1 of 3 | Left to right, Donal Finn, Zine Tseng and Hero Fiennes Tiffin star in “Young Sherlock,” premiering Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Prime Video
NEW YORK, March 4 (UPI) — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Safe and The Minister of Ungentlemanly Warfare actor Hero Fiennes Tiffin says his new action-dramedy, Young Sherlock, depicts one of literature’s most iconic sleuths as viewers have never seen him before.
Executive produced and directed by Guy Ritchie and premiering on Prime Video Wednesday, the series takes place in 1870s England and follows brilliant, fast-talking, trouble-plagued teen Sherlock Holmes as he works as an Oxford University servant following a brief prison sentence for pick-pocketing.
“I would say that Sherlock is far from the finished, polished, final product that we meet him at the start of Arthur Conan Doyle‘s works,” Tiffin, 28, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“We can see the foundations and the building blocks of the character that he’s going to become, but also place him far enough away that we weren’t telling an origin story,” he said. “We can really document that growth.”
Tiffin said it was all about striking a balance between who the private detective was as a young man and who he would eventually become.
“Sherlock is quite cold and emotionally distant from other people and on a spectrum of sorts and very different [when he is older],” the actor noted.
“So, I felt like it was really important for him to, at this point in his life, be a little bit more youthfully positive and relatable in the ‘benefit of the doubt’ attitude he has for the world, which, sadly, we’re going to see slowly wear off, I reckon, as the story goes on.”
The series also depicts Sherlock as friends with James Moriarty — played by Hadestown, The Wheel of Time and The Uprising alum Donal Finn, 30 — a man who will years later vex Sherlock by using his own keen intellect for nefarious purposes.
“It’s 1871. He’s Irish. He has a brilliant capacity. But I think there’s something in those kind of first couple of sequences that lets you know that maybe he isn’t kind of fitting in, or that he hasn’t found his place,” Finn said of Moriarty.
“And then he meets Sherlock,” he added. “What is established really quickly is an appreciation for mutual brilliance. And I think both of the characters are kind of looking for that. They’re looking for a kind of home for their genius.”
Their shared intelligence and feelings of being outsiders cement their bond.
“They’re kind of locked in and the show does a great job of making you believe the circumstances that they just would have been like, ‘This fellow is my ride or die,'” Finn said.
“The great kind of spin in this is there’s an element of Moriarty that sees the world differently,” Finn added. “It’s probably a little bit of like an optimistic realist and he has to be a realist because he’s probably had to fight to get what he feels he deserves, or to the places that he has got to.”
Finn believes introducing Moriarty as Sherlock’s trusted friend and intellectual equal is more interesting than the way he is often portrayed as an unfamiliar nemesis in stories, films and TV shows.
Finn said this version of the tale posits, “What if he was a great friend?”
“They do put themselves in positions of peril and danger for the other person,” Finn said.
“If you spoke to Sherlock or Moriarty years from now [and said], ‘You actually really risked your neck to save that person from getting arrested’ or whatever, they wouldn’t believe it,” he added. “That deepens any sense of rivalry or betrayal or whatever might come for the future of these characters.”
Tiffin said he loves the energy Ritchie brings to the project as an executive producer.
“It’s so much fun,” he said. “It’s really ambitious to try and create a story that touches on so many different genres because, if you don’t get it right, the drama undermines the comedy and vice versa. And Guy is, obviously, so experienced, and we trust him, and he knows what he’s doing.”
The actor went on to credit show-runner Matthew Parkhill as a genius in his own right.
“I don’t know how he creates a story this layered and complex, and ties it all into one,” Tiffin said.
“I think people who love Guy Ritchie’s work and love Sherlock are going to love this and, similarly, people who have never seen any of Guy Ritchie’s stuff and don’t know who Sherlock is, hopefully, I’m quite confident we’ll love this, too.”
Finn said he was amazed by how Ritchie focused on the “micro-level of detail” for the production.
“That’s balanced by Matthew’s ability to hold the whole picture, or the whole season and series, in his head,” Finn added.
“That speaks to Matthew’s genius more than Sherlock and Moriarty’s, really. He looks after so many characters that are operating on such an intense, superior wavelength and each of them have their own kind of use of language and means of getting what they want, and he’s looking after all of those things. Guy and Matthew perfectly complement each other.”
