Post by bobdoc on Feb 4, 2010 19:31:05 GMT -4
From www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8295:exclusive-interview-michael-emerson-the-ex-leader-of-the-others-talks-the-final-season-of-lost-&catid=43:exclusive-features&Itemid=73
Michael Emerson has become one of the most captivating stars of ABC's hit television series Lost with his portrayal of Benjamin Linus, the deceitful ex-leader of The Others who believes he always has the island's best interests in mind. Unclear where his intentions truly lie, Ben has kept viewers at the edge of their seats with his often despicable and sometimes even noble actions that complicate the traditional idea of a bad guy.
With the show's Final Season having just premiered, the national phenomenon that ignited the return of intelligent and thought-provoking television is promising to answer many of the questions that loyal viewers have hotly debated since Oceanic Air flight 815 tore apart in mid-air and crashed on a remote island, leaving 48 passengers alive and stranded in the South Pacific.
Even though the cast is sworn to secrecy on all the details of the Final Season, in this exclusive interview with IESB, Michael Emerson talked about going from guest star to playing one of the most integral characters on the series, understanding who Ben Linus is, working in the paradise of Hawaii and what it's been like to be a part of the legacy of Lost.
IESB: Since you came into the show a little bit later, how did you originally get involved with Lost?
Michael: It was unusual because it came as an offer. I didn't even have to audition for it. I'm used to having to jump through hoops of fire to get everything and, with this, my agent said, "We have an offer from the TV show Lost to do a few episodes. It films in Hawaii. Are you interested in that?" And I said, "Oh, hell yeah!" I went out there for just another guest spot. I've done a lot of them, so I didn't get overly excited about it. My wife was very excited because she was a religious Lost fan. So, I packed up and went out there, never dreaming that it would be the only job I would have for the next four years.
IESB: What did they initially tell you about this role?
Michael: They originally told me nothing about the role. I never exchanged a word with a director or writer, or anything like that. They sent me the script for the first episode I did and I flew to Hawaii on the night of January 10, 2006 and, the next morning, I was hanging from a palm tree in the jungle. That was it. I was just winging it, from there on. But, that's often the case in TV. You don't get the luxury of a lot of preparation and discussion. You just show up and do it. Luckily, this was a character that I had an instinctive handle on, thank goodness. It was a good fit for me. I knew how much ambiguity to invest it with, right from the get-go.
IESB: How do you see Ben Linus? Do you view him as a villain, or do you think he's misunderstood?
Michael: I just see him as complicated and mysterious. He's a man with an agenda or mission, and he tries his best with the resources he has to get things done. He's in some great contest or battle that we still don't fully understand, or at least I don't.
IESB: At what point did you realize that this character would be playing such an integral part of the story, and when did you find out that you'd be continuing on the show for as long as you have?
Michael: I think after about five or six episodes, I began to see that the writing was coming my direction. They seemed to be very happy with what I was doing with the role. I guess like most viewers of the show, at that time, I hadn't imagined that the show was going to be something a whole lot more than just castaways. So, it took me awhile to think, "Wow, what if this went in some other direction? What if this show isn't about being cast away on some island?" And, I began to think that I might be important. But, you never think that you're going to be taken on. A guest actor's dream is to be given a guest spot that's so good that the writers decide to keep you forever. You can't even let yourself hope for that, but it is your secret dream. So, I couldn't really, truly let myself believe it until we got the offer, and the offer came in the summer between Season 2 and Season 3.
IESB: What have been the biggest surprises for you, in playing this character? Have there been things about him that really shocked you?
Michael: Sure. I've often been shocked by what they have me doing. Mostly I've been shocked by his bad deeds. I continue to think of him as a man of both good and bad impulses. Not necessarily an evil man, and maybe even a heroic man. I don't know. But, when the scripts come along where Ben does heinous things, that always takes me back a little bit. I have to remind myself that not everybody thinks of my character the way I think of him.
IESB: As an actor, do you have to justify those actions to yourself?
Michael: Yes, in a way. I have to find a way to play it, and I won't play anything just purely villainously. I just think everything is complicated, so everything should be played to appear to be complicated because that's the truth of life. I guess I do a little bit of a sell job on myself, but mainly it's just challenging. I'm going to do this bad thing, but my job is to not let the audience think that that's all there is to it. I'm supposed to keep them wondering.
