Eric McCormack loves anything to do with secrets — and it’s just as well, because his new show Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue is full of them.
The actor, 61, plays Kevin in the new MGM+ series which follows nine strangers who are stranded in a Mexican jungle after surviving a plane crash. But, in a plot twist: while they may have made it out alive following the initial air disaster, the survivors begin to be mysteriously killed off one by one while the others race to figure out why — and try to avoid the same fate.
Speaking to Us Weekly, McCormack confesses he loves the mystery and intrigue involved with the show and his character.
“The important thing about a show like this, but particularly the way that Anthony Horowitz wrote this one, is that everybody’s got a secret and we don’t get to see, we’re not privy to what it is,” he says of the show, which drops Sunday, March 2. “They’re all mysterious characters to us and to each other. And that’s what I loved. I love anything with secrets.”
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He adds: “With Kevin from the beginning, he’s clearly got something traumatic in his past that he can’t talk about. And he clearly is a doctor, but not really willing to carry that forward. So, why?”
While the show may be set in the Mexican jungle, Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue was actually filmed in the Canary Islands, an archipelago that is part of Spain. McCormack spills his own secrets about the reality of filming in the area.
“It’s a terrible secret to tell, but the truth is the island we shot on, there’s no jungle there. It’s volcanic. So it’s mostly a state-of-the-art studio,” McCormack shares with Us.
He adds, “It’s just that they created this incredible jungle for us to be in.”
Interestingly, the jungle the crew created for Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue was so realistic it quickly began forming its own ecosystem, according to McCormack.
“I mean, bugs are crawling on us, and I was yelling at props going, ‘Did you provide bugs?’” he recalls, before the realization dawned on him that it was doing it itself. “It started to feel more and more real.”
Still, the beautiful filming location itself was enough for McCormack to jump at the chance of signing on the dotted line.
“Before I read the script, it was like, it shoots in the Canary Islands and I said yes,” he admits to Us. “And that doesn’t give your agents much to negotiate with.”
As well as the stunning scenery to enjoy while at work, the international location also came with other perks for McCormack, including being able to bond with his fellow castmates, which includes David Ajala, Peter Gadiot and Siobhán McSweeney. Since they were all working away from their home cities, they ate dinner together almost every night and formed friendships right from the get-go.
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McCormack recalls that the cast shot the opening scene — which involves a dramatic plane crash — on day one, and it happened to be the day after the birthday of cast member Lydia Wilson.
“I think there were two hours into drinks [the night before filming kicked off] and she said, well, this is the loveliest way to spend my 40th birthday,” McCormack says. “We went, ‘What? Today?’ She said, ‘Yes, yes, today, but don’t make a thing. So we had to blow that out a little bit and had a bit of a birthday party, and then the next day we had all day long to scream and hold onto seats and it was a trial by fire.”
The dramatic plane crash wasn’t the only tough part when it came to filming Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, though. McCormack says filming the show also came with some other challenges.
“There’s a scene that was actually quite real where one of the characters falls off of the side of a mountain, and I’m trying to hold on to her,” he says of one of his trickiest scenes to shoot. “And that was a hundred degree heat and then a lot of shots. That was probably the most challenging.”
Aside from the physically hard scenes, McCormack teases there is an emotional scene that involves his character Kevin and learning more about what his “deal” is that was also a tough one to shoot.
McCormack adds that filming remotely on an island made portraying their “stranded” on-screen characters a little more realistic, however.
“When you are all trapped in a space, a lot of the acting takes care of itself somewhere,” he says.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
