THE INSTITUTE – Season 1 Key Art | ©2025 MGM+
Season 1 of THE INSTITUTE, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, is currently airing Sunday nights on MGM Plus and thereafter available on the network’s on-demand and streaming platforms.
Joe Freeman stars as Luke Ellis, a genius-level teen who also has telekinetic abilities. Because of the latter, he is kidnapped by the Institute, which continuously gathers adolescents and children with telekinetic or telepathic abilities for mysterious purposes.
At the same time, former big-city police officer Tim Jamieson, played by Ben Barnes, takes a job with a small-town police department as a “night knocker” (someone who makes sure there’s no neighborhood mischief going on after dark). Traumatized by what it took to stop a mass shooter, Tim is emotionally shut down but finds himself curious about what’s going on at that odd facility just outside the city limits.
Barnes’s many previous credits include starring as Prince Caspian in the NARNIA movie franchise, the title role in the 2009 film DORIAN GRAY, one of the title roles in JACKIE & RYAN, series regular parts on SONS OF LIBERTY, WESTWORLD, THE PUNISHER, and GOLD DIGGER, and Brad Majors in a 2020 livestreamed production of ROCKY HORROR SHOW. Barnes has also appeared in a multitude of music videos.
Freeman previously appeared in an episode of the long-running British series DOCTORS, a show that coincidentally also provided Barnes with his first television job in 2006. THE INSTITUTE is Freeman’s first series lead.
After watching THE INSTITUTE, in which Barnes and Freeman both emply flawless American accents, it’s startling to hear their real English accents when they come together on Zoom to talk about the series.
Did either of them have issues with the U.S. accents?
Barnes gestures at Freeman. “This kid is a genius with accents. We would do stupid accents with each other all day, every day.”
Freeman happily confirms this. “Yeah.”
For himself, Barnes continues, “I worked for ten years solid, pretty much, in an American accent, so it’s definitely something that I feel comfortable in. But it can definitely help. The voice, or the accent, can always be a really good jumping-off point for a character for me.” He turns to Freeman and asks, “Do you start with a voice or a walk or a mindset or …?”
“I think it’s probably the voice over anything,” Freeman replies. “But yeah. I’ve obviously grown up watching a lot of American telly and listening to a lot of American people. So, it’s easier, I think, for Brits to do that, because the American media is way more mainstream than British, so it’s easier for us to …” He moves his hand by his ear, indicating a readiness to pick up on speech patterns.
Barnes adds, “I find there’s a music to it, even if I’m doing my own accent in something. There’s a music and a rhythm to how a character speaks. So, I think when you do have an accent, sometimes it’s a nice way to key into who that character is.”
Had either actor read King’s novel THE INSTITUTE prior to doing the series?
“I had not, no,” Freeman acknowledges. “I read it after I got the job.”
Barnes says he started reading it “before I got the job, after I’d read the first episode. And then I was in a real rush to try and finish it before I found out if they were going to ask me to play Tim or not, because I didn’t want it to get ruined. I’d definitely been in the position before where I’d started reading something, not got the job, and then felt so disappointed that I didn’t want to finish the story,” he laughs.
Was there anything they had to learn in order to play the characters?
“Yeah, I had to learn how to lift stuff with my mind,” Freeman deadpans, earning a laugh from Barnes. “It was difficult.” More seriously, Freeman continues, “No, I think it was just to acclimatize to such cold temperatures at night [on the Nova Scotia locations, standing in for King’s beloved Maine] and just to keep completely in the zone at all times when you’re on set. I think that was what I had to learn pretty quickly, that you cannot drop the ball for a second.”
Barnes says, “I’ve been very lucky that I’ve learned how to do a lot of different things in my career – horse-riding and sword-fighting and working with guns and all sorts. I remember, on THE PUNISHER, I got taught how to pick a set of handcuffs, and so I felt very, very good about the fact that, when I read that there was a scene [in THE INSTITUTE] where I pick these handcuffs, I was like, ‘That’s all right, I know how to do that already from a different show.’
“But yeah, I think there are always particular challenges. There’s a scene in this show where I have to bandage a wound using cling film [light plastic wrap] and diapers and cello tape [Scotch tape], and that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever physically had to try to negotiate doing,” Barnes laughs. “So, there’s always something new to learn.”
What do both of them think of THE INSTITUTE’s themes?
“I like them a lot,” Freeman declares. “This is what I usually watch, or read, this kind of thriller. Thrillers are great.”
“But also,” Barnes elaborates, “I think Stephen King’s always so thoughtful about the idea of expressing how the vulnerable stand up to authority, and talking about the traumas that they go through and, particularly with my character, a sort of stoicism of being a man and having this striving to be a force for good in the world and really feeling impotent as to how to go about doing that sometimes, the frustration of it. I think his themes always speak to truth and standing up for what’s right, and that’s what’s so interesting about all of his stories and why they’re so adaptable.”
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Article: Exclusive Interview with THE INSTITUTE actors Ben Barnes and Joe Freeman on the new Stephen King series
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