australian television information archive

Shazad Latif as Nemo

Nemo is an enigma. He is mercurial, with a deep vulnerability, but when we meet him, he’s driven, dismissive and secretive. We soon discover that what’s fuelling him is revenge, but also that deep down what he’s looking for is peace.

He has been torn between cultures — leaving his native India to be educated within the British boarding school system, Prince Dakkar, as Nemo was then known, became a renegade, a determined man with a vision. His family suffered terribly at the hands of the East India Mercantile Company, the destruction of which becomes his obsession.

Georgia Flood as Humility Lucas

An addition to Verne’s original story, Humility Lucas is the privileged daughter of the British empire who is taken hostage aboard the Nautilus. Humility, as the series opens, demonstrates very little of her namesake. Bullishly self-assured, she can’t imagine she could ever be wrong. She is, though, compassionate and intelligent. Humility’s father, who she loved deeply, was an engineer. She fled England to study engineering in Paris by passing as a man, before being discovered by her mother and ‘sold’ into marriage. She’s a ground-breaking feminist, ahead of her time, who initially is desperate to escape the Nautilus, but ends up not wanting to leave.

Thierry Frémont as Gustave Benoit

Benoit, a French engineer, is the architect of the Nautilus, who has worked with Nemo to create the best possible vessel.

The character was conceived by James Dormer, in some ways as a proxy for Jules Verne. He’s a dreamer, whose ultimate goal is to find the utopian society of Atlantis, where there is no war, and harmony with nature.

Benoit struggled for years to convince financiers to fund construction of the Nautilus, the most advanced exploratory vessel the world will have seen. The East India Mercantile Company was the only taker. When Benoit finally realises the Company never intended the Nautilus to be focused on exploration, but for acquiring territory and wealth, he must come to terms with reality, while not letting go of his dream.

Céline Menville as Loti Clement

Loti has been employed by Humility’s mother, Jacqueline, to ensure that her daughter is securely delivered to her fiance, Lord Pitt, in Bombay.

Loti describes herself as the ‘devil in a dress’, and it was this edge and complexity which drew French actress Céline Menville to her.

Pacharo Mzembe as Boniface

A trader from Zanzibar, Boniface has an earnest charm. A member of Nemo’s original escape crew, he’s a logical thinker and Nemo’s right hand as First Mate of the Nautilus. Boniface’s

brother was taken by slavers, and his unceasing determination to recover him led to his imprisonment by the Company. Boniface’s loyalty to his captain’s plans is tested when he believes Nemo is putting the crew at risk.

Arlo Green as Turan

An idealistic poet, Turan is a would-be Casanova. When Turan fell in love with Mrs. Foxley- Pope, the wife of the Company’s resident in Baghdad, he was banished to Kalpani. His belief in love and beauty will be tested, and reinforced, over the course of the journey.

Tyrone Ngatai as Kai

A giant of a man, with a gentle heart, Kai is a Māori warrior who’s also very handy at cooking and has a great belief in destiny, which will be tested more than once. A warrior of the Ngai

Tahu nation, Kai killed a Company official who thought he owned him. He develops a romantic attachment to Loti, and is determined to be the man who finally lives up to her expectations.

Ling Cooper Tang as Suyin

A farmer from Kowloon, Suyin, a widow, was separated from her five sons by the East India Mercantile Company. She is determined to be reunited with them, or to be sure of their fate. Suyin should not be underestimated — she’s a fighter, and harbours an adventurer’s heart.

Andrew Shaw as Jiacomo

A man of mysterious origins who speaks a language no one can understand, Jiacomo — as the crew call him — does not recall anything before he arrived at Kalpani. Despite his slim handle on reality, Jiacomo is a reliably loyal and brave member of the crew, who at the end of their journey will finally discover who he is.

Chum Ehelepola as Jagadish Gosh

A would-be social reformer and rabble-rouser. Jagadish is a Bengali intellectual, a verbose but cowardly lion and a proto-Marxist, constantly espousing revolution against the overlords. When he’s taken hostage later in the series, Jagadish’s chance to actually become heroic will emerge.

Ashan Kumar as Ranbir

A young North Indian fisherman, Ranbir knows a lot about the waters and the creatures in them. Ranbir was abducted by the Company in the dead of night from his village — the fate of his family and friends unknown to him. He’s an impressionable dreamer, who develops a firm friendship with Jagadish.

Kayden Price as Blaster

A 12-year-old boy, with the real name of Nathaniel Tull, Blaster is a powder boy on The Ceylon, who is transferred with Humility and Loti to the Nautilus. Blaster, who ran away from a Caribbean island, yearns to find his secret aristocratic father, but comes to find family in the motley crew around him.

Benedict Hardie as Edward Cuff

A Company soldier, Cuff is an accidental stowaway, knocked unconscious in the melee as the Nautilus is taken from Kalpani. Unlike the Company higher ups, Cuff is from poor circumstances. As an outsider, he has more in common with the Nautilus crew, who he tentatively becomes part of. But can Cuff be trusted?

Damien Garvey as Director Crawley

A deeply evil human being, Crawley must retrieve the Nautilus, which he was entrusted to deliver from Kalpani to Bombay. Possessing neither empathy nor honour, Crawley will stop at nothing to capture the precious submarine, and punish those who ridiculed him in taking it.

Luke Arnold as Captain Billy Millais

An elusive figure, Millais is Nemo’s nemesis. He seems to know Nemo intimately, and is determined to bring him down. As we come to understand how the two are connected, it’s clear that like Nemo, Millais is a man driven by revenge, whatever the collateral damage may be.

Cameron Cuffe as Lord Algernon Pitt

The single largest shareholder of East India Mercantile Company stock, Pitt has agreed to a price with Humility’s mother, in exchange for her daughter’s hand in marriage. He joins the

Dreadnought in pursuit of his betrothed, but his inability to not act like the spoiled fool he is keeps the crew disdainful of him.

Jacob Collins-Levy as Captain Zacahriya Youngblood

The one decent man on the Dreadnought is Youngblood, who will not be bullied by Crawley nor by Pitt. Captaining The Ceylon, the ship that was to bring Humility to Bombay, Youngblood spent enough time in the young lady’s company to become entranced by her.

Richard E. Grant as The Rajah of Karajaan

An English aristocrat, and the self-appointed White Rajah of the island of Karajaan. He’s a wily, amoral opportunist, who exploits the people of Karajaan and plays the Company off against Nemo, Humility and the crew of the Nautilus, to get what he wants.