Dominic Monaghan is currently promoting AMC+’s new futuristic sci-fi TV series Moonhaven and Audible’s original series Moriarty: The Devil’s Game, but before our interview begins, we’re trading notes on how to take care of indoor plants. Though it may seem like an arbitrary place to start our conversation, the idea of understanding and preserving life and our natural world is very much pertinent to Moonhaven in particular. In its first season, the AMC+ series tells the story of a future in which Earth has declined severely and violently, prompting a last-ditch effort to secure life somewhere else in our galaxy. After 100 years, and with the help of an advanced artificial intelligence known as “IO,” the moon has become a prosperous place to live. There are, however, forces at play who threaten to destroy the utopia (and, by extension, the majority of humanity’s last chance at survival) established on the moon, which has since developed its own unique culture, customs, and even language.
In Moonhaven, which IndieWire hails as “one of the most exciting new sci-fi stories in years,” Monaghan plays Paul Sarno, one of the detectives on the eponymous idyllic commune, who must solve a murder during the most crucial times on the moon. “He’s naive and innocent and kind of sweet in a way that you probably wouldn’t see in most police officers,” Monaghan says of Paul. “It’s kind of an interesting juxtaposition to be working in crimes, very serious crimes against other humans — which is kind of a cynical world because you obviously start to feel ways about what humans can do to each other — and then to maintain this sense of idealistic naivety.” Indeed, Paul is, as it turns out, one of the handful of “Mooners” (as they call themselves) that believes wholeheartedly in their original mission to be the scouts for the “Earthers,” to help establish life on the moon before those on Earth can finally join those on Moonhaven.
“I’m always looking for ways as an actor [to] play a type of character I’ve not done before. I’ve certainly played detectives before, but I don’t think I’ve played anyone that comes from a different part of the galaxy before,” the actor says of what initially drew him to the AMC+ series and, more specifically, Paul. Monaghan’s most notable performances, both in film and TV, have taken famously him to different worlds across multiple genres and major franchises, from the Lord of the Rings movies to Lost. What, he says, has been his goal as an actor, particularly in his performance in Moonhaven, is to “make any of the characters you play as real as possible” and that relatability is paramount. “What’s fascinating for me, watching TV shows that I enjoy, is [that] you might see someone grappling with something that, for you, is difficult to understand […] and then, you suddenly see them driving a car or sleeping in a bed or crossing the street, and you think, ‘Oh, they are like me. I can relate to them.’ And then, suddenly, they do something, and you think, ‘Oh, that’s crazy.’”
Moonhaven’s Overarching Question About Humanity
The biggest question about humanity that Moonhaven grapples with — perhaps the most timely one, too, albeit in a cynical way — is not a matter of how humans will be saved, but whether we deserve to be saved in the first place. From various environmentalism documentaries to fictional stories that explore real-world issues like war, hate, and climate change, it’s easy to see that Earth’s decline is the result of human interference and, as Monaghan suggests in our interview, arrogance. “What will remain [on this planet], and what will win is ultimately nature. We are obviously part of nature — we’re an animal, we live in the natural world — [but] we’ve kind of separated ourselves from animals. I think that’s a major problem with our species. We think that we’re the bosses and can do whatever we want. It’s not going to be nature that struggles with [environmental decline], it’s us.”
Monaghan feels nonetheless “positive about [our] future and positive that we can solve a lot of the problems that we’ve got ourselves into,” but he doesn’t “do it in a naive way.” This is where he and his character in Moonhaven differ. Unlike Monaghan, Paul is naive and idealistic about humans: he understands that the first generation of Mooners were sent to the moon with the sole purpose of establishing a new world for the Earthers; it’s a responsibility he staunchly upholds, continuously saying throughout the show that “they [meaning Earthers] are us, and we are them” despite humanity’s history of violence against one another, selfishness, and destruction. “Paul is a lovely guy. I like huge aspects of his personality, but this naivety that seems to get him into trouble — [his belief] that all humans are intrinsically good and everyone’s out to help you — is probably something that was a little harder for me to make sense of.”
Moriarty: The Devil’s Game Puts a Twist on the Famed Sherlock Holmes Character
Audible
Monaghan’s second project is a reversal of his detective role in Moonhaven. In Moriarty: The Devil’s Game, Monaghan voices Professor James Moriarty, the famed villain in Sherlock Holmes canon. This time, however, Moriarty leads the story as a framed fugitive who desperately tries to prove his innocence when his fiancée ends up murdered. True to the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary universe, there are darker forces at play, particularly at a time when Moriarty is on the brink of a mathematical breakthrough (one that can predict the future). “He’s a brilliant mind, a brilliant mathematician, chess champion, highly intelligent like Holmes. And if someone wants to come up against Sherlock Holmes, you’re going to need that level of intelligence,” says Monaghan of Moriarty. “Instead of consistently approaching the world of Sherlock Holmes by looking at our quote-unquote hero, we want you to think, ‘What if the hero of the story is Moriarty and everything’s flipped on its head?’”
Voice and audio work is certainly within Monaghan’s wheelhouse — “I did a couple of radio plays when I was younger,” he says — as he and Lord of the Rings co-star Billy Boyd are currently hosts of Kast Media’s The Friendship Onion, a podcast in which the two reflect on their time filming Peter Jackson’s mega-successful trilogy. Of course, with Moriarty: The Devil’s Game, Monaghan’s experience recording the Audible original isn’t unlike being on a movie or TV set. “As an actor, I still bring my body and my face into it — you just don’t see those things. All you can do is kind of give over your voice. But, for me, it’s really nice. I’ve been listening to it over the last few days, driving around LA, and to be transported back to that time in London is quite charming.”
Moonhaven premiered on AMC+ on July 7. Its current episodes are now available to stream, with new ones added Thursdays. Moriarty: The Devil’s Game is available exclusively on Audible.
