Getting older is usually where Hollywood pushes people to the sidelines. Netflix’s new sci-fi series “The Boroughs” flips that idea and hands the hero job to a group of retirees.
The eight-episode series premieres May 21 and follows residents of a retirement community in New Mexico who join forces after its newest occupant, widow Sam Cooper, played by Alfred Molina, spots a monstrous creature. Sam, a former engineer, quickly befriends charismatic neighbor Jack Willard, played by Bill Pullman; retired journalist Judy Daniels, played by Alfre Woodard; her husband Art Daniels, played by Clarke Peters; Renee Joyce, played by Geena Davis; and Dr. Wally Baker, played by Denis O’Hare.
Matt and Ross Duffer, creators of “Stranger Things,” are executive producers on the series.
“If you look at something like ‘Stranger Things,’” co-creator Jeffrey Addiss told USA TODAY beside co-creator Will Matthews, “when kids turn to somebody and say, ‘I saw a monster,’ nobody believes them. When an older person turns to somebody and says, ‘I saw a monster,’ nobody believes them. This is a coming-of-age story, just of a different age.”
“As Will and I get older, and our parents get older, and our grandparents get older,” Addiss continued, “what you wish for the people you love is adventure. And, also, the way that we’ve been showing aging characters on screen felt a little old to us.”
For the cast, that approach stood out.
“It’s fantastic that all of us get to be heroic,” Davis, 70, said. “That’s really unusual and great.”
She also said of her character, “She’s a badass. I would like to be like that in real life.”
Davis founded the Geena Davis Institute in 2004. A recent report from the nonprofit found that 83 percent of the men and women surveyed, ages 50 and older, felt on occasion that “the media/culture doesn’t realize how much they stereotype older people.”
“The biggest thing for me is you become invisible,” O’Hare, 64, said. “I was never a sexual object, so I didn’t lose that. But there is a sense of you’re not… a viable candidate for anything, literally being walked in front of or walked over. It can be challenging.”
Peters, 74, said older performers “become commodities. We no longer become actors. You fit the role because you’re a certain age and you look a certain way, so there you are, you’re Granddad. You’re somebody’s father, rather than the superheroes that we really are.”
Woodard, 73, agreed, saying people “see you walking around and I guess they think you’re supposed to be older. People always say to me, ‘God, you don’t look your age.’ It’s like, what does that mean anyway?”
In “The Boroughs,” she added, “we get to be the way mature people are in life. They’re not lying around. They’re active.”
Molina, 72, said the cast’s decades of experience created a rare bond on set.
“I’ve never known this kind of closeness amongst all of us before,” he said. “We’re all part of a generation that we’ve done some work, we’ve been around the block a few times. We’ve all enjoyed success. We’ve endured failures. We’ve endured all kinds of ups and downs in the business, and I think we’ve learned, over the years, not to sweat the small stuff.”
“And the fact that we can take comfort and strength and support from each other without feeling that we’re giving anything away or losing anything. Just the very fact of sitting together in between shots and just talking and chatting and sharing stories,” Molina added. “That’s what I call the ‘green room energy,’ it’s really, really important at work. Helen Mirren calls it the grease that keeps the wheels turning. Just that sense of camaraderie and common experience.”
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