Cigar Aficionado Appears In New Netflix Series “3 Body Problem”
Out of all of the television shows and films where you might expect to see a Cigar Aficionado cover making a guest appearance, an existential science-fiction series would probably be among your last guesses. Yet, on the new Netflix series “3 Body Problem,” a fictional cover of this magazine makes quite a prominent appearance in the third episode of the show.
“3 Body Problem” debuted worldwide on Netflix on March 21. The eight-episode, sci-fi series quickly gained traction on the streaming platform, ranking among Netflix’s most streamed shows in its first few weeks, alongside the likes of other popular new series such as “The Gentleman” and “Homicide: New York.” The show was created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the famed duo behind HBO’s “Game Of Thrones,” along with “True Blood” writer Alexander Woo. The premise of the series was inspired by the popular Chinese novel “The Three-Body Problem,” written by author Liu Cixin.
Both the book series and the Netflix show were inspired by one of physics’ most popular, unsolvable mysteries, the three-body problem. The dilemma has plagued physicists for many years, and if you go on exploring it yourself, it’ll plague your ability to think straight. In short, it’s a situation where three objects in space (such as planets or stars) exhibit force on one another, making it harder to predict rotation than in a situation involving only two such objects. Both the book and the show explore a world where Earthlings meet extraterrestrials who come from one of these chaotic systems (three suns, in this scenario) and, naturally, their trip to Earth threatens life on our planet as we know it.
The show takes a non-linear approach, rotating between 1960’s China during the Chinese Cultural Revolution to present-day England and New York, among other worlds. As our planet prepares for the imminent danger, a group of friends and scientists, dubbed the “Oxford Five,” come together to start formulating contingency plans. One of the five, a brash, freshly wealthy young man known as Jack Rooney, is the fictional Cigar Aficionado cover star in the show.
Rooney is played by English actor John Bradley, who played Samwell Tarly in “Game of Thrones.” Those familiar with the massive, hit series will likely Bradley’s character as one of the most lovable figures in a series full of brutal individuals and occurrences. In the “3 Body Problem,” however, Bradley’s Rooney character is quite the opposite. The Oxford dropout, who chose money over academia, made millions building a snack empire, and carries a relatively arrogant attitude often associated with someone so rich at a young age. He’s no villain, but he’s also not a hero.
In the third episode of the series, the Oxford crew gathers at Rooney’s lavish home, and prominently displayed in his living room is a massive cut-out of Rooney on a Cigar Aficionado cover. The large poster is inescapable throughout the first seven minutes of the show. We never see Rooney ever actually smoke a cigar.
In a March interview with Vulture, Bradley was asked about the fictional Cigar Aficionado cover. While Bradley revealed he did not, he did share a humorous reasoning as to why not: “As a single man, you never know what’s going to happen if you date someone and it goes well and you bring them back to your house for the first time and there’s a 50-foot-high photograph of yourself with a cigar. They may not see that that was an ironic thing.”
