For David Dastmalchian (Life of Chuck, Late Night with the Devil), filming Apple TV+'s sci-fi series Murderbot was "an incredibly emotional experience."
Dastmalchian plays Dr. Gurathin, an augmented human and a member of the PresAux survey group. Unlike the rest of the very loving, very open group, Gurathin is more cagey, as well as immediately distrustful of security android Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård). As the show reveals, Gurathin's lack of trust and more loner status stems from his mistreatment at the hands of Murderbot's nefarious Company, who coerced him into substance addiction during his time working for them.
"Gurathin is, similar to me, a person who has struggled and wrestled with both addiction, as well as a compulsive disorder in which control is an addiction all in its own," Dastmalchian told Mashable in an interview for an upcoming episode of Mashable's Say More. "So Gurathin is a person who maintains his own security and safety by keeping the people he loves very close and trying to control the things around him as much as he possibly can."
That control manifests itself especially in Season 1's first few episodes, which sees Gurathin prodding at Murderbot and trying to figure out what is "off" about it. However, by the season's end, Gurathin has grown to love Murderbot just as much as his PresAux compatriots, so much so that when he finds out the Company has wiped Murderbot's memories, he finds a workaround to download them all himself, then pass them back onto Murderbot.
From there, PresAux head Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) buys out Murderbot's contract, hoping to bring it back to the utopic Preservation Alliance, where it will have free will. However, Murderbot decides it wants to make its own decisions, and it jets off into space by itself.
The last person it sees before it heads out is Gurathin, who tells Murderbot he's ready to show it around Preservation, and that he understands, to a certain extent, what that transition might entail, as someone tied to the Company now being given free agency.
However, Murderbot interrupts, eyes watering. "I need to check the perimeter," it says.
It's a phrase ripped right from Murderbot's role as a SecUnit, but it hides a deeper meaning: Murderbot needs to strike out on its own.
Gurathin understands, echoing the words back: "You need to check the perimeter."
It's a quiet yet heart-wrenching scene, as well as the culmination of Gurathin and Murderbot's journey from adversaries to beings who finally understand one another. According to Dastmalchian, the scene also spoke to his relationship with the Murderbot cast and crew, including Skarsgård.
"The family that I'd grown to love in making the show, including my castmates and the creators and all the crew, we were very close," Dastmalchian said. "And it was odd, in a way, that makes you feel both that there is a beautiful, golden thread that connects the universe and also can make you feel a little crazy sometimes, when you're like, 'Wow, these words are more personally significant than I could have ever imagined.'"
He continued: "When we reach that moment where [Gurathin] is saying... 'I just broke through a level of understanding about you, and now I have to let you go,' it's hard. It's a part of the human experience that many of us experience, either through death or through the end of things. Relationships end. Sometimes people have to go away, sometimes for themselves, and that kind of acceptance hit me in the moment, while I'm performing as a fictional character in a TV series based on a book series. I was sitting there doing the scene with Alex, and he's such a phenomenal actor, and he's so, so present, even when portraying a construct, it was very emotional."
As emotional as the scene is, both for viewers and the actors performing it, it is thankfully not the end of the road for Murderbot and Gurathin. On July 10, Apple TV+ announced that Murderbot has been renewed for a second season. While Gurathin doesn't show up in the second installment of Martha Wells's The Murderbot Diaries, he does return further down the line, meaning there could be a reunion between Murderbot, Gurathin, and all of PresAux in the future.