IESB: What do you think it is about this character that has made viewers so intrigued by him? Have you been surprised by the reaction that you've received?
Michael: Yeah. It's overwhelming. People are so interested in him and have studied him so closely. They've studied his ticks and his nuances. Many viewers know the history of the character and the history of the moments of the character better than I do, but I know how to get inside him and play him, so I guess I do have that advantage.
IESB: What been the most enjoyable thing about playing this character, and what do you think you'll miss most about playing him?
Michael: I will miss the high-crackling drama of some of those confrontations in small rooms. I will miss playing an electrifying scene, like invading Charles Widmore's (Alan Dale) bedroom in the middle of the night, to tell him that I'm going to kill his daughter. It doesn't get much better than that. You don't get a thing with much more stakes or much more electricity than a scene like that, or a scene like when John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) is trying to hang himself and I talk him out of it, and then I strangle him. That's a roller coaster ride.
I can't think of a play that has more compressed tension and danger than those scenes, so I do love doing that. But, I've always been a fan of those kinds of scenes, and I hope I can continue to do them, all my life. Another thing I've enjoyed on Lost is the sillier stuff. I love when Ben is droll, or he gets a joke on people, or he's sarcastic. I loved it when Ben and Hurley (Jorge Garcia) shared a candy bar. I loved it when Ben served Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) and he became a sort of frumpy housewife. He was so domestic, which seemed so out of character, and yet, maybe in some ways, really perfectly in character. I don't know.
IESB: What have you enjoyed about working with these actors? Are there things that you'll take away from having worked with them?
Michael: A lot of my best scenes are with Terry O'Quinn, who plays John Locke. I don't know that I've learned something new from it, but it re-enforced my sense that this work is supposed to be easy and fun. We're not supposed to get into character, or anything like that. Terry and I show up in a good mood, we're light-hearted, we're good at what we do, we get it done quickly and easily, we have fun while we do it, and then we clock out, at the end of the day. He's an actor after my own heart. I like the way he works. I think it's the same way I work. I hope that he and I have many other chances to act together, in the future.
IESB: Has it been nice to have most of the previous cast members return for this final season? Does that help give things a sense of closure for everyone?
Michael: I think it does. Many of them, I never worked with, so they're still strangers to me, and I'm still not working with them. I'm not in those scenes, so people from Season 1 are coming and going and I never even lay eyes on them.
IESB: Is it difficult to work on a show with such a large ensemble? Are there people you wish you could have had more scenes with, or any scenes with?
Michael: Yeah, sure. People that are long gone. There are regulars on this series that I've never had a line of dialogue with. I've never had a line of dialogue with Jin (Daniel Dae Kim). I've never really had a line of dialogue with Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick). I've never done a scene with Claire (Emilie de Ravin). There are certain people I work with all the time, and some people I only see coming and going, or at parties and things. It's really odd.
IESB: How has it been to work in Hawaii? What had that added to this whole process for you?
Michael: I think it's essential to the show. Hawaii is a perfect location for the show. It's such a paradise and it has such a particular look, with those rippling green mountains and the beautiful beaches. They needed to shoot in a paradise of some kind. For me, I really like it here. I think the landscape is gorgeous and the weather is unbelievable. But, it's also logistically difficult for me. I miss my life on the mainland. I'm so far from home and loved ones. The time change is crazy. It's been tricky to be here. My life will be so much simpler when this is over and I can live in the same place with [my wife] Carrie [Preston], on a regular basis.
IESB: Had you spent any time there before?
Michael: No, I had never been to Hawaii before, in my life. It really is beautiful, and more complicated. Well, everything is, isn't it? But, it's not just hula dancers and Tiki bars. It's so much more than that. So, it's also been really educational to be here.
IESB: What's it been like to work on a show that's so shrouded in secrecy? Is that more fun for you, as an actor, or does it make it more difficult to know how to portray your character?
