‘moral compass’.

Amid some soul-searching over what he was ‘putting out into the world’, Barnes told Metro: ‘I started my career playing boy heroes and then I was stretching my acting limbs, finding the edges of characters and edges of humanity. 

‘I was really keen to pull it back in and see what it meant to play a character who sees themselves as a good man in the world.’

Enter Tim Jamieson of The Institute. Barnes read King’s 2019 novel, which the new eight-part show is based on, and was instantly drawn to Tim, who helps to uncover a shady government lab that’s performing tortuous experiments on children. 

Tim works as a ‘nightknocker’: a small-town job King made up, but which is essentially a nighttime patrolman. Not that Barnes knew that when he spent hours on Google trying to find a nightknocker he could speak to for colour on the role.

‘Once I’d been told that it was a made up thing, I realised I had some parameters to play with,’ said Barnes. While there was freedom, he did still have to get his head around the ‘vaguely archaic’ system his nightknocker Tim uses, which involves a lock box and key clock. 

‘I still don’t really understand how that’s supposed to work,’ he laughed.

When reading King’s novel, Barnes quickly twigged onto the fact that Tim’s job title would suggest ‘a lot’ of night shoots while filming in Nova Scotia.

It can be a draining part of the job when it’s night after night, but Barnes also said there’s a ‘magic’ to them, recalling shooting at ‘stupid o’clock’ in an emptied out British Museum for the BBC drama Gold Digger.

‘I’ve always enjoyed shooting when there’s not many people around,’ he said. ‘I think that’s one of the privileges of being an actor. You get to shoot often in spaces which ought to be full of people.’

It makes sense that Tim is attracted to working during the wee hours, doing laps of the Maine town DuPray (also fictional). An ex-copper, he’s looking for a slower pace of life. Although that goes out the window when he gets wind of what’s going on at the nearby government facility (bad things).

‘He smells that something is awry,’ says Barnes of his character. ‘He can’t help but investigate and look for ways to make the world a safer place. It’s not necessarily always a good thing, especially for him.’

Barnes was spared the majority of the chilling scenes fans of King’s work can expect from this MGM+ drama, which mostly unfold among the younger actors at the titular Institute. 

‘I was realising that I was forgetting to breathe as I was reading those in the scripts,’ he said.

He wasn’t entirely unhappy to be spared the ‘filmic trauma’ of the piece, which he had his fair share of earlier in his career.

‘When I was starting out, my characters would be tossed into freezing waterfalls or walking through a fire or being thrown off a cliff,’ smiled Barnes. ‘I think it was nice to play the character who was slightly more in control of his own destiny and body.’

The task instead fell to Joe Freeman, who plays the wonderkid Luke. He’s kidnapped by the shady operatives at the Institute in the middle of the night and then tortured in their labs. 

The pair found a coffee shop in Halifax, where they were shooting, which became their spot to catch up and decompress, since they share precious few scenes with each other. 

This was the first proper acting gig for Freeman (of Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington parentage). It’s clear Barnes is open about discussing his own ‘boy hero’ start in the industry, as the dashing Prince Caspian in The Chronicles of Narnia films. 

‘For me, it was really exciting because I watched the BBC vaguely-puppet version in 1988 and thought it was magical,’ he said. ‘Then to be in these big film versions of it was such a defining thing in my life.’

The powers that be have deemed enough time has passed since the C S Lewis adaptations for someone else to give the books a go. That someone is Barbie’s director Greta Gerwig, who is now remaking the films for Netflix. 

Would Barnes ever consider returning to the world within the wardrobe? He noted ‘almost quite sadly’ that there aren’t many roles going in his age bracket.

‘I think it was enough time ago that there is another generation for whom it needs to be seen through a new lens. I think she’ll do a brilliant job with it.

‘And if she wants me to voice a mouse or something, I would do it.’

The Institute premieres in the UK on MGM+ on July 13.

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