Why Josh Hartnett couldn’t resist Newfoundland and Netflix’s Below

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In the film, now playing in theatres, Hartnett plays Jeremy Crawford, the husband of a best-selling thriller author (Hathaway), who hires a young writer (Johnson) to finish his wife’s last book after she suffers an accident.

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“I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate to be able to live kind of the most diverse and fun life, and able to have a career in this business, where I am able to play lots of different types of characters and work with people of the calibre that I’m working with,” Hartnett said.

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“I didn’t know what to expect when I first got into this, because I never really intended to be an actor full-time. But I will say that it’s kind of worked out well beyond my wildest dreams,” he said.

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Nowadays, success has come to mean something different to him. It’s not about magazine covers or box office; it’s about challenging himself.

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“Success means being able to approach different projects with an openness and have the knowledge that it will be released in a good way,” he said.

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In Below, Josh Hartnett plays Newfoundland fisherman Calvin Penney, who fights to save his family and his community from a mysterious sea creature. Netflix

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Hartnett, who is no stranger to horror-themed projects, said that aside from the Newfoundland setting, he was drawn to the Netflix series because he didn’t know where Calvin’s story was going.

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“You don’t know what’s going to happen. It obviously has mystery elements to it. It’s a family drama in its own way. It exists in a place you probably don’t know much about. And there’s something going on that involves legend. But everything that you think you know from the first two episodes, you don’t,” he said. “It’s going to surprise you … That’s the kind of show I want to see.”

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Before landing in Newfoundland, Hartnett said he only knew “bullet points” about the province.

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“Like how early on, transatlantic flights would stop there to refuel,” he said. “And when the Titanic sank, rescue ships were sent from there. People got stuck there on 9/11. That’s pretty much everything I knew. It was these little weird, historical bullet points, but I didn’t know about the culture.”

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When he arrived, Hartnett took part in a “Screech-In” ceremony, in which locals welcomed him by having him kiss a cod and take a shot of Newfoundland rum.

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“Everybody got screeched in,” he said, laughing. “What I love about being there is that everybody seems to be somehow involved in the arts.

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Everybody has, like, five jobs, but, like, one of their jobs is usually acting or reading poetry or something like that. And I love that. I just think that’s such a cool atmosphere to grow up in.”

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In addition to filming in St. John’s, Below employed more than 1,000 people and shot in Petty Harbour, Brigus, and Pouch Cove.

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The production generated more than $90 million in economic activity for the Canadian economy.

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“I did feel like the people there, the community was so welcoming to us, and they really wanted us to perform it well and make sure we represented the culture of the place, correctly. So we were spoiled for choice on what to do with our characters,” he said. “It was a really nice experience.”

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