Michael: I don't really have anything to compare it to, but it's fine with me. I love that the show is a network of mysteries. Because we have a fanatical following, naturally the producers have to be careful about what gets leaked and spoilers, and all of that, so we are under some restrictions, in terms of security, but it's fine. It's not a big deal. At the end of the day, you have to remind yourself that it's a TV show. We're not in the CIA.
IESB: With all of the unresolved issues that have come up on the show, that the viewers are hoping they'll finally get to learn the answers to, is there any one thing that you were anxiously to learn the answer to yourself?
Michael: I have lots of little particular things. There's a mystery in Ben's backstory that I always thought we would get to explore dramatically, and now I believe we'll never go there. When Ben was a little boy, he was befriended by a little girl in the Dharma Initiative, and she gave him a carved wooden doll that he's kept all his life. I always thought, "Oh, we're going to find out what that was about. We're going to find out who that girl was and who she is now, and maybe something really interesting will be in there." And I think the writers probably thought that too, but now they're just not going to have time to get to it. I think that's going to be an unanswered mystery, forever.
IESB: Is that disappointing for you to not learn what that was really all about?
Michael: Yeah. It would have been nice, but maybe it's more wonderful that it is a tantalizing and unanswered question, and a path not chosen. Maybe it's better that way. There's going to be lots of them. We're not going to answer everything, I can guarantee you that. Some people are going to be satisfied, and some people aren't. The people who are satisfied now, will probably be satisfied with the ending. The people who are continually dissatisfied with Lost, I don't think there's any way we can satisfy them. I think it will be a dramatically satisfying ending, but many things will be left open.
IESB: Do you think some of these answers will be shocking for people, when they're revealed?
Michael: I hope they are. I hope they're mind-blowing. My dream is that we learn things at the end that completely change what we think about everything we've seen for six years. Maybe that's not possible. My ambition for the ending was that we all went, "Oh, my God!," and had to go back and start watching Season 1 again.
IESB: In what was has being a part of this show changed your life? Can you see how big of an impact the show has had on television, or do you think you'll need more distance for that?
Michael: I can't really absorb the scale of Lost's impact, in the present. We work in Hawaii where we're away from the media, and all the glamour and the fuss and the paparazzi. In a way, we've been on an expedition for many years, on location, in a remote place that's beautiful and intoxicating, but far, far away. There's something a little bit unreal about our lives here, or at least I can say that for myself.
As far as the legacy of what Lost means in the great scheme of television, I don't know. That's too hard a call. There aren't many TV shows that hold up, a generation later, but there are some. If nothing else, at this time in the evolution of TV, as a medium that is beginning to bleed into other mediums, I think Lost was on the cutting edge. To be a show that lead us from the screen onto the Internet with chat rooms and the blogosphere, and spawned an inclusive TV viewer culture, where people felt like they participated, and people wrote books and created art and wrote music, based on their passion for this show, is unprecedented.
IESB: What was your reaction to winning the Emmy for your performance? Were you surprised by that?
Michael: After being nominated three years in a row, you begin to wish that you could win it, just to have that over with and to bring a sense of closure to all those nerve-wracking awards experiences. It's a great honor. It's like part of you can stop worrying whether you're a fraud or not. Part of you can say, "You know what? You really are a qualified actor now. And it's not just you that thinks it. A bunch of other people that do the same work, think it also."
So, it's a relief, in a way. A fraction of your self-doubt can be put aside. I like that about it. The events themselves are really nerve-wracking and challenging. It's an awful lot of attention, and you try not to get too dizzy about it all. The best part of Emmys night is usually getting home after, and taking off the clothes, getting into your pjs and relaxing. Then you can begin to digest what the day has been about.
IESB: You've played some other great villainous characters in your career. Do you think there's something about you that leads people to cast you as these misunderstood characters with villainous tendencies? How do you react to being named one of the greatest villains in television history by Variety?
Michael: It's all right with me. Villains are great characters, and I am a character actor. I don't know how I got these parts. I also do a lot of other things and, eventually, people will see that. But, for now, I'm happy to be one of people's favorite villains. I just think I'm a solid actor. Maybe there's something about my look. Maybe it's my theater training. Maybe my characters speak a little more carefully, and Americans are suspicious of that. There is a great streak of anti-intellectualism in American culture, and I think people are suspicious of people that are too facile or good with words. We are a nation that professes to prefer deeds to words, so if anyone's too smooth at talking, people's guard goes up. It may be a cultural phenomenon, in a way like that. Mainly it's just an accidental collision of me, an actor, and these certain roles that I seem to have a handle on.
