You won’t find a young couple more attractive or ebullient than actors Rachael Leigh Cook and Warren Kole, in real-life both disarmingly cute yet onscreen so confidently courageous in the new TNT miniseries event Into the West, a remarkable new telling of the settling of the American frontier. As Robert and Clara Wheeler, two of West’s idealistic 19^th Century dreamers, they play an integral role in creating the Transcontinental Railroad before bumping up against a disillusioned American Dream. They inject a youthful passion into West’s fair-handed depiction of the rise of American civilization at the expense of Native American culture.

Lee Shoquist, Reel Movie Critic: Into the West is quite an epic, and it works well as both a large canvas adventure and an intimate personal story.

Rachael Leigh Cook: So true. And it really captures the time well. I think it doesn’t feel as "current" as a lot of attempts at westerns.

Warren Kole: There’s no, ‘Hey, varmint!’ It’s not a genre type. It’s very relatable. It’s people not too long ago living in a very different country.

RLC: I think people can find at least one character they can identify with, whether it’s someone trying to forge ahead or someone just trying to survive.

LS: To Warren’s point about this not being a cliché western or genre piece, it really presents both the Native American culture and pioneering American settlers in a balanced and vivid way.

RLC: Definitely. The inspiration for making it was to tell the real story about what happened between people who came in and decided this country should be theirs, and fought and killed for it, and the people who were here to begin with.

LS: We never really got a sense of that growing up in school, you know?

WK: I remember being in elementary school and the pictures they had in history books. They made Native Americans look like absolute savages.

LS: Yes. They always had these bloody scalps.

WK: And then there were these proud cavalrymen fighting for their civilization. And that’s why it’s such a fair story and there was attention to make sure there were no sides.

LS: Did you find yourselves identifying with any particular side or perspective more than another?

RLC: I remember one scene where a Native American (character) says, ‘This isn’t working—what we’re doing. We’re going to lose this battle.’ And (another) says, ‘Yes, but you still have to try." And it’s about the act of trying, even when it is fruitless, because you’re defining who you are in that. I think that’s a really cool message. I don’t identify with either of those people, but I really take that to heart.

LS: One thing that’s so beautiful in the story is the through line of going out, breaking away from your family to pursue your dreams.

That’s a rite of passage for most of us.

WK: Sure. Today we have the comfort and the freedom to do that, where you can break away from your family. Back then it was so much more about survival and the family wasn’t just a family. It was the rock. It was a clan. There was a pride, and when one goes away, the pride was that much weaker. It was such a bigger choice. I liked that about my character. His belief was strong about having his own family and taking Clara to have something solid in life.

RLC: Yes. And (family) was all you were guaranteed. I think that’s something that’s probably missing today. I think a lot of families run away from each other because they can.

LS: It’s also interesting, and I think you see a bit of this in the film, when you go out into the world, you can’t really go home again.

RLC: That’s really true.

WK: No, you can’t. It only makes sense once you’re independent and have lost that naiveté.

LS: There’s also this idea in the film, when we look back at this sixty-five years, that they were these defining events that shaped history. But I wonder if we’re living the same thing right now, and in centuries to come we’ll be just as important a part of history, when you look at our times with a different perspective.

RLC: Well, we don’t have an active genocide of the people going on here in the States right now. Some countries do!

WK: I think we’ll be looked at as the technological revolution; not so much the industrial revolution. It won’t be quite as tangible as the railroads joining and the continental United States galvanizing.

LS: Both of you end up disillusioned with this ‘progress’ later in the film, and end up teaching in a school intended to ‘Americanize’ Native American children.

WK: Sad, distracted, diverted from the purpose that I wanted so badly, back to the kind of material need that to get that comfort that I wanted to get away from. It was a regression, and they’re trying to re-capture that by going to this school and helping.

RLC: What is that saying? ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ They think it’s a good idea and they’re helping people…

WK: Not a bad idea!

RLC: It saved lives.

WK: But then when you see all this spirit and culture sucked out of the people, it’s tragic.

LS: This is a film that is set in the west but more a story about living during the time than a western, per se.

RLC: True. I don’t like westerns, and this is something that, if I didn’t know about it, I’d look at the poster and say, ‘Interesting. Spielberg did produce it. Maybe I’ll check it out. Maybe I won’t.’ It’s really so much more than that. It’s an important story.

