Howard Silk

Howard Silk is the name of the two primary characters in the Starz Original Series Counterpart. Two different versions of Silk appear on the show, each from a distinctly different dimension. Both Howard Silks are played by J. K. Simmons.

According to executive producer Amy Berg, the writers called Dimension One Howard "Alpha" and Dimension Two Howard "Prime." The scripts also delineated by calling the D1 version "Howard" and the D2 version "Prime."

Howard Silk Dimension One
The first Howard Silk, "Alpha" is from Dimension One and works at a low-level bureaucrat at the Office of Interchange in East Berlin in Germany. He's worked for the agency for 29 years and, as the series begins, is part of what is known as "Interface."

His job is to enter a small room with a glass partition facing another worker and read off what appear to be nonsense phrases and make notes on the replies his counterpart offers to each one. Howard is tired of this job and seeks a new position in a department known as "Strategy." He doesn't get the job at first but with time they start needing him so eventually he gets all they way to accounting.

He plays a game called Go in an outdoor cafe with a friend named Andrei every day before work.

Each night, Howard visits his wife Emily Burton Silk at the hospital where she is being treated following a car accident. She's been comatose for six weeks following an apparent car accident. He brings in fresh flowers on each visit and reads to his wife from her favorite books, poetry mostly.

Howard Silk Dimension Two
The second Howard Silk introduced on the show - also known most official materials as "Prime" - is a confident and accomplished spy from a parallel dimension. There he works in the same agency as his counterpart. His job is officially "4C Diplomacy" but in reality, Howard is part of "Section 2." In this position, he is tasked with cross-dimensional espionage through The Crossing and has spent his career building a clandestine network of agents working in the Dimension One.

Currently, Howard claims he is tracking a contract killer who is targeting members of the agency in the primary dimension. He says it's part of an escalating power struggle on his side. He plans to use his counterpart to catch this killer.

Howard reports that his wife, Emily Burton Silk, died of cancer. This does not appear to be true.

Season 1
Howard is turned down for promotion by Peter Quayle and learns that his agency is actually sitting on top of a doorway between two, almost identical, dimensions. (See The Crossing(TV Episode))