IESB: What sort of reaction do you get from fans? Are people ever scared to talk to you?
Michael: A lot of people are nervous when they run into me. I don't know if that's because my character looms large, fictionally, in their imagination, so they weren't expecting to see him in the flesh, in front of them on the street, but I think people are also delighted to find me fearsome. It's like carnival rides. It's thrilling to bump into someone that has scared you on TV. That's a bit exciting, and I think it makes people happy.
IESB: Looking back on this whole experience, what do you think you'll remember most about working on this show, with this cast and in this location?
Michael: I'll remember the landscape and certain beautiful days when it rained or the scenery was more breathtaking than the story we were telling. I'll remember certain scenes and certain landmarks in the evolution of the character. I'll remember certain parties that we had on warm Hawaiian nights. It's all that stuff that you remember from spending a long time in an exotic place. There are bits of it that get under your skin. I'll never be able to hear a slat key guitar played again without thinking of Hawaii. I'll remember the sound of their language and certain phrases. I'll remember all of that.
IESB: Do you remember what it was that first inspired you to want to become an actor? And, having been in the business for as long as you have, do you still have that same passion for the craft now?
Michael: Yeah, and it's a hard thing to hold onto. People ask, "What's the hardest thing about your job?," and I say, "Fighting fatigue and cynicism." You want to continue to be fired up for it and love it. I fell in love with the idea of being an actor when I was a little boy and I went to see a school play. In our town, they did "Arsenic and Old Lace" and a boy that went to my church played the insane brother that thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt. He was very funny and also very glamorous, and I thought, "If I could ever be half that cool, I would die happy." That's the earliest memory I have of the bug having bit me.
IESB: Is it exciting for both you and your wife (Carrie Preston plays Merlotte's waitress Arlene on True Blood) to be a part of two of the most popular shows currently on television? Are you guys very supportive of each other's career?
Michael: Oh, yeah! We're thrilled. This is a good chapter in our marriage. Both of us are on genre shows that have cult followings and we both get a lot of attention from it. And, we're able to play the mortgage.
IESB: Have you given any thought at all, as to what you'd like to do after Lost?
Michael: I would like to bounce around a little bit and maybe do a stage play. It would be nice to get back to that, before I forget how to do it. I think that's likely. But, I don't have any solid plans at all yet. We'll see what happens.
IESB: Are there any specific types of roles or particular genres you'd still like to do, but haven't gotten the chance to do yet?
Michael: I'd like to play someone funny for a change. Comedy comes easy for me. I'm very good at that
With the show's Final Season having just premiered, the national phenomenon that ignited the return of intelligent and thought-provoking television is promising to answer many of the questions that loyal viewers have hotly debated since Oceanic Air flight 815 tore apart in mid-air and crashed on a remote island, leaving 48 passengers alive and stranded in the South Pacific.
Even though the cast is sworn to secrecy on all the details of the Final Season, in this exclusive interview with IESB, Michael Emerson talked about going from guest star to playing one of the most integral characters on the series, understanding who Ben Linus is, working in the paradise of Hawaii and what it's been like to be a part of the legacy of Lost.
IESB: Since you came into the show a little bit later, how did you originally get involved with Lost?
Michael: It was unusual because it came as an offer. I didn't even have to audition for it. I'm used to having to jump through hoops of fire to get everything and, with this, my agent said, "We have an offer from the TV show Lost to do a few episodes. It films in Hawaii. Are you interested in that?" And I said, "Oh, hell yeah!" I went out there for just another guest spot. I've done a lot of them, so I didn't get overly excited about it. My wife was very excited because she was a religious Lost fan. So, I packed up and went out there, never dreaming that it would be the only job I would have for the next four years.
IESB: What did they initially tell you about this role?
