Hell on Wheels - Interview with Colm Meany

What do you think makes Star Trek so special?
Before I did it, I never really understood the whole genre to be honest with you. But, I grew to appreciate it as we were doing the Deep Space Nine show because we got to deal with a lot of subjects that they wouldn’t let you deal with in a contemporary show - episodes about homelessness, genetic engineering, and about racism. Racism between intergalactic species of course, but it is still about how to understand someone who is different than you. They might have three heads or a tail, it’s a bit odd, but it is basically about relating to someone who is different than you. Issues like that were dealt with.
If you go into the future you can deal with these issues or if you go into the past. In ‘Hell on Wheels’, Common the rapper plays this freed slave who is working on the railroad - he was freed from slavery a year ago and things haven’t changed much for him. We’ve got the Native Americans; West Indians; relationships between the Irish, the Italians the Poles, all these are explored in the show. It also deals with the environment and ploughing up the land. All these issues are there and dealt with realistically and they are all still relevant today. If you are working on a contemporary script, people can be very wary of tackling these issues in case they offend their audiences.

What projects do you have coming up?
I have an AMC drama ‘Hell on Wheels’. It is the story of the building of a transcontinental railroad ‘The Union Pacific’ in the 1860’s. I’ve just been down in Cannes MIPCOM for the last four days promoting that and it’s a great show – a beautiful script and great writing. We’ve done ten episodes and it starts airing November 6th in the states. It’s AMC who do loads of great shows like ‘Mad Men’, ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘The Walking Dead’, so hopefully that will take off.
For films coming out I have ‘A Whole Lotta Sole’ with Terry George, which filmed in and around Belfast earlier this year. I did a lovely picture late last year with Ray Winstone in Belgium called ‘Hot Potato’ and I also did ‘Bel Ami’ last year with an incredible bunch of women: Christina Ricci, Uma Therman, Kristen Scott Thomas…I played Kristen’s husband.

Source: Full interview @ IFTN