On the Apple TV+ series Foundation, Lee Pace contains multitudes, literally.
Over three epic seasons, the actor has starred in the sci-fi series as a sequence of powerful, frequently shirtless emperors that rule the galactic empire. Pace plays a different cloned version of the emperor, Cleon, every season—the kind of juicy challenge actors dream about.
But playing all those Cleons isn’t just a thespic test, it’s a physical challenge, too. Committed actor that he is, Pace elected to build a different body for every one of those Cleons. “The first season, we were just thinking, let’s build a real emperor’s body for this guy,” he says. “And the second season, we wanted him to be lean and mean. And then this third season, we wanted to push a lot of weight, but we also wanted to eat a lot.”
Of course, that versatility isn’t surprising to anyone who’s followed Pace’s career over the years. From the recently-rediscovered arthouse gem The Fall to the big-budget superhero movie Guardians of the Galaxy, from the beloved cult TV series Pushing Daisies to the blockbuster The Hobbit series, we’ve seen Pace do practically every kind of genre, from theater to film to TV and back again.
We recently caught up with the actor to talk about the third season of Foundation, how he gets in shape to play the different Cleons, the importance of taking naps, and the sluttiest thing a man can wear.
GQ: In interviews you did around season one of the show, you were talking about how you got in shape to play Cleon by doing yoga for two hours every day during quarantine.
Lee Pace: I mean, we had so much time during quarantine. The show was put on hiatus, so I got to really get into my yoga practice—which I have completely let lapse, but I would do the same. I did yoga. I found [an instructor on an app named] Joanna, and she led me through the same exact two-hour yoga class every single day, and it was great. Such a great practice. Very relaxing, really good.
After the COVID era, has your preparation changed?
Well, every season I play a different character, and it’s very important to me to create physicality for the characters, to help tell that story, even though the idea is that they’re the same man cloned again and again.
I guess it’s important for me and my own sanity to know that none of us can actually be the same, that clones are impossible, that we are intrinsically individuals and unique from each other. So it’s important to me to make a very different body for these characters every season.
So in the first season, he was the strong emperor of the galaxy, eager to execute people. And in the second season, I guess I just went wild with this idea of his ego, that he actually believed he was the most important person in the galaxy. And to do it, I worked very hard with Ian Benson, who has been my trainer since season one.
