Resurrection: ABC drama examines what happens when “Just one more day” comes true

Resurrection premieres Sunday, March 9 on ABC.

resurrection abc cast

We’ve all said it when grieving the loss of a loved one: “Just one more day.”

Just a day, a few more hours to … well, the rest is likely as unique as the person making the plea. But few of us have ever considered what we might do if that day actually arrived and our dead returned — not as zombies or specters or visions, but just as they were on the day they left us.

For Lucille and Henry Langston (Frances Fisher and Kurtwood Smith), the retirement-age couple at the heart of ABC’s intriguing new drama series Resurrection, that day arrives in the form of immigration agent J. Martin Bellamy (Omar Epps), who appears at their Missouri home with a little boy claiming to be their son, Jacob (Landon Gimenez). The same Jacob who drowned decades earlier and has seemingly reanimated half a world away, fully cognizant of his home, his parents … and the real circumstances of his death.

Though Henry struggles to accept the apparent miracle, Lucille fiercely and joyfully throws herself back into motherhood, even as the mystery surrounding Jacob’s “resurrection” deepens, sweeping Bellamy, the Langstons’ own family and their entire tiny town into what promises to be a moving examination of grief and faith and what it means to be alive.

“It hit me on a visceral level,” says Fisher, mother to 20-year-old Francesca with her former partner Clint Eastwood, of her first reaction to the tale, loosely based on Jason Mott’s recent bestseller The Returned. “I immediately put myself in the position of this woman who got to reunite with her son after 32 years and believes it and knows that it’s a miracle. Because it’s what I believe. I do believe in miracles. I do believe anything is possible.”

Fisher, whose four-decade career spans powerful turns on the stage, screen and television, says that, to play the hopeful Lucille, she drew on the conflicting emotions she experienced as Francesca grew up. “I thought, ‘Of course I can play this role — all I have to think about is my own daughter and how I wish she would be 8 years old again so I could play with her the way I used to!’” Fisher recalls. “That would bring me to tears. The loss of childhood. It’s all so precious!”

Resurrection ABC LANDON GIMENEZ, FRANCES FISHER

To that end, Fisher says she relished her time on and off the set with the 10-year-old Gimenez — though it came with a price of its own. “He had a cuss jar — he said, ‘Whenever anybody cusses, they have to put five dollars in this jar!’” she laughs. “I said, ‘I will fund his education all by myself. He’s got college sewn up!’”

Fisher says Resurrection’s complex subject matter forced her to delve deeply not only into her character’s understanding of life and death and the afterlife, but also her own. “Lucille goes to some places that I wasn’t expecting and I had to confront some painful possibilities,” she says. “It was so deep in me that I didn’t even want to do the scenes. And when I went to the director, I realized that I didn’t want to go there because it was going to shatter the entire belief system I had created.”

But, she says, Resurrection’s real gift to its audience is hope.

“Every single human being who will watch this show has lost someone,” Fisher explains. “Hopefully they will be able to invest their own memories of their loved ones, channel that through these characters and begin to heal.”

Resurrection premieres Sunday, March 9 on ABC.

Photos: ©2013 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Credit: Bob D’Amico

 

4 Comments

  1. I love resurrection, please tell me it will be renewed! When is it scheduled to show with new episodes on ABC?

  2. I saw the pilot before I interviewed Frances, and I liked it very much. I was a a big fan of the French series called The Returned, which aired on Sundance in the fall and was kinda, sorta the same theme, although it played out much differently. I’m interested to see where this goes.

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About Lori Acken 1195 Articles
Lori just hasn't been the same since "thirtysomething" and "Northern Exposure" went off the air.