The legendary 'Jurassic Park' actor stars as Stan Delaney in the Peacock adaptation of Liane Moriarty's best-selling novel.
Sam Neill is grateful to have a second chance at life and the opportunity to take on new roles after a vicious cancer battle.
Sitting down with ET's Hope Sloop to talk about his new Peacock show, Apples Never Fall, the 76-year-old Jurassic Park alum said that after fighting stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, he has found that not only is he lucky to be alive, but that his acting continues to get better over time.
"Listen, I have been in remission for two years now and I feel great," he told ET, adding that he has been reinvigorated by a second wind as his cancer remains at bay. "I only get better with age."
In October, Neill told Australia Today that he is not remotely afraid of death after doctors told him that the anti-cancer drug he is on will at some point stop working. At the time, he shared that he was more terrified of the idea of retiring, a prerogative he told ET he still has now -- especially after being given a second chance that has added a new level of pep in his step.
That boost in energy, he explained to ET, allows him to take on "bouncy" parts like the one of Stan Delaney in the Peacock series. Stan is a secretive and possibly deceitful husband and father who begins to turn heads after his wife -- played by the incomparable Annette Bening -- goes missing. Apples Never Fall is adapted from Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers writer Liane Moriarty's homonymous best-selling novel.
The role -- and the show in general -- is heavily centered around the fictional Delaney family's commitment to tennis as both Bening, 65, and Neill play former tennis pros who raised four great athletes who had the skill (but not the drive or desire) to follow in their parents' footsteps. Throughout the show, audience members watch as Stan falls under suspicion from his friends, community members and even his four adult children.
While Neill said that he found the role exciting to play, the native New Zealander added that he could not be further from his character in real life. Neill found Stan -- a gruff "alpha male" type -- to be a complicated character and a challenge as an actor.
"Well, he [Stan] is an alpha male, which is typically the type of person I try to avoid in the world," Neill noted, adding that if he could have his way, women would "be in charge of everything."
Despite being a wholly different person than his Apples Never Fall character, the actor said that it was their wide variety of differences that led him to the job in the first place, as he considered it to be "more challenging and more fun."
"In a way, I respect Stan Delaney," he said. "Stan has a depth to him that I appreciate."
For her part, Bening told ET in February that she found her own character, Joy Delaney, to be written with a certain "deliciousness" that is not too often seen on television and in film. While Joy is missing in the present-day portion of the storyline, the show jumps back and forth between the past and the present to let viewers in on the inciting incidents that led to the devoted wife, mother and community staple vanishing without a trace.
"There's a kind of deliciousness in her writing," the actress said. "It's very entertaining the way that she [Moriarty] approaches characters and plot. She makes the stakes very high. She has a way of doing that. So, she's also on the knife edge of something very painful, mysterious, dark, and something hysterically funny. And that's good writing. And sometimes, you know, as you just play the truth of the moment and some people find it funny, some people find it tragic and sometimes it's kind of both."
Filling out the cast is The White Lotus' Jake Lacy, Community's Alison Brie, Conor Merrigan-Turner, Essie Randles, Georgia Flood, Jeanine Serralles and Dylan Thuraisingham.
Watch the trailer for Apples Never Fall in the player below:
Apples Never Fall premieres on Peacock on March 14.
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