'Below': Josh Hartnett is a Newfoundland fisherman in Netflix's Canadian thriller show
"I had never read anything that was set in Newfoundland before," Hartnett said to Netflix's Tudum

Josh Hartnett has captivated fans in projects like The Virgin Suicides, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Pearl Harbour, Black Hawk Down and Oppenheimer, and now he's transformed into a Newfoundland fisherman for the upcoming Canadian Netflix series, Below. Coming to the streaming site Oct. 8, the six-episode thriller series was filmed in the Canadian province.

"I read the first two scripts in less than an hour," Hartnett told Netflix's Tudum. "The voice was so clear, the concept was so engaging, and the character was fantastic."

"I'd never read anything like it before. I had never read anything that was set in Newfoundland before. I didn't understand the long history of Newfoundland being its own country and having its own dialect and its own very specific ancestry."

Created by Jesse McKeown, who was a writer on The Umbrella Academy, Hartnett plays Calvin Penney, who's described as "a big‑hearted but stubborn fisherman," in a small Newfoundland town. While decades have passed, he's still haunted by his father's mysterious death.

When an unidentified sea creature appears in the town, terrorizing the small community, Calvin fights to protect his hometown, including keeping his son Wade, played by Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton, and the rest of his family safe.

Joining forces with a visiting marine researcher, Fonda Howander, played by Mackenzie Davis, buried secrets on the island are revealed.

"He is a guy who has had a series of setbacks and tragedies in his life starting at a young age," Hartnett told Tudum. "He's felt that he's cursed and that his place in the world is untenable, that even his community doesn't see the point of him, and he lives in a very small community, so he feels untethered."

The series also stars Willow Kean, Ruby Stokes, Rohan Campbell and Kaleb Horn.

As McKeown told Tudum, as someone who has been visiting Newfoundland for years, he's always wanted to create a series set in the province, specifically something that can really use its unique landscape, and also showcase the warmth of the local communities.

"It's such a unique landscape and such a rugged, dangerous, isolated, scary place in a lot of ways," the statement from McKeown reads. "But then there's also this other side to it, which is that the community is so warm and the people are so funny and unique and there are so many eccentricities about the place."

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/below-josh-ha … 04881.html