Michael: They originally told me nothing about the role. I never exchanged a word with a director or writer, or anything like that. They sent me the script for the first episode I did and I flew to Hawaii on the night of January 10, 2006 and, the next morning, I was hanging from a palm tree in the jungle. That was it. I was just winging it, from there on. But, that's often the case in TV. You don't get the luxury of a lot of preparation and discussion. You just show up and do it. Luckily, this was a character that I had an instinctive handle on, thank goodness. It was a good fit for me. I knew how much ambiguity to invest it with, right from the get-go.
IESB: How do you see Ben Linus? Do you view him as a villain, or do you think he's misunderstood?
Michael: I just see him as complicated and mysterious. He's a man with an agenda or mission, and he tries his best with the resources he has to get things done. He's in some great contest or battle that we still don't fully understand, or at least I don't.
IESB: At what point did you realize that this character would be playing such an integral part of the story, and when did you find out that you'd be continuing on the show for as long as you have?
Michael: I think after about five or six episodes, I began to see that the writing was coming my direction. They seemed to be very happy with what I was doing with the role. I guess like most viewers of the show, at that time, I hadn't imagined that the show was going to be something a whole lot more than just castaways. So, it took me awhile to think, "Wow, what if this went in some other direction? What if this show isn't about being cast away on some island?" And, I began to think that I might be important. But, you never think that you're going to be taken on. A guest actor's dream is to be given a guest spot that's so good that the writers decide to keep you forever. You can't even let yourself hope for that, but it is your secret dream. So, I couldn't really, truly let myself believe it until we got the offer, and the offer came in the summer between Season 2 and Season 3.
IESB: What have been the biggest surprises for you, in playing this character? Have there been things about him that really shocked you?
Michael: Sure. I've often been shocked by what they have me doing. Mostly I've been shocked by his bad deeds. I continue to think of him as a man of both good and bad impulses. Not necessarily an evil man, and maybe even a heroic man. I don't know. But, when the scripts come along where Ben does heinous things, that always takes me back a little bit. I have to remind myself that not everybody thinks of my character the way I think of him.
IESB: As an actor, do you have to justify those actions to yourself?
Michael: Yes, in a way. I have to find a way to play it, and I won't play anything just purely villainously. I just think everything is complicated, so everything should be played to appear to be complicated because that's the truth of life. I guess I do a little bit of a sell job on myself, but mainly it's just challenging. I'm going to do this bad thing, but my job is to not let the audience think that that's all there is to it. I'm supposed to keep them wondering.
IESB: What do you think it is about this character that has made viewers so intrigued by him? Have you been surprised by the reaction that you've received?
Michael: Yeah. It's overwhelming. People are so interested in him and have studied him so closely. They've studied his ticks and his nuances. Many viewers know the history of the character and the history of the moments of the character better than I do, but I know how to get inside him and play him, so I guess I do have that advantage.
IESB: What been the most enjoyable thing about playing this character, and what do you think you'll miss most about playing him?
Michael: I will miss the high-crackling drama of some of those confrontations in small rooms. I will miss playing an electrifying scene, like invading Charles Widmore's (Alan Dale) bedroom in the middle of the night, to tell him that I'm going to kill his daughter. It doesn't get much better than that. You don't get a thing with much more stakes or much more electricity than a scene like that, or a scene like when John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) is trying to hang himself and I talk him out of it, and then I strangle him. That's a roller coaster ride.
I can't think of a play that has more compressed tension and danger than those scenes, so I do love doing that. But, I've always been a fan of those kinds of scenes, and I hope I can continue to do them, all my life. Another thing I've enjoyed on Lost is the sillier stuff. I love when Ben is droll, or he gets a joke on people, or he's sarcastic. I loved it when Ben and Hurley (Jorge Garcia) shared a candy bar. I loved it when Ben served Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) and he became a sort of frumpy housewife. He was so domestic, which seemed so out of character, and yet, maybe in some ways, really perfectly in character. I don't know.
IESB: What have you enjoyed about working with these actors? Are there things that you'll take away from having worked with them?
