'The Terror: Infamy's horror element will terrify viewers and make them empathize with the Japanese American community, teases Derek Mio
AMC's 'The Terror: Infamy' is about a lot of things. While at its core it is about the horrors of infamous occurrences, the ones suffering the consequences of the terrifying haunting resulting from an already bad situation are people of the Japanese-American community. In the second installment of an anthology series, the story revolves around certain bizarre deaths among the community, and one man's quest to get to the bottom of the mystery plaguing them and fight the evil entity behind it all.
All of 10 episodes, the story chronicles the protagonist - Chester Nakayama - his friends and family's crisis as they face persecution from the American government, while simultaneously fighting the evils of nature.
Yet actor Derek Mio, who plays the role of Chester, would like to assure fans that the story is about more than just the haunting of the community. Paying homage to the massive number of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians who were forced into camps by their governments because of where they or their ancestors came from, the story upholds an aura of perseverance and tackles inherent racism as the people navigate through what it means to be truly American.
"There are a lot of you know issues that we're addressing that are political and relevant to current events," Mio shared in an exclusive interview with MEA Worldwide (MEAWW.) "But this is a TV show; it's not a documentary and it's a horror TV show and we want to thrill the audience and introduce them to the Japanese horror sub-genre of horror that they haven't seen like before on streaming," he adds.
"The show is just so vivid. It's shot beautifully, the costumes and the makeup are very detailed and vibrant. So we're excited for the audience to just get sucked into the story and to be terrified by it and be on the edge of their seats." But at the same time, the show will also focus on the very crucial element of empathy for what the characters so evidently discriminated against, are going through. "If it makes them think and feel, and have empathy for others, that would be the icing on the cake," he muses.
The emotional value of this season doesn't end there. "It was tremendously emotional to the filming," Mio says about the final scenes of the series. "I almost couldn't get through it and saying goodbye to our cast and crew when I was up in Vancouver. It was just the hardest thing to do because we had become family: we were all working together in the trenches, five days a week, 15 hours a day and battling the elements together. So it was definitely sad and it's still been a struggle for me. You feel an emptiness and kind of question if you can ever top an experience like this one, that yu had such a personal connection to. So I'm still processing it and decompressing from it all but each day gets better."
Alongside Mio, the series also stars George Takei - working with whom was an extremely 'profound experience' in Mio's own words. Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama. Takei appears as Yamato-san, an 80-year-old elder statesman of Terminal Island, where all the action unfolds. This season will also feature Kiki Sukezane as Yuko, Cristina Rodlo as Luz, Shingo Usami as Henry Nakayama, Naoko Mori as Asako Nakayama, and Miki Ishikawa as Amy. 'The Terror: Infamy' premieres on Monday, August 12, only on AMC.
