‘Dark Matter’s’ Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly talk S2’s marital disintegration and the humility of hanging on wires (interview)

The eighth episode of Apple TV’s “Dark Matter” season 2 has just dropped, and we’re all on the edge of our seats trying to guess how the strange saga of Jason (Joel Edgerton) and Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) Dessen is going to finish up. Not even fans of the books know, as this superb adaptation of NYT bestselling author Blake Crouch’s 2016 novel broke out of its source material for season 2.

For Edgerton and Connelly, “Dark Matter” has been a whirlwind project as their characters search for a safe alternate universe while being pursued by a multiplicity of Jasons. The physical rigors and emotional toll of shooting the show and presenting its nuanced storytelling often proved difficult.

“There’s two exhaustions that I’ve found in movie work,” Edgerton tells Space. “It’s either mental exhaustion from going to dark emotional places in your brain or complex dialogue stuff. Then there’s the physical challenges, like for doing a fight scene. One of the weirdest ones on ‘Dark Matter’ was doing a gravity scene where we’re dangling on wires inside The Box. There’s something deeply exhausting about it and a bit humiliating. You feel like a human teabag.”

Connelly was also a part of that tough sequence and reflects on Edgerton’s tireless fortitude.