Sean Kaufman Reveals The Exact Moment Joel Kinnaman Passed The Torch In For All Mankind

Since 2019, the sci-fi alternate history series For All Mankind has had one space maverick central to the series, Ed Baldwin, as played by Joel Kinnaman. But now, with Season 5, Ed Baldwin isn’t the Baldwin we’re focused on anymore. It’s 2012 now, and we started with Ed in 1969, so now it's his grandson, Alex Baldwin (Sean Kaufman), who is emerging as the focal point of the show.

As Alex comes into his own in For All Mankind and stumbles upon a secret that changes everything on Mars, Inverse caught up with Kaufman to get a sense of how he managed to step into the daunting legacy of For All Mankind, and the moment he knew he was stepping into bigger shoes.

Spoilers ahead for For All Mankind Season 5, Episode 4, “Open Source.”

In Episode 4, following the passing of Ed Baldwin, everyone on Mars is trying to get on with their lives. But, there’s unrest brewing. Alex’s close friend and maybe girlfriend, Lily Dale (Ruby Cruz), is pushing harder on the Free Mars movement, but Alex is taking a job from an old family friend, tech mogul Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi), working directly for aerospace company Helios. The only trouble is, Alex suddenly discovers that Helios, along with another company, Kuragin, is secretly planning to replace human workers with automation on Mars. And this is the spark that pushes Alex to revolt, and in a sense, follow in the footsteps of his mother, Kelly Baldwin (Cynthy Wu), and grandfather, Ed.

“It’s a changing and passing of the guard, but this is also extreme,” Kaufman tells Inverse. “I am a firm believer that it is on the younger generation's shoulders always to create a revolution. These 18-year-olds on Mars are saying f*ck the system. And they’ve got good reason.”

What makes For All Mankind unique, Kaufman notes, is that his character is essentially aligned with his late grandfather’s views, too. This isn’t about one generation saying “OK Boomer” on Mars, but instead, his generation, essentially the millennials of FamK’s timeline, aligning themselves with the philosophies of a Boomer like Ed. In theory, Dev is the Gen X outlier in this conflict, but Kaufman points out that for him, the show mixes in elements that not everyone experiences. Alex has reverence for his family legacy, while also being a bit daunted by it all.

“I felt like I came onto this show with a historic legacy, just like the Baldwin name, and all these great actors like Ed. I was so nervous and scared, but I realized that this is how Alex feels. So I decided to use that,” Kaufman explains. “Alex and I are very much in the same situation. It’s an arc, he’s finding himself, but you can still go back and forth on how you feel.”

Episode 4 is a huge turning point for Alex, though, the moment he realizes that Helios and Dev are betraying not just his generation, but everyone on Mars, too. In some ways, now that Ed is out of the picture, this episode tells us that yes, this is an intergenerational show, and basically, Alex is arguably the star of the show now.

“No pressure!” Kaufman jokes, but does note that there was one specific moment where he felt Joel Kinnaman sort of pass the baton to him in a subtle, meaningful way. “I remember there was a scene where Joel and I were working together, and we were just talking about my nerves or whatever, and it was like a close-up of me. And he was like, ‘You got this,’” Kaufman says. “And at the end of the scene, he looked at me, and he’s in his old-man makeup, he looks at me like the Godfather, and nods his head and gives me a thumbs up and just... walks away. I got his approval. I was like ‘let’s go!’”

Speaking of old-man makeup, with For All Mankind, there’s always a chance that young actors are going to have to end up playing much older in future seasons. Kinnaman is only 46, despite playing an 80-year-old this season. Cynthy Wu is 27, but is playing Alex’s mother, now at the age of 46, in Season 5. Kaufman is 25, playing 18, so the actor playing his mom is only two years older than him in real life. Is the actor ready for these time-jumps in Season 6? Does he have hints about Alex’s future?

“I have never played older than my actual age in my life or in my professional career. And the chance when I heard that I could play like a 40-year-old man, I was like ‘Sign me up!’ I love the way that Coral and Cynthy do it, because it's not as pronounced,” Kaufman says. “But no. I don’t know where this character is going. [The showrunners] have kept me totally in the dark. You’ll probably find out before I do.”

For All Mankind streams on Apple TV.