Chris Pine And Troian Bellisario Discuss Their ‘Ad Lucem’ Podcast

Living in a world that seems to always be achieving extraordinary advances in technology, alongside an ever-growing obsession within our society to seek out human connections by way of social media, Hollywood leading man Chris Pine is now lending both his time and his voice to share a rather cautionary tale in the form of a newly launched podcast series titled Ad Lucem.

Set in New York a few years in the future, this fictionalized socio-political audio thriller centers around a revolutionary tech company and its latest innovation, a Corporeal Augmented Reality Assistant (CARA), a live operator that provides individual and organic responses like a human would. However, as time goes on, the consequences of these types of artificial advancements start to unravel.

I spoke with Pine before the SAG-AFTRA strike about Ad Lucem and why he chose to executive produce this podcast under his Barry Linen Motion Pictures production company banner with co-founder Ian Gotler, alongside production partners QCODE and SALT.

Pine said, “There’s a lot of content out there, so we don’t want to kind of add to the deluge that people have to sort through. For us, it’s really a matter of do we think it’s relevant now, do we think it needs to be told now and are we the people to tell it? It answered all of those questions, particularly for me as a luddite at heart probably, who does prefer the analog. This story has everything to do with the intersection this future present tense that we’re always seemingly living in, where evolution of technologies are hitting us so fast.”

Pine added that he believes the Ad Lucem podcast has many themes to it, including privacy concerns of the 21st century, the way we as a society give up our sense of privacy to feel connected and humanity’s elevated sense of loneliness in today’s world.

Created by Pine’s longtime friends Troian Bellisario (Pretty Little Liars, Doula, Plan B) and Josh Close, the Ad Lucem story was first routed to become a film, then a television pilot and ultimately the podcast series. While also speaking with Bellisario beside Pine, I wondered if there were any previous entertainment projects that inspired her creative imagining of this original tale.

Bellisario said, “Josh and I have drawn from many different classic films – classic stories. There’s elements of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), elements of Her (2013) – I think that’s actually a really good example. The biggest difference that I wanted to explore is this isn’t reliant on AI technology – it’s reliant on human beings and what happens when you take away the face-to-face and you put a screen in-between us. What happens to our relationship?”

Already being a well-known public figure, Pine chooses not to have his own social media accounts to regularly post on for the public to see. Knowing this, I asked Pine for his current thoughts surrounding social media and modern technology.

“I feel so many things about it,” Pine said. “Progress is progress and it seems like the human being can’t help but want more and more. It seems like we can’t give up the desire for more technology and more connections. My personal preference – I get overwhelmed by the stimuli that that provides.”

He added, “I remember the science section of The New York Times – I don’t know, five years ago, where they were interviewing all these people from Silicon Valley about technology and the advancement of technology. One hundred percent of them wouldn’t let their children around the technology that they were developing, which just made me think, ‘Well, if the brains behind all of these incredible algorithms are weary of what they’re putting out there, maybe we should be, as well.’ I have certain hesitations about it. I’m addicted to it as much as anybody else. It’s too much for me, but it’s happening.”

Pine and Bellisario are not the only Hollywood actors lending their voices to Ad Lucem’s nine episodes. Pine’s Don’t Worry Darling director and co-star Olivia Wilde has also added her voice and her producing efforts to the podcast, as well as other notable actors voicing characters, including Fiona Shaw, Clancy Brown and Patrick J. Adams.

According to Bellisario’s recent post on Instagram, Ad Lucem is covered under a SAG-AFTRA podcast agreement, where scripted podcasts are not “struck work.” So, when it comes to what seems like never-ending advancements happening with technology lately, does Bellisario feel there is such a thing as too much progress?

“I definitely think so,” Bellisario said. “I think that social media was a leap that we made as a civilization that we didn’t really know what we were jumping into, and I think we are now understanding the ramifications and understanding the fallout of everything. We thought we were just posting pictures of our burritos and it’s causing the fall of democracy. So, I do think that what this podcast, what I was really interested in writing is that I am so tempted to just rip it all away and start fresh and just be like, ‘Let’s not have any social media. Let’s not do any of it.’ – and that viewpoint is expressed by certain characters. How do we find that happy medium? Can we go back at any point or are we too far gone down the line?”

With Pine remaining an in-demand Hollywood actor, following his performance in major blockbusters like Star Trek, Wonder Woman and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, I was curious how he might say his professional mindset has evolved within his decision-making process towards projects today, compared to when he first started his Hollywood acting career.

Pine said, “I think it’s a great question that is kind of at the heart of what it means to be an actor or an actress, which is you’re beholden to people saying yes or no. In the beginning, at least for myself, there’s a feeling of being extremely grateful for being invited to the party. If you have the great privilege of coming to a place where you have the ability to really be much more curatorial about your career and saying yes or not to certain things, the sense of ownership you can have over your choices is that much greater. It has nothing to do with bank account or presence of the world. I want to smile and I want to spend my days with people I like.”

As I concluded my conversation with Bellisario and Pine, I wondered what their greatest hopes are for Ad Lucem podcast listeners to take away from these upcoming episodes.

Bellisario said, “I really just want to in view people the power to question what’s good for us, what’s accessible, what about this device makes our life better and what about this device makes it more complicated. I have no doubt that this has globally connected us in a way we’re able see news stories on the other side of the world. We’re able to help people on the other side of the world, but also, what has it done to us mentally to be so reliant on that?”

Pine added, “I think the wonderful thing about Ad Lucem is its commercial, thoughtful, high-brow entertainment. At its heart, like the trojan horse that we’re really talking about for me is exactly what we began this conversation talking about, which is progress and the desire for more and where that’s going to take us. Everything we’re talking about – about social media and this desire to connect more in many ways is disconnecting us even more, and somehow we’ve lost ourselves and dove into this device with this idea that in that device, there’s some sort of nirvana life of plenty and perfection. In fact, there’s a lot of dark and weird stuff in it. Maybe it introduces people to the idea of like, ‘Maybe I’ll put down the device and read a book. Maybe I’ll walk outside or maybe I’ll put the maybe in there.’”