Brad William Henke Discusses His Role on ‘The Stand’ [Interview]

Though you’ll likely recognize Brad William Henke from his role as Piscatella on Orange Is the New Black, his latest role is one that’s quite different from anything you’ve seen him in before.

Henke stars as Tom Cullen on the long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Stand, which sees a world decimated by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil.

I recently spoke with Henke about his role on The Stand and his experience filming the limited series.

Henke said he was excited to be a part of The Stand for a few reasons.

“It’s Stephen King’s favorite novel that he’s written and so that means a lot,” he began. He also said he felt challenged by the role and that it was a great experience for him overall. “It was the best experience I’ve had in acting so far in my whole career.”

“I haven’t had very many opportunities in my career where I have been offered this job three months before it starts. So many times, it’s just right before it starts. So I had so much more time to work on it and prepare and just think about it, dream about it,” Henke said. “I learned all my lines before I even got to Vancouver.” 

“We were treated so well by the production. And as actors, everyone was given just so much freedom,” he continued. “Everyone was so committed and into it, and they’re such good actors.”

“Everyone’s really nice, really good people,” he said.

A major part of Henke’s work on The Stand was unique. “When this quarantine started, I had basically been living that life since last October.”

“My character was kind of isolated away from the other characters. And it’s great to be in Vancouver and it’s just dark all day and raining all day, for months. I was just there with my two 15-year-old puggles. It was just us,” Henke explained. “So it just felt very isolated, which I liked for the character.”

The time Henke spent filming was quite the experience for his two dogs, Mr. Puggles and Girlfriend, as well.

“My dogs were like — this one day we’re walking to our room, and we were up north from Vancouver. It’s literally way, way below zero. And they’re looking up at me like, this better be worth it,” Henke laughed.

The Stand is, obviously, a story that hits a little close to home right now with the current health crisis. Henke spoke a bit about those parallels and why they matter.

“We’re seeing it right now, how something like this can split human beings apart,” he said. “That’s exactly what happens in the book and what’s happening now. So I find that pretty eerie. In the book, I think 99% of the world’s population dies. So it’s much, much more extreme. But I feel like what human nature looks like it does, is very parallelled and mirrored. It’s scary.”

Henke also gave a few hints as to what we can expect from his character in the series.

“My character had suffered a head injury when he was younger,” Henke explained. “People don’t think he can do that much, but really, he ends up… I don’t want to blow anything, but he really shows he’s capable of a lot. And so, I feel like that character is really the heart of the show.”

Henke said reading the novel went a long way in helping him prepare for his role. He made the decision to read the scripts first, then to start reading the novel to help him develop his character further after that.

“It really helped me pick my wardrobe and helped me do all this kind of stuff, because the book was just like giving me an extra cheat sheet.”

“Then when I drove up there, I listened to it on tape from L.A. to Vancouver,” he recalled. “The day I was going to go shoot a scene, I would listen to that scene of that book on tape, just because [it] has so much more detail in it.”

“But then after a while, when I was going into some scary situations, then I stopped reading it because I didn’t want to know what was going to happen to me until it was time! And then I finished it when it was over.”

Henke said he truly appreciated the challenge of his role as Tom Cullen.

“I look for the [jobs] that make me a better actor. Because at this time of my life, I’m just trying to, I don’t want to say master something, because you can’t, but just be as good at something as I possibly can,” he said. “I got a later start into acting, so I just feel like maybe I just got my 10,000 hours a few years ago. So now I feel like it’s creatively just fun.”

Henke reflected a bit on his role on Orange Is the New Black as well, noting that the character of Piscatella was a fun challenge for him too, and something he was grateful for.

“There were a lot of things about [him] hopefully, that you found out about on Orange, where it was a surprise. But then when you look back, you’re like, ‘Oh, okay.’ Do you know what I mean? So that was me layering stuff in for a long time.”

Even after Piscatella was gone from Orange is the New Black, he definitely wasn’t forgotten.

“You have to tip your hat to everybody. Because first of all, the writing was so good and so complicated, but then, the other actors… Because I wasn’t around in season six, but they were talking about me all the time,” he said. “I wasn’t doing anything, but my guards were doing things, so people hated me.”

Of course, on The Stand, Henke’s character won’t be like that at all. “It could not be a further character from Orange Is the New Black,” Henke said.

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The Stand is available for streaming on CBS All Access, with new episodes each Thursday. 

Featured image credit: Jesse Ashton

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