‘Project Blue Book’ Cast Dish About HISTORY’S Upcoming True UFO Drama [EUR Exclusive]

*Executive produced by Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Robert Zemeckis, HISTORY’s “Project Blue Book” chronicles the true, top-secret, United States Air Force-sponsored investigations into UFO-related phenomena in the 1950s and ’60s.

The series follows Dr. Allen Hynek (Aidan Gillen, “Game of Thrones”), a brilliant college professor recruited by the U.S. Air Force to spearhead the clandestine operations that research thousands of cases, many of which were never solved. Each episode will draw from the actual files using authentic historical events from one of the most mysterious eras in United States history.

“All of our plotlines, our stories, are based on actual reports,” said Gillen during the HISTORY channel panel at Summer TCA in Beverly Hills last month. “And it’s very convenient to say it but truth is stranger than fiction — or can nearly always be stranger than fiction. So having these stories based on real events and real reports, they take these twists and turns that you couldn’t — you just wouldn’t make up because the randomness of the way the tapestry of life works, you just can’t predict it,” he explained.

“So it’s kind of a very interesting angle to be coming from in what’s seen as a kind of a popular entertainment sci-fi genre, to be saying well, yeah, but this stuff happened. Or at least these people very convincingly told us what happened to them. And there are seven of them.”

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Wait…so does this mean the @foofighters are actually aliens? #ProjectBlueBook https://t.co/zfYWoWw5Ii

— PROJECT BLUE BOOK (@HistoryBlueBook) August 16, 2018

Co-starring with Gillen on the series are Michael Malarkey as Captain Michael Quinn, Laura Mennell as Mimi Hynek and Neal McDonough as General James Harding.

“It’s quite an eclectic variety of things that we explore. It’s not just lights on the sky. It’s also about the character stuff,” said Malarkey, as Gillen noted that the series is “a character drama.”

The pilot episode certainly leaves you intrigued by these two men and their personal views on UFO’s and how they’ll clash over the season. When EURweb.com reporter Ny MaGee asked Gillen and Malarkey to describe their dynamic and the challenges they’ll face together this season, they explained how their characters are “kind of on the same page but just from different disciplines.”

“These are two guys who are from different backgrounds who are not exactly at odds with each other, they’re kind of on the same page in some ways but just from different disciplines, if you like. And hopefully we’ll see a growth in that relationship and in the way that they can help each other and work with each other to fulfill their goals,” said Gillen.

“That’s also maybe gonna put them at odds with their employers. It does go to an interesting place. And just speaking from myself and in relation to my own character, ’cause Hynek is a real person and Michael’s character is based on a real person, or an amalgamation of real persons. There was an arc and Hynek did go from being a skeptic to being the man who founded the Center for UFO Studies so it’s, again, truth being stranger than fiction. My arc, or our arcs are somewhat pre-ordained but we’re just gonna try and make them interesting and it doesn’t all just happen at once,” he added.

“So basically how it starts off in a way, we recruit J. Allen Hynek to work alongside me investigating these cases and my whole thing has been to get in there, orders from above, close the cases, move on,” Malarkey explained. “There’s way too many of ’em for me to be dilly-dallying and wondering what actually happened. If there’s something that I can see that is plausible, that’s the ticket. Whereas, he comes in and wants to discover the truth, what actually happened. So he’ll want to linger a bit more and want to discover what’s happened. And that’s the crux of our initial confrontation.”

Things start to get real “interesting when we start experiencing these things together and I start actually questioning my orders above,” he added. “And when you’re in the Air Force or in the Army, as you all know, you don’t question those things. You don’t question your orders. You just get in there, you do it, and get out. And my character has given his life to the Air Force. And I think when he starts to see these things and being told to shut up, after a while it starts to weigh on him. So they start working together a bit more.”

So, have either of these actors ever experienced any strange or unusual phenomena? Ever seen something weird but intriguing in the sky?

“I certainly have,” shared Gillen. “I mean, it could have been just a helicopter, but I don’t think it was. Look, I’m of the age where one of the first films I saw in the cinema was “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” which, apart from making me very interested in this subject, instilled a love of cinema. And after, I’d seen that three or four times in the cinema or whatever, I was watching the sky constantly,” he said.

“And getting ultimately to play Hynek, whose books inspired Spielberg to make that film in the first place, was a kind of (full) circle. But, yeah, I did see some stuff. You didn’t know what to do about it ’cause like a lot of these potential people who report these things, they’re afraid of being ridiculed. Me and my friends phoned up the newspaper and said, “Did anyone else report seeing this?” and they say no, so we just left it.”

Malarkey agrees that “a lot of people do leave it and are encouraged to, and partially because of what “Project Blue Book” instigated is it couldn’t possibly exist. I’ve always, ever since doing this show, I’ve literally sat outside going “Come on, I’m ready!”

Co-star Neal McDonough chimed in with:”But I think that’s the great thing about a show like this. To have it on the History Channel, to be able to do an “X-Files” type of show that’s about real things that happen — whether you believe in them or not — and for me being a devout Christian everything from me always comes from the Bible,” he said.

“And this show really made me think, wait a second, what if there was another plan? What if there are other things out there? I look at the sky now with my kids and my wife and I think differently after doing a show like this. And it’s not just because the show — it’s a great looking show, it’s the ’50s, it’s got all the eye candy, it’s got the wardrobe, it’s got the sets, it’s got the cars, it looks great. But the amazing thing about what History has done with Robert Zemeckis is they put together this show that makes us think. And to have a show like that give us pause and think what else is out there, is there other things, are there other things? I love that about this show, and I think that’s what the audience is really gonna gravitate towards, is the what-ifs of life.”

The ten-episode first season of “Project Blue Book” will premiere this winter.