Ron Perlman returns to The Capture for its latest season, stepping into a story that feels increasingly close to reality as artificial intelligence and deepfake technology reshape how we understand truth. As Frank Napier, Perlman brings a controlled intensity to a world where institutions struggle to keep pace with the technologies they have created.

In an interview with Nexus Point News, Ron Perlman discussed the dangers of AI, the process of building Frank as a character, and the growing questions around recreating actors’ performances without their consent.

The show explores institutions losing control over the technologies they created. What was the theme that resonated with you most as someone representing an institute in the show, trying to use that kind of technology?

Ron Perlman: Well, I thank God for the guys who have devoted themselves to keeping the world somewhat safe, because once you begin to immerse yourself into this world of the kinds of dangers that are out there and what it takes to have the upper hand when you think you’ve developed something that gives you the upper hand, your enemies take it one step further and do it better than you. And then you’ve got to do it, and it’s this constant inability to almost catch your breath in something as guaranteed as letting your kids walk to school without being blown up. That’s what we’re up against, and we’ve got to get it right every single time. A failure is disastrous… Thousands and thousands of people lose their lives, and everybody loses their equilibrium, and everybody loses their innocence. Everybody loses, loses, loses… And this is what the terrorists have in mind. That’s why it’s called terror.

Your character Frank has a more controlled presence, even in the most chaotic situations. How much of that comes from the script versus your own decisions?

Ron Perlman: The script is the map. It’s the roadmap first and foremost. The script is the exercise. There’s nothing beyond that. I’m here to make sure that I’m able to add humanity and make it look like it’s actually existing in the world. That’s my job. After that, you have to unlock your tool chest and figure out who this human is, this made-up human called Frank Napier: Who is he? And if he did exist in real time, what does he walk like? What does he eat for breakfast? What concerns him? What rattles him and what he has to do to stay unrattled… All of those things are decisions that go into the playing of the character.

Do you think that the audiences now watch The Capture differently because of how this technology has become part of daily conversations and something everyone can do now — creating fake videos online?

Ron Perlman: When we began making The Capture season one, I think 2019 or even earlier than that, and all of these things that Ben Shannon was grappling with in writing the scripts were just ideas that hadn’t been executed yet. Over the course of time, we’ve not only seen everything that’s in The Capture come to pass in reality, but technology has gone way, way beyond it. The amount of what you’re able to do with artificial intelligence in terms of completely creating a reality and making you think it’s reality when it’s not anything close to reality is scary and fucked up, and it’s another thing that chips away at our faith, that there’s some sort of order out there when you have no faith in your faith. We’re in trouble, and I don’t remember what your question was…

No, that answered it perfectly, thank you. And Frank dies relatively early in the season, but he is brought back via the deep fake technology. As an actor, did that storyline resonate differently with the current debates around AI recreating performance without consent?

Ron Perlman: Yeah. It’s gotta be essential that it becomes one of the foremost topics of conversation we have as a society: What can we do to regulate the world—the population—from a world that has all of these abilities to make you completely lose all of your confidence in absolutely everything and question, is this real or is this bullshit? And that’s gonna be the question. Whoever solves that, whoever begins to address that question in a way that even starts to solve it is, to me, the next Nobel Prize winner.

The Capture is now streaming on Peacock.