We interview Raised by Wolves stars Amanda Collin and Abubakar Salim about their characters, Mother and Father, and the show's themes.
Raised by Wolves, airing now on HBO Max, tackles the tale of two androids struggling to raise human children on a new planet after the destruction of the original Earth. Dubbed merely Mother and Father, they battle against a barren wasteland as well as a bubbling cauldron of religious differences – all while they themselves learn what it means to be almost human.
Amanda Collin and Abubakar Salim play the pair of Android partners, and the duo spoke with Screen Rant about the motivations behind their characters and the themes that tug at their hearts.
This show is fantastic. It's crazy what they can do with something like this that's not in a cinema. But as for you, who are Mother and Father?
Amanda Collin: Start with Mother, obviously.
Abubakar Salim: Of course, of course.
Amanda Collin: She is an Android programmed to raise human children on Kepler-22b. And with that comes a need to fulfill her mission; to succeed with her mission. But there also comes a time when your kids grow up, and maybe they want or need to have a human experience; maybe a bit of jealousy of the human experience. I think it's been such a joy to dive into the world of Mother, and I'm so privileged that I'm the one giving life to this psycho Android.
Abubakar Salim: And Father's just the hype man. Generally, I'm just there to be like, "Go, Mother, go! You've got this." Father's, again, an Android tasked with the same mission of raising children in this distant planet; to protect them and start humanity again with Mother.
I think it goes on this crazy journey; the fact that it's not as simple as that to just start humanity again. And that's something that both Mother and Father learn the hard way through being a parent. That's what Mother and Father are; they are almost like the representatives of what it means to be human, or learn to be parents for the first time.
Amanda Collin: While they're growing up themselves. Because evolution-wise, they're only teenagers in their journey.
Is Father's humor a mechanism for him to feel more human than machine?
Abubakar Salim: You know what, I think it's more of - I mean, look, dads who do dad jokes do it in the most awkward moments; awkward spaces. It's designed to be awkward and to relieve tension. I think it's not really to feel more human, it's to do exactly that - it's to relieve tension. I mean, if you look closely in the moments of when those jokes come in, it's the most ridiculous times. Mother's just massacred a ship and brought new children in, and he offers to give a joke as a way of kind of easing the tension. It's like, who wants to hear a joke then? I think that's what it is.
Amanda, can you talk to me about the show's commentary on nature versus nurture, but also motherhood?
Amanda Collin: I think, first of all, to be able to portray the mother of new humanity in a skintight suit that doesn't have a gender and no hair - there's so little feminine energy about my look. Which I loved, because then you're able to just emerge that energy or whatever, and I think that's a beautiful point.
Abu and I, we're a partnership; it doesn't matter what we look like, if we're siblings, if we're partners or whatever we are - this just has to work. And there's a respect of each other's fields, sort of, what we're good at and then the other kind of supplements [it]. I love that way of portraying a family, because so many people can reflect themselves in that family, no matter what kind of family you are. I think that's a that's one of my favorite things about the show.
Raised by Wolves is now streaming on HBO Max.
