Stephen King’s The Institute: with Mary-Louise Parker & Ben Barnes

Stephen King’s literary universe continues to expand and captivate audiences with his latest adaptation, The Institute. Poised to deliver another chilling and thought-provoking experience, this new series promises to explore themes of unchecked authority, the power of youth, and the enduring human spirit, all through the master storyteller’s unique lens. We sat down with stars Mary-Louise Parker, Ben Barnes, Joe Freeman, and creators Jack Bender and Ben Cavell to unearth the secrets behind bringing King’s chilling vision to the screen…

The Genesis of The Institute

For the show’s director, Jack Bender, the journey to The Institute began directly with the source himself. “I was sent the galleys by Stephen, after working with him on a couple of other shows. He sent me the galleys for The Institute, and said: ‘Do you like working with kids?’”

Bender eagerly accepted the challenge, noting the difficulty in finding authentic young talent: “It’s very difficult, because you got to find the right kids that’s first and foremost, and they’ve got to be believable and not over-acty, which kids at an early age are sometimes trained to be. This has to be real.”

Well, to bring The Institute to life, a plethora of young talent is certainly needed. The story focusses on young genius Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman) who is kidnapped and wakes up in a sinister facility known as the Institute, where other children with special abilities—like telekinesis and telepathy—are being held. The staff subjects them to brutal experiments under the guise of serving a higher purpose. As Luke befriends the other children and uncovers the truth about the Institute’s operations, he plans a daring escape. Meanwhile, at the nearby town, ex-cop Tim (Ben Barnes), still reeling from a tragic event in his past, starts to notice strange disappearances. Are they linked to the mysterious facility hidden in the woods?

A powerful real-world event heavily influenced Bender’s vision for the adaptation. “The Parkland school shooting happened around that time,” he reflects, “and I watched those kids that survived it become a political force that stood up to various local politicians and gatherings and groups. They literally stood there and said, ‘Get out of our way. We know how to fix this. You all have screwed it up. You adults have screwed it up, and we’re going to have to fix it ourselves.'”

This powerful display of youthful resilience appeared to deeply resonate with the core themes of King’s novel for Bender. “That, to me, was very much in the world of ‘children shall inherit the earth’, but first they have to save themselves. That to me and when Ben [Cavell] joined up as my partner in crime here creatively, we both agreed that that was really the heart and the mission of the show.”

Said partner in crime, Ben Cavell, echoes the sentiment: “That’s also what I loved about it. The kids save themselves. There’s not an action hero who rides to the rescue; the kids in our show have to band together to get themselves out of it.”

For Cavell there’s a broader societal message in this narrative: “Every politician in the States, every political party, is talking always about the kids, and how they’re doing this for the kids, and they’re protecting the kids. Except nobody ever really seems to consult the kids about what they want or what they need. And this felt like a real answer to that.”

Casting the Institute: Finding the Right Balance

With such a strong message, the challenge of casting believable children was paramount. Though it was an element of TV-making that Cavel hadn’t really experienced before. “I hadn’t worked with kids or worked on a show where kids were a big part of it,” he affirms.

That’s not to say that Cavel is a stranger to TV shows – he’s worked on mega series like SEAL Team, Godfather of Harlem, The Stand and Justified, where they cast a young Kaitlyn Dever: “I insisted then that we have to plan for, if it turns out she’s not as great as we think she is. What are we going to do in terms of telling the story where it doesn’t all fall apart? Well, she’s obviously, a huge star, and she’s in The Last of Us!” he laughs. That backup clearly wasn’t needed!

For The Institute, the stakes were even higher. “The kids are the foundation of the thing. As soon as I read the book, I called Jack, and I said, ‘Where are we going to find kids who can do all these things?'”

Not to worry, Ben. Those prayers were answered with Joe Freeman. “We were blessed with seeing his audition. The minute we saw it, we went, ‘wow'” Bender remembers. “Then when I worked with him… this kid has everything we want!”

Interestingly, the production opted for slightly older children than those written in King’s book. “The reason for that was because we never wanted the show to be sadistic,” Bender explains. “We wanted it to be horror, and horrifying on a human level, but not sadistic.”

Another aim with the age-change was to broaden the appeal, with Bender hoping that “slightly older kids will draw in a teenage audience that if they were much younger, maybe not would have shown up. I think they’re relatable and great.”

