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Pablo Schreiber said that he’s aware that his new show “Halo” will be compared to “The Mandalorian” — since both shows follow a guy in a helmet acting as a protector to a younger figure.
“I feel fine about it. There are certainly similarities [and] there are a lot of differences,” Schreiber, 43, told The Post. “I think they’re both very interesting pieces of science fiction that stand up on their own, and live in their own universe.
“There’s just so much content on TV that there’s a lot of options for people. ‘The Mandalorian’ has certainly done well in grabbing an audience [and] we hope for the same.”
“Halo,” based on the video game franchise of the same name, premieres Thursday (March 24) on Paramount+. It’s a futuristic sci-fi epic, set in the year 2552, where humans have a conflict with an alien threat known as the Covenant. Master Chief (Schreiber) is a genetically engineered super-soldier known as one of the government’s “Spartans.” When Kwan (Yerin Ha), a girl on the planet of Madrigal, survives an attack, she becomes an unlikely companion for Master Chief, as he begins to question his mission and himself.
“Halo” has already been renewed for a second season ahead of its series premiere.
“I had a relationship to [the game] but it was a peripheral one, until I got cast and started the process of researching for it,” said Schreiber (“Orange Is the New Black”), who’s also half-brothers with “Ray Donovan” star Liev Schreiber.
“I had played the game a handful of times at friends’ houses after school, but I didn’t grow up with TV or video games. So, it really was that high school period … that I had interaction with it. I also hadn’t played it as a story, so I had no idea about all of this mythology that had been established. So, when I started to dig into that and learn about how much has been established over the past 20 years, I really was blown away.”
Schreiber said that wearing Master Chief’s armor wasn’t a walk in the park.
“It’s very limiting, but in the story, the suits are meant to make the Spartans super-human and super-capable: faster, stronger than everything that regular human beings do,” he said. “Obviously, the future tech that’s involved isn’t actually functional. So, in reality, you’re just wearing a 50-pound suit of plastic. Learning how to shoot it so that it looked super- capable and added all those elements — rather than took away from the mobility — was really our challenge.”
A major departure in the adaptation from the game to the show is that, in the game, Master Chief’s face is not shown, which gives Schreiber a blank slate to work with — and a lot of pressure from the fan base.
“I feel a sense of responsibility for sure,” he said. “From the moment that I was cast in this role, I started to feel through reactions online how much the universe and character means to people. It’s based on a first-person shooter, and so everyone who has ever played the game feels some sort of ownership over the Chief, because they played the game as him. So, I always knew there would be a lot of opinions about it.
“I also knew that you really just have to let that go and stick to your instincts as an actor and trust and put faith in the decisions that are being made around you, as well.”
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