Michael: A lot of my best scenes are with Terry O'Quinn, who plays John Locke. I don't know that I've learned something new from it, but it re-enforced my sense that this work is supposed to be easy and fun. We're not supposed to get into character, or anything like that. Terry and I show up in a good mood, we're light-hearted, we're good at what we do, we get it done quickly and easily, we have fun while we do it, and then we clock out, at the end of the day. He's an actor after my own heart. I like the way he works. I think it's the same way I work. I hope that he and I have many other chances to act together, in the future.
IESB: Has it been nice to have most of the previous cast members return for this final season? Does that help give things a sense of closure for everyone?
Michael: I think it does. Many of them, I never worked with, so they're still strangers to me, and I'm still not working with them. I'm not in those scenes, so people from Season 1 are coming and going and I never even lay eyes on them.
IESB: Is it difficult to work on a show with such a large ensemble? Are there people you wish you could have had more scenes with, or any scenes with?
Michael: Yeah, sure. People that are long gone. There are regulars on this series that I've never had a line of dialogue with. I've never had a line of dialogue with Jin (Daniel Dae Kim). I've never really had a line of dialogue with Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick). I've never done a scene with Claire (Emilie de Ravin). There are certain people I work with all the time, and some people I only see coming and going, or at parties and things. It's really odd.
IESB: How has it been to work in Hawaii? What had that added to this whole process for you?
Michael: I think it's essential to the show. Hawaii is a perfect location for the show. It's such a paradise and it has such a particular look, with those rippling green mountains and the beautiful beaches. They needed to shoot in a paradise of some kind. For me, I really like it here. I think the landscape is gorgeous and the weather is unbelievable. But, it's also logistically difficult for me. I miss my life on the mainland. I'm so far from home and loved ones. The time change is crazy. It's been tricky to be here. My life will be so much simpler when this is over and I can live in the same place with [my wife] Carrie [Preston], on a regular basis.
IESB: Had you spent any time there before?
Michael: No, I had never been to Hawaii before, in my life. It really is beautiful, and more complicated. Well, everything is, isn't it? But, it's not just hula dancers and Tiki bars. It's so much more than that. So, it's also been really educational to be here.
IESB: What's it been like to work on a show that's so shrouded in secrecy? Is that more fun for you, as an actor, or does it make it more difficult to know how to portray your character?
Michael: I don't really have anything to compare it to, but it's fine with me. I love that the show is a network of mysteries. Because we have a fanatical following, naturally the producers have to be careful about what gets leaked and spoilers, and all of that, so we are under some restrictions, in terms of security, but it's fine. It's not a big deal. At the end of the day, you have to remind yourself that it's a TV show. We're not in the CIA.
IESB: With all of the unresolved issues that have come up on the show, that the viewers are hoping they'll finally get to learn the answers to, is there any one thing that you were anxiously to learn the answer to yourself?
Michael: I have lots of little particular things. There's a mystery in Ben's backstory that I always thought we would get to explore dramatically, and now I believe we'll never go there. When Ben was a little boy, he was befriended by a little girl in the Dharma Initiative, and she gave him a carved wooden doll that he's kept all his life. I always thought, "Oh, we're going to find out what that was about. We're going to find out who that girl was and who she is now, and maybe something really interesting will be in there." And I think the writers probably thought that too, but now they're just not going to have time to get to it. I think that's going to be an unanswered mystery, forever.
IESB: Is that disappointing for you to not learn what that was really all about?
Michael: Yeah. It would have been nice, but maybe it's more wonderful that it is a tantalizing and unanswered question, and a path not chosen. Maybe it's better that way. There's going to be lots of them. We're not going to answer everything, I can guarantee you that. Some people are going to be satisfied, and some people aren't. The people who are satisfied now, will probably be satisfied with the ending. The people who are continually dissatisfied with Lost, I don't think there's any way we can satisfy them. I think it will be a dramatically satisfying ending, but many things will be left open.
IESB: Do you think some of these answers will be shocking for people, when they're revealed?
Michael: I hope they are. I hope they're mind-blowing. My dream is that we learn things at the end that completely change what we think about everything we've seen for six years. Maybe that's not possible. My ambition for the ending was that we all went, "Oh, my God!," and had to go back and start watching Season 1 again.
IESB: In what was has being a part of this show changed your life? Can you see how big of an impact the show has had on television, or do you think you'll need more distance for that?