Freeman (recognise that surname? He’s the son of Martin Freeman, don’t you know!) got on board straight away, reading King’s book as soon as he was cast. “I read it after I found out I got the part. I didn’t want to get too invested in something that I wouldn’t have gotten…!”

Meanwhile, Ben Barnes, who plays Tim, took a different approach, reading “a couple of episodes first, and then the book before saying yes to the part”.

“I realised that there was an opportunity to see where the character went, and how it evolved and developed,” Barnes explains further. “But I absolutely devoured it, even though Tim, my character disappears for a huge chunk of the book, I just fell for the intricacies of the character, and of the allegory of the story as a whole.”

The Allure of Stephen King: Understanding the Master of Psyche

Speaking of character intricacies, King’s ability to tap into the human psyche is a recurring allure for fans, including The Institute‘s cast and creators.

That includes Mary-Louise Parker, who plays one of the shadowy figures running the Institute. Despite her normal aversion to scary content, she holds immense respect for his craft. “I can’t watch scary things, so I’ve not seen many [Stephen King adaptations], but I will say he is masterful at understanding the human psyche and I think people get a great release from being unsettled in the way that he makes them and where he takes the stories.

“He knows exactly how to hook an audience immediately, where to take them, and how to keep that tension. Stephen King is too expert for me to watch his stories. When I try to watch, he’s so effective, and he gets into your psyche in a way that’s just uncanny. That’s his genius. I think.”

Like Parker, Barnes has a more selective appreciation for King’s horror. “I don’t like the creepy stuff as much. I’ve seen it all and I’ve read some, but yeah, Carrie and The Shining and It. It gives me the shudders.”

For Freeman, a recurring favourite of King’s work is Misery (“it doesn’t get much better”), though he also likes to lean into the other side of King: “I like the more thriller/drama,/sci-fi. I love the Running Man, Stand by Me. Shawshank… He’s so prolific. The fact that everything we just mentioned is from the brain of the same man is so extraordinary to me.”

The immediate connection to the kids in The Institute is a testament to King’s genius and ability to connect readers with his characters. “On the very first page, you’re already fully aligned with the protagonist, because they’re children and they’ve been taken from their parents,” Parker notes. “That places you firmly on the side of who you’re rooting for. And you’ve seen just enough of the parents for it to be heartbreaking. That’s part of the genius of Stephen King. In order to just set it up right away, you know exactly where you’re aligned. Then it gets a little murkier when you start to know the other characters, and you see they have their own set of ideals, however skewed…”

The Complexities of Evil: Portraying the Antagonists

Indeed, that complexity is never more apparent than in Parker’s character Ms. Sigsby, who embodies a chilling form of dangerous justification. “I felt the entire thing hinged on Jack’s question: How far would you go if you could prevent armageddon?” she says. “She’s justifying everything that she does based on that. And that’s pretty dangerous. That’s pretty much the definition of a sociopath, as someone who justifies their bad behaviour. She’s very dangerous in that way. I think she will do anything, because she takes her job very seriously, and it all makes sense to her; she has it worked out in her head.”

In trying to get closer to the character, Parker delved into the origins of Sigsby’s moral decay. “You want to have somewhere to begin and at some point, a kind of decay set in with her, because I didn’t feel she was someone born with no moral compass. I think it was something that happened over time.”

For Parker, this was confronting the harsh realities of Sigsby’s actions by focusing on the mundane aspects of her work. “I don’t think she’s wrestling with, ‘oh, these poor children’. She’s able to just connect to the everyday logistics of her job, and I think that’s how she’s able to keep going, because she doesn’t really go there.”

From watching the show, you can’t help but notice a particularly unnervingly striking idiosyncrasy about Sigsby, particularly her eating habits (one of which includes directly eating from the pan). This was Parker’s own idea. “Yeah it’s gross. I tend to have these ideas and then on take five, I’m like, ‘Why did I suggest this?’ It’s really horrible, but yeah, I just liked the idea that she couldn’t take care of herself enough to put a plate on the table. She couldn’t put a condiment on the food in the kitchen and bring it and have a napkin. It’s just ‘I need to eat. I am a machine. This is the easiest way to do it’.”