WK: It’s how people lived their lives. It’s not the events and it’s not the place. It’s the internal connection.

LS: Anything that really struck you as a memorable part of the production?

WK: Not an event or anything, but just a moment between takes. The set was like a whole town that they had and they had built a track. And I was on the track and the engine was on the track and they were rehearsing. I could kind of believe that I was…back then. It was awesome. Pretty amazing. Make believe. There was no proscenium arch that I had to stare past. So complete. Those moments would burn the deepest. It was very reflective.

RLC: I was anticipating this day, when were loading the kids into the wagon. We’re taking these kids from their parents to take them to the school. I read this part of the script and said, ‘This is going to be the saddest thing.’ We had these women screaming and crying and reaching to their children, and the kids screaming and crying and holding on for dear life, but the parents are still giving them over. It’s a terrible conflict and we’re taking them. And on the set that day they had some women doing some amazing work, being so upset—adults who knew the effects of what we were re-enacting. The kids, who were young enough that it didn’t really affect them at all, were laughing. I remember being so relieved because I thought, we’re going to really scar some kids. They’re going to understand what happened to their ancestors and the world we live in. And (director) Tim (Van Patten) was like, ‘sad face,’ you know? Such a relief.

LS: You have some fairly intense emotions going on in this film. Your first scenes are very big emotionally.

RLC: You can’t do too much in a situation like that. You can’t overact when your whole family is about to be killed. You’re only in danger of doing too little. When a scene is really emotional, it’s easy to find it when the scene is written well, if you understand the scene and know what it is. Even if you know, sometimes your emotional faculties will sort of not be there and then you have to have technique to fall back on. Your real feelings aren’t always going to be accessible to you.

WK: You’re talking about instinct, which you have but a lot of people don’t—the instinct to make the right choices.

RLC: How do you like to work?

WK: Same kind of way. I just make choices; whatever feels right; whatever tells the story best or most dynamically.

RLC: You can’t have two feet on the ground when you’re in a scene. You can’t have a plan. A lot of actors like to say as soon as you have a plan, you’re in trouble, because you’re not free.

LS: Warren, what do you love about acting?

WK: It’s a thrill putting together a story so that it will have the greatest impact on whoever is watching it.

RLC: A lot of actors think that you can’t think about your audience, but we are storytellers and we have a responsibility to think about the audience.

WK: You’re allowed to be creative. I remember one small thing we did together, in the barn. The writing was great if you were reading a novel, but trying to make it happen real time didn’t work. Rachael came up with a very simple solution—one line—and the whole thing falls into place. It’s a great feeling.

LS: Rachael, a director told me recently that it takes as much energy to make a bad film as a good one, and you can’t tell when you’re doing it whether it’s going to be good or not.

RLC: I really set myself on a bad course for quite awhile. I was working to work or working because I wanted to go somewhere fun or with a certain person, be it an actor or a cool director. Maybe one element was strong, but the rest were not great. I’ve done a lot of things that are on video somewhere.

LS: Does that hurt?

RLC: Yeah, it does, because it seems like you don’t really care about the longevity of your career when you go to the video store and everything is straight to video. You look like somebody who cannot only not open a film, but who can’t get a really quality film. It does really make you look bad.

LS: I would imagine being on a set is the most wonderful job, or just being an actor. You come together with a group of great people for a short time, do something incredibly creative and then, before you get bored, you go somewhere else on something new and do the same incredible process all over again with amazing new and different people.

RLC: That’s so true. It’s always different. I think even being on a television show you never know what’s going to be thrown at you the next week, and this was always different. There were always new elements to deal with, the weather or the set, the 1860s we had to learn about. It was really interesting. It’s always that way trying to figure out, are we all together, are we all telling the same story here?

LS: Ever get on a set and say, ‘I want out of here. This isn’t what I thought?’

RLC: I was on one film that shall remain nameless…

LS: Oh, come on!

RLC: I can’t! These people are still around! Unbelievable. The caterers would decide not to show up some days. The camera truck couldn’t find the set. The producer made himself the star of the movie!

LS: We’ll go surfing IMDB and try to figure out just which one you’re talking about!