After that shocking twist, Foundation star Jared Harris admits even he's being kept in the dark about the show

The second and latest episode of Foundation season 3 brought multiple big revelations that could change the course of this Isaac Asimov-adapted show (here's how to watch Foundation season 3 and I'd recommend you do so, because I'm going to jump into big spoilers after this paragraph).

If you've watched the second episode of the new season, or read our Foundation season 3 episode 2 recap, you'll know that the Galactic Empire has a planet-destroying weapon, that the Third Crisis of this season is just a warm-up for bigger dramas to come, and that an elderly Hari Seldon has been whisked away to who-knows-where by an enigmatic entity, taking the form of a long-dead mathematician from Seldon's past, who hints that they could be a god or some other kind of super-powerful entity.

This is just the latest bump in the road for the main driving force behind Foundation: he currently exists in two distinct forms on opposite sides of the galaxy, neither of which is his original form (it was recycled and turn into the Vault on Terminus during season 1), and after his space-faring digital version was mysteriously gifted a real biological body in season 2, it's clear that plans are in motion which heavily involve Seldon.

But what are they? Prior to the release of Foundation season 3, What To Watch participated in a roundtable interview where we asked Seldon actor Jared Harris about his character and performance

The body of the problem

Not beating about the bush, we asked Harris simply what the status of the real Hari is, specifically about his trip to Oona's World in season 2 (where he gained his real body) and where the lingering questions about his humanity could go.

However he responded: "I've got a lot of questions about that as well! I mean, how did he know about [Kalle's presence on Oona's World]? Is it a real body? Honestly, there are questions that I have that I don't know the answers to, and I'm waiting to see what happens if this thing carries on."

At the time of writing, Foundation season 3 hasn't been officially renewed for a fourth season, but Deadline reports that work on it is underway nonetheless. Other works by Asimov that are linked to the Foundation universe, and even later books in the series, speak of super-powerful Eternals who control the threads of time, but the TV show Foundation has adapted Asimov's ideas in very different ways so it remains unclear if that's where the show is going with the deity-like figures it's newly introduced.

It doesn't sound that Foundation's showrunners (David S. Goyer for the first two seasons, Ian Goldberg for the third) are making things up as they go along, though, just that they're keeping the cast in the dark:

"You ask these questions on set, and they smile and nod at you and go 'yeah, that's a good question'. And then you pitch answers to them: 'is it this, or is it this', and they just nod and smile at you and go 'yeah, that's an interesting idea'."

This all sounds to me like the showrunners are just being coy, and that makes sense for Foundation. Lots of the themes around the story (largely in the book, but partly in the show too) are about secrecy, and people being better at their tasks if they don't know what said task is.

The acting challenge

So how much input does Harris have on Hari's character and direction? Well, it depends on the stage: "by the time I enter the conversation, the season has been written, so a lot of that conversation has already taken place in rooms that I'm not in. And when the actors arrive, you start to have a dialog with the writers, and you're mostly trying to figure out how the information that you already have from previous seasons, is still relevant to the season that you're doing."

"There's a good dialog back and forth, taking on board ideas that the characters, who are playing the characters, have. Because after all, our job is to know these characters in such detail, that at some point, we're going to know these characters better than the director or the writer will. But we're not in control of where the story is going".

During the interview, Harris wasn't just grilled for a deep dive into the entire character arc of Hari Seldon. He was separately asked what his favorite thing about his role was:

"Pretending that I'm smart, that's the best thing! That I understand quantum physics, that I'm a mathematical genius, none of which is true in real life".

We also asked what it was like playing two similar-but-different versions of the same character, the digital version in the Vault on Terminus and the real flesh-and-blood Hari on Ignus. And according to Harris, "that was the fun!".

"The pitch of it was that there's these two different versions of the character that you're going to do. It was slightly described as Dead Ringers (the 1988 David Cronenberg thriller starring Jeremy Irons as two identical twins), along the idea that there were these two versions of the character, and they were going to be very different. It was this very attractive acting challenge."