Keen on creating nuanced antagonists and not just one-dimensional villains, Jack Bender alludes to the makeup of the show’s villains: “Now, there is one character, we won’t mention who, is really a sadist and loves slapping and hitting the kids with electronic prods. But Sigsby, I believe, is a true believer. And Mary-Louise’s brilliant performance… She can shift between being horribly aggressive and manipulative and doing things that we consider evil, and at the same time, turn around and be charming and tell us about saving the world. I wanted this show to be believable and have full storytelling, where all the characters are rich and nobody’s superficial.”

Allegory and Hope: The Deeper Meanings of The Institute

Beyond the initial premise and creepy, for Ben Barnes, The Institute strives to serve as a powerful story that just adds to its unnerving appeal. “The vividness of the allegory of this unchecked authoritarian system is just such a brilliant allegory,” he enthuses. He also found resonance in the children’s abilities: “The powers themselves feel very keenly connected too. Telepathy is a kind of magical, filmic language version of how we communicate and how we do better with that. And telekinesis is these buried powers that even we didn’t know we had to be able to topple these systems.”

Despite the seemingly disparate storylines between his character Tim and the children in the Institute, their convergence is something that really resonated with Barnes. “They feel like separate stories, and then you realise they have the same kind of fire to challenge those systems. They both smell injustice and they sense that things are not as they should be.

“The story feels derivative of nothing, but it speaks the language that you feel you might have seen. As we’ve seen in Stranger Things, we’ve seen kids with telekinesis, and we’ve seen a lonely ex-cop, looking for a quiet, peaceful new start. They seem separate, and then they kind of get magnetised towards each other in this really compelling way.”

The Advantages of Episodic Storytelling

King has been adapted for the big screen and little screen (and the stage!). For Barnes, the decision to ultimately tell this King story as a TV show is a testament to TV storytelling right now.

“People are getting bolder with the way that they do that,” he says. “You watch something like The Last of Us, and it will go off on an episode to a completely different story, and make you ache with pathos or really move you. It’s only after the episode finishes you realise it’s got nothing to do with the series you’re watching, really.”

This flexibility is clearly crucial for The Institute ” I think with a story like this, we were able to toy with the structure a little bit, not as much as the book does, in terms of following Tim for an episode and then Luke for an episode and but it does feel like you’re trying to marry these two stories and find common ground between them,” Barnes explains. “Episodic TV gives you an opportunity to leave one episode with one character and pick it up with another, or whatever it might be.”

Well, that begs the question then: is this a binge series or should audiences watch it weekly? “Weekly leaves that kind of excited taste for what’s to come,” he answers “I don’t want to say it’s a slow burn, because that sounds like it’s not exciting, which it is. But it’s got a simmering tension to it, which I think just leaves you wanting. It’s good to let that happen. It’s good to let that tension bubble.”

Hopes for the Audience and the Future of The Institute

Whether audiences binge or watch it weekly, Barnes hopes that by the time the credits roll on that final episode, that series will empower its audience. “I hope it makes people feel thoughtful. I think the purpose of some of the storytelling – not to speak for Stephen King at all – is to help people feel empowered and to be able to use their skill set. To be able to apply that to challenging things that they feel aren’t right.

“I just hope people get to the end and think that they were really happy that they spent their time watching it. That they felt invested and excited and would want to watch more if there was more.”

Speaking of which, the desire for more stories from The Institute is certainly strong among the creative team. “We very much want to keep telling this story,” Cavell affirms. “That’s always been our hope and we very intentionally have have left it at the end that there is a lot more to tell. We have lots of really cool ideas about where it all goes.

“We would love to continue this because we’re so in love with all these characters. Sigsby included – Mary-Louise’s performance is so beautiful and nuanced and interesting and strange and quirky, and Joe is so brilliant as Luke, and Ben Barnes is great. It feels like, honestly, it would be a shame to leave it here, even though, yes, in some way, I suppose you could. We’re very aware that this leans into more, and we would love that.”

“Our studio, MGM+ and Amazon are very much behind the show,” Bender adds. “They love the show, and are hopefully expecting there to be a Season Two. Just so long as you bang the drums.”

Bangs the drum we shall! Watch The Institute on 13 July 2025 on MGM+