Michael: I can't really absorb the scale of Lost's impact, in the present. We work in Hawaii where we're away from the media, and all the glamour and the fuss and the paparazzi. In a way, we've been on an expedition for many years, on location, in a remote place that's beautiful and intoxicating, but far, far away. There's something a little bit unreal about our lives here, or at least I can say that for myself.
As far as the legacy of what Lost means in the great scheme of television, I don't know. That's too hard a call. There aren't many TV shows that hold up, a generation later, but there are some. If nothing else, at this time in the evolution of TV, as a medium that is beginning to bleed into other mediums, I think Lost was on the cutting edge. To be a show that lead us from the screen onto the Internet with chat rooms and the blogosphere, and spawned an inclusive TV viewer culture, where people felt like they participated, and people wrote books and created art and wrote music, based on their passion for this show, is unprecedented.
IESB: What was your reaction to winning the Emmy for your performance? Were you surprised by that?
Michael: After being nominated three years in a row, you begin to wish that you could win it, just to have that over with and to bring a sense of closure to all those nerve-wracking awards experiences. It's a great honor. It's like part of you can stop worrying whether you're a fraud or not. Part of you can say, "You know what? You really are a qualified actor now. And it's not just you that thinks it. A bunch of other people that do the same work, think it also."
So, it's a relief, in a way. A fraction of your self-doubt can be put aside. I like that about it. The events themselves are really nerve-wracking and challenging. It's an awful lot of attention, and you try not to get too dizzy about it all. The best part of Emmys night is usually getting home after, and taking off the clothes, getting into your pjs and relaxing. Then you can begin to digest what the day has been about.
IESB: You've played some other great villainous characters in your career. Do you think there's something about you that leads people to cast you as these misunderstood characters with villainous tendencies? How do you react to being named one of the greatest villains in television history by Variety?
Michael: It's all right with me. Villains are great characters, and I am a character actor. I don't know how I got these parts. I also do a lot of other things and, eventually, people will see that. But, for now, I'm happy to be one of people's favorite villains. I just think I'm a solid actor. Maybe there's something about my look. Maybe it's my theater training. Maybe my characters speak a little more carefully, and Americans are suspicious of that. There is a great streak of anti-intellectualism in American culture, and I think people are suspicious of people that are too facile or good with words. We are a nation that professes to prefer deeds to words, so if anyone's too smooth at talking, people's guard goes up. It may be a cultural phenomenon, in a way like that. Mainly it's just an accidental collision of me, an actor, and these certain roles that I seem to have a handle on.
IESB: What sort of reaction do you get from fans? Are people ever scared to talk to you?
Michael: A lot of people are nervous when they run into me. I don't know if that's because my character looms large, fictionally, in their imagination, so they weren't expecting to see him in the flesh, in front of them on the street, but I think people are also delighted to find me fearsome. It's like carnival rides. It's thrilling to bump into someone that has scared you on TV. That's a bit exciting, and I think it makes people happy.
IESB: Looking back on this whole experience, what do you think you'll remember most about working on this show, with this cast and in this location?
Michael: I'll remember the landscape and certain beautiful days when it rained or the scenery was more breathtaking than the story we were telling. I'll remember certain scenes and certain landmarks in the evolution of the character. I'll remember certain parties that we had on warm Hawaiian nights. It's all that stuff that you remember from spending a long time in an exotic place. There are bits of it that get under your skin. I'll never be able to hear a slat key guitar played again without thinking of Hawaii. I'll remember the sound of their language and certain phrases. I'll remember all of that.
IESB: Do you remember what it was that first inspired you to want to become an actor? And, having been in the business for as long as you have, do you still have that same passion for the craft now?
Michael: Yeah, and it's a hard thing to hold onto. People ask, "What's the hardest thing about your job?," and I say, "Fighting fatigue and cynicism." You want to continue to be fired up for it and love it. I fell in love with the idea of being an actor when I was a little boy and I went to see a school play. In our town, they did "Arsenic and Old Lace" and a boy that went to my church played the insane brother that thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt. He was very funny and also very glamorous, and I thought, "If I could ever be half that cool, I would die happy." That's the earliest memory I have of the bug having bit me.