Billy Crystal Talks About ‘Dark’ Moment That Helped Inspire His ‘Before’ Role (Exclusive)

For Billy Crystal, the creative inspiration for his new role was largely a personal one.

In his Apple TV+ supernatural drama Before, debuting Friday, Oct. 25, he plays Eli, a child psychologist who’s mourning the loss of his wife Lynn (Judith Light). Throughout the 10-episode psychological thriller, he “encounters a troubled young boy, Noah (Jacobi Jupe), who seems to have a haunting connection to Eli’s past,” according to the synopsis.

Crystal shared in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE how the loss of a best friend helped him find the emotional place as an actor to portray his complex character Eli.

“There’s a darkness between the two of them that we explore,” he says referring to Light. “You have to put it into a place that is in yourself to get it right… your reaction to some dark or the darkest moment you can imagine.”

“I’ve lived, sadly, my own personal life with that, losing a friend to suicide. Best friend,” he continues. “And how you feel, how it leaves you, what could I have done? Could I have said something? What did I miss? Why didn’t I know? Why wasn’t I told? Why was this withheld from me? Didn’t he trust me?”

Crystal, 76, was able to use those feelings towards his onscreen performance.

“That’s your art, is to use the paints that you’re given from life, and as painful as it is, you got to use every brush that you have,” he continues.

For the six-time Emmy winner, who has largely carved out a decades-long career with beloved comedies like When Harry Met Sally, City Slickers, Forget Paris, Analyze This and Monster’s Inc., the opportunity to star in and executive produce an emotionally dark and complex project like Before was an extremely welcome change of pace.

“If you’re not challenged by [the role], then you’re dead,” he muses. “The range of the emotional moments, the physical character, I did 99% of my own stunt work in it, living in the surreal world that Sarah [Thorp] created.”

“It’s this genre: it’s not horror, it’s intense thriller. It’s scary, it’s dark,” the actor adds. “It was fantastic to live in there and to keep spreading and to fill up the moments. You have to be really available to what’s demanded and take it even further than that.”

He says he originally planned to produce the show, but in the middle of Thorp’s pitch, “I said, ‘Stop, Sarah. I want to play him. I’m in.'”

Working with five directors across the show’s 10 episodes, Crystal relayed a message to each one.

“I’d say to each one of them when we would meet for the first time, ‘I’m going for this, so don’t be afraid to push me further,” he says. “Never say ‘print’ until you have what you want. I’ll get you there. Push me. Pull me. Whatever you think I’m not giving you because I’m yours. And we had great relationships that way.”

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Before premieres Friday, Oct. 25 on Apple TV+.