Fra Fee on Building Sam’s History in Netflix’s Unchosen

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(SPOILERS BELOW)

In Unchosen, Fra Fee delivers a performance that’s as unsettling as it is magnetic. His character, Sam, is a man shaped by trauma, driven by survival, and suspended somewhere between repentance and manipulation. Fee unpacks the psychological architecture behind his complex character and why understanding Sam never means excusing him.

One of the most striking aspects of Sam is how fully realized he feels. That depth, Fee explains, came directly from the writing.

“Not all of the time does one get a full picture or background story, the actor’s duties are to connect the dots and fill in the blanks. But I actually was provided with this amazingly extensive background story.”

The material shared with him bought out Sam’s upbringing in detail, including an abusive father and a fractured home life. Even though viewers only receive fragments, Fee used that unseen history as emotional scaffolding.

“It goes some way to explain why he behaves in the way that he does. Not to justify the actions but at least it made me understand where he’s coming from.”

Fee also grounded Sam in broader cultural research, particularly around masculinity and identity.

“We’re living in such a world of young men who are lost and have completely lost their sense of what it is to be a good man, we’re living in the manosphere.”

Sam isn’t just an individual case study, he’s part of a wider pattern. Fee even points to parallels with the Netflix series Adolescence, noting how easily violence can surface in young men shaped by similar influences. This framing makes Sam feel disturbingly plausible: not an outlier, but an escalation.

Sam’s emotional development is stunted, not just by trauma, but by incarceration.

“He’s almost trapped in that age, when we meet him 16 years later, I think he’s desperately trying to reclaim that life back.”

That arrested development fuels both his vulnerability and volatility. His connection with Rosie, another character shaped by isolation emerges from this shared lack of lived experience.

“They both desperately need each other, they can see each other’s need and think they can maybe rescue each other.”

It’s a relationship that feels real, even as it heads somewhere deeply unsettling.

Religion plays a dual role in Sam’s journey—both sanctuary and tool.

“I think both things are true… the desire to repent is definitely genuine. But also all that practical stuff is obviously very useful for him.”

That duality is never resolved cleanly. Even in moments of apparent sincerity, there’s an undercurrent of calculation. Nowhere is that more evident than during the baptism scene.

“There’s the real sense of forgiveness and being reborn, but also the survivor who will do anything to protect himself.”

Sam doesn’t stop being dangerous just because he wants to change.

By the final scene, Sam appears transformed, calm, composed, even leading others in faith. But Fee is careful not to provide answers.

“I want people to go, ‘Is this a good man? Has he repented? Has he changed? Is it all just one big manipulation?’”

It’s a deliberately ambiguous ending, one that invites the audience to interrogate everything they’ve seen.

Q&A on the Netflix series Unchosen with actor Fra Fee. Moderated by Mara Webster

Rosie is a devoted wife and mother in a conservative Christian cult, and her meeting with escaped convict Sam triggers her dangerous journey toward freedom and sexual discovery.