Callum McGowan: 'Librarians' hero Vikram has 'White Rabbit' energy

UPI

4 days ago

1 of 2 | Callum McGowan's "The Librarians: The Next Chapter" premiered Sunday, with a new episode set to air Monday. Photo courtesy of TNT
NEW YORK, May 25 (UPI) -- Callum McGowan compares Vikram, the brilliant adventurer he plays in the history-themed, fantasy series, The Librarians: The Next Chapter, to the White Rabbit in the classic fairy-tale, Alice in Wonderland.
"Vikram is, for any actor, an embarrassment of riches," McGowan told UPI in a Zoom interview Friday.
"As an actor, he's kind of a dream," he added. "Anything is valid with Vikram. In my imagination, his energy is like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. He Is behind time, never on time and always lost, always in a rush."
McGowan went on to say Vikram's charisma and confidence hide a deeper sadness for a man eager to return to his own time.
"I kind of really love that about the character that Dean [Devlin] created," McGowan said. "He wears many masks, but he is very rarely honest, and I found that really fascinating as a challenge."
The Next Chapter premiered Sunday on TNT and new episodes will air Mondays. It follows Vikram and his team of librarians -- YouTuber Connor (Bluey Robinson), scientist Lysa (Olivia Morris) and guardian Charlie (Jessica Green) -- as they protect magical artifacts from villains in various time periods.
The show is the latest installment in a franchise that started with 2004's The Librarian: Quest for the Spear and continued with two TV movie sequels and the spin-off series, The LIbrarians, which ran 2014-18.
Robinson said Connor is a modern man who loves social media as much as he does history.
"He's always diving into books, learning about the past and comes across these discoveries that he can't really explain with logic and that was very exciting to play," Robinson noted.
"He's an adventurer. He likes to break into places and tries to prove his theories by doing all these crazy antics. He's very athletic. He does Parkour," he added. "I'm not a specialist, but I like to move and dance and play around."
Despite their differences in life experiences and personalities, Vikram and Connor become fast friends by the end of Episode 1.
"We saw Connor falling in love with Vikram very quickly," McGowan said.
Robinson agreed with a laugh.
"Connor's a historian. He's an archivist, so he can't believe that he's meeting someone from the 1800s, who's a real-life person in his face and he just wants to know more about him, wants him to like him, wants to kind of go along with him on his journey," Robinson said.
"At first, he's very much. optimistic and, then, eventually, like Callum mentioned, some of the layers come off and you start to see how that evolves and develops their dynamic and relationship."
The show emphasizes the importance of knowledge achieved through hard work and study, as opposed to simply looking something up via search engine or Wikipedia.
"Vikram is a hero, not because he was born an alien and he's got two heartbeats, or he has any extra ability," McCallum said.
"He is who he is because he reads books -- that knowledge, that thirst for knowledge is what drives him and, therefore, that is available to everybody in the world and I think that's a beautiful, special kind of message that Dean puts forward."
Robinson added: "It opens up the idea that anybody could be a librarian. You could be a librarian if you're inquisitive enough, if you read a lot.
"If you're knowledgeable and interested in learning about things that maybe a lot of people might just 'poo poo,' as they say, or dismiss, and you're open-minded and caring and loving, maybe the library would choose you. Who knows?"