But on the other side of New London’s spectrum, a high-ranking Alpha+ named Bernard Marx is having problems of his own. “There are emotions and complexities that we have that are not obtainable, they don’t even have words for them.”ĬJack60 might have one of the more extreme emotional journeys in Brave New World’s early episodes, as he goes from essentially having no emotions to being saddled with unfamiliar feelings after a tragedy. “I naturally want to react to something or feel shame, and they don’t feel shame in the same way,' Brown Findlay says of Lenina and her peers. Essentially, Lenina feels the tug of emotions that normal people - people like Brown Findlay - feel all the time. And yet, Lenina feels something’s missing - and no amount of Soma, a mood-leveling drug that all citizens pop like Tic Tacs, can fill this void she can’t quite define.

Embryos are designed and sorted, people happily work at their assigned station, and monogamy, money, religion, and other troublesome notions are outlawed. Brown Findlay plays Lenina Crowne, a “Beta+,” a somewhat high-ranking member of New London’s caste society. In real life that’s how I am,” Jessica Brown Findlay tells SYFY WIRE during Brave New World’s virtual press junket. It’s an insidious, subtle bit of control - it’s not that people aren’t allowed to feel dissent or have independent thoughts, but that they’re too blissed-out to even consider the possibility.ĭespite seeming perfect on the surface, the society of New London is no way to live, and for the actors tasked with playing characters who are only supposed to be thinking happy thoughts, it was a bit of a challenge to leave their own emotions behind.

However, Brave New World, a new, upcoming Peacock series based on the seminal dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley, offers a glimpse of a society where everybody has to be happy all of the time, whether they like it or not. It’s tempting (and understandable) to want to be happy all of the time.

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