Breaking bad and hannibal stars headline the path

Premiering March 30th, Hulu's The Path (formerly The Way) stars Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul, True Detective's Michelle Monaghan, and Hannibal's Hugh Dancy. From executive producer of Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, Jason Katims, and executive producer Jessica Goldberg, The Path examines a family at the center of a controversial faith based movement, struggling with relationships, marriage, and power.

The cast and creators of The Path all appareled at the TCA Winter Press Tour to discuss the series with the TV critics in attendance. Dancy even took the time to compare his Path character, the controversial Cal Roberts, to Hannibal's Will Graham. "I think on the surface, he’s having an easier time of it than Will," Dancy smiled.

Speaking about taking on psychologically intense roles like Cal and Will, and the exhaustion it might cause, Dancy added "Look, I love what I do. And in both cases, I have loved the people, the environment that I found myself in, and the people I’m working with. Every day, I go home feeling great. And if it was a tough, strange, dark, messed-up scene, all the better, you know, because I got to do it with these guys. And the same is true with Hannibal. I think it’s true that this is probably just the nature of TV, that if you’re in that same universe, two, three years, whatever it might be, that that has its own effect. But I suspect that would be true for a comedy too. You’d have to come to terms with that."

Paul then shared how it was that he came to the series. "I wasn’t really looking to jump back into TV this quickly, but my reps called and said, 'You must read these first two episodes.' And I read them, and I just could not ignore the material. It was just so gripping, just so beautifully written and well done."



"I find religion sort of fascinating," Paul continued. "There’s an endless amount of religions out there, and everyone, as humans are just desperately trying to find their answers. And my father was a very intense Southern Baptist minister. I had to read the Bible multiple times, so I know the Scripture. So I am definitely drawn to that sort of story. When I read this, I was just blown away. My character is having some sort of doubt in the pilot episode, you come to realize. And so he’s really searching for his questions to be answered, trying to find the truth in them."

So are the people on The Path involved in a cult? Well, Dancy had some interesting things to say about that. "I think Stephen Colbert said, 'If you’re wondering if you are in a cult, you are in a cult'," he stated. "But these guys, they are not having that thought. They’re just trying to improve their lives, strive for something, heal themselves, heal people. There is something beautiful about that, and that’s one of the two sides.

Michelle Monaghan then added "I think as an actor, one of the things that I felt appealing about this was really the exploration of religion and how it saves people. And how far people are willing to go, or what they do, in the name of religion. And I think that’s what the show brilliantly does, is really just explore the positive aspects, and then sometimes your convictions can take you down a rabbit hole of some darker things, and I think that’s what I thought was really interesting, personally and professionally, because we’ve all witnessed that, what people do in the name of religion. And so I was excited to get to tap into that."