Samuel L. Jackson draws on family for series about memory issues

To play the role, Fishback wrote a journal for her character and shared it with Mosley and Jackson. “I wanted to really bring Robyn from the book to the series as much as we could,” she says. “Different quotes, I would match pictures to and say, ‘What if she did this?’ And then I emailed it to Sam. It was a huge collaboration with both of them, so I was really thankful.”

Jackson, meanwhile, chose a different approach. “I’m not a method actor. I kind of do all that before I get to work so that when it’s time for the work to happen, I just kind of flow into it. Dominique will tell you how silly I can be sometimes coming out of a scene where she’s all emotional and crying and I’ll just look at her and go, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”

Jackson says he has been thinking about the character for 10 years, “so when it was time to do those things, I just kind of turned on the emotional asset that I’m able to access and do it.”

Although “Ptolemy Grey” has a fantasy element – Mosley creates a drug that would give the character his memory back – it also serves to help him solve a mystery that has disturbed him for years.

“It’s a fairy tale,” Mosley says. “But a dark fairy tale in more ways than one.”

Jackson, who also serves as the series’ executive producer, met Fishback through his wife, La Tanya Richardson Jackson. The two had appeared in a series together. “I remember sitting at home watching this Jamie Foxx movie and she was in it,” he says. “I called my manager and said, ‘I found Robyn.’ I didn’t realize that it was the same little girl that I had seen (in his wife’s series).”