Henry Rollins has described the character he plays in his first starring movie role as “a weary monster.”
Rollins plays Jack in He Never Died – a supernatural dark comedy based on the life of an immortal who occasionally likes to eat parts of the people he kills.
He tells Billboard: “Jack is a guy who’s been fighting for years, so everything is really efficient. Everything he does is real small. You pull a knife out, he’ll walk up, take the knife and break your neck.
“And so it’s all close quarter, highly efficient. He’s not into killing you. He just wants you to leave him alone. Break your neck, maybe eat your arm.
“He’s just a thing. He takes his carcass, throws it in a chair, makes it watch TV. Because eternity, for him, sucks. He was done a thousand years ago. But he can’t die. He’s furious, he wants to go, and that’s his existential crisis and what appealed to me most about the character.”
Rollins has had small parts in a string of films and also appeared in hit TV series Sons Of Anarchy. He now hopes to have He Never Died made into a TV show.
He adds: “Jason Krawczyk, our wonderfully creative writer and director, has written a full season. The way they always wanted to do it was to shoot a really amazing pilot, this movie, and go, ‘Okay, you like the movie, now give us the budget for a TV show.’
“We have been pitching this as a TV show until our little arms are sore. We’ve finished a ton of pitching. The initial meetings, either everyone is being polite or they really like it. A season is written, I’ve read two episodes, and it’s insane.
“It’s wild and I want to do it so bad. Since you have all of human history to work with, go nuts. I think people would dig it. But we’ll see.”
