Harold Perrineau: ‘If you don’t care about the people, it’s just shenanigans’

Harold Perrineau said that he brought some lessons from “Lost” to “From,” his new Epix horror series.

“The more grounded of human being I could bring [to the character], the more appealing it would be to audiences. That’s what we learned on ‘Lost.’ It can get fancy, flash- forward, sideways, and back. But, if you don’t care about these people, all that other stuff is just shenanigans. You really need to care about the people,” Perrineau, 58, told The Post. 

Premiering Sunday (Feb. 20) at 9 p.m., “From” is a horror series about a nightmarish town in middle America that traps everyone who unwittingly stumbles into its clutches. Residents try to live normal lives and find a way out and survive the night, since monstrous creatures emerge at sundown. The townspeople are led by local sheriff Boyd Stevens (Perrineau) who is estranged from his artist son Ellis (Corteon Moore). Meanwhile, a new family led by patriarch Jim Matthews (Eoin Bailey, “Once Upon a Time”), gets stranded and must adjust to the strange way of life in this town with help from Stevens.

“Boyd Stevens is a complex guy, and I like playing those characters,” said Perrineau. “He’s a guy who is of service – to his son and to the town. And he wants to make sure everyone is safe and taken care of. And however he gets there is how he gets there. Those choices are hard to make – and he’s willing to make them, no matter how it looks to the rest of the world.” 

Perrineau said he considers himself to be a character actor.

“I’m not a leading man. You have to have a certain look for that. I’ve got friends who look like Taye Diggs – and he can do any character he wants as well – but certainly I’m more of a shapeshifter, he said. “That’s really what makes me excited.”

Even though the characters in “From” are in a fantastical sci-fi situation, it wasn’t hard to get into the right mindset, he said. 

“I think the circumstances of ‘From’ are really no different than the times that we’ve been going through for the past couple of years [in the pandemic],” he said. “Many of us are just stuck in this nightmare that won’t seem to end, stuck in our homes, stuck with our people, trying to make sure they’re all safe and protected, coming up with new ways and ideas. So, it was really easy to draw from where we are right now. And from the creators, I didn’t need to know what happens in the show. I just needed to know — which the audience will find out — the essence of Boyd’s pain.”

In addition to “Lost,” Perrineau’s long resume includes “Sons of Anarchy,” “Oz” and “The Matrix.” But one of the roles he’s still frequently approached about is his scene-stealing turn as Mercutio in the 1996 movie “Romeo + Juliet.”

“First of all, Baz Luhrmann is just amazing. It’s it’s a project that lives [and] it stands the test of time,” he said. “And it’s pretty interesting; when it first came out, there were lots of young women who were like ‘Oh my God, you know Leonardo DiCaprio!’ But then, because teachers started to play it for their high school students — usually 10th grade — there’s a ton of new 10th graders every year who are like, ‘Hey! You’re Mercutio!’

“My kid is about to go into 10th grade soon, so there will be a whole new round of that.”