Apple TV+’s ‘The Big Door Prize’ asks the question: Are you living up to your true potential in life?

Are you living up to your true potential in life? And what is your true potential anyway? Those are some of the big questions asked in the new Apple TV+ series The Big Door Prize, debuting Wednesday.

In the series, Chris O’Dowd and Gabrielle Dennis play a husband and wife who live in a small town, when a mysterious machine appears that can print out a card telling you who you’re supposed to be.

“This machine arrives in the small town with the promise that it’s going to tell everybody what their true life potential is,” O’Dowd tells ABC Audio. “And for me, the conceit of the show is that we can so easily be led by a big idea, whether it be good or bad.”

“It’s not destiny, it’s potential,” he explains. “So you have to make it happen, being the difference.”

O’Dowd adds that people who reevaluated their lives during the pandemic may find the show especially relevant, noting, “the idea that let’s just have another go at it, folks. It didn’t work out the first 40 years, let’s do something entirely different.”

As for whether the show’s stars feel about the machine, Dennis shares that she’s wanted to be an actress since she was 4, and doesn’t really need a machine to tell her that.

“Of course, if I were to pull a card and it said something completely different, it would throw me so out of whack,” she admits. “And I think that is the struggle that a lot of people are going to ask that question when they watch…but if for nothing else, it just makes for great conversation in like you’re in this dream space of like the coulda shoulda woulda’s of life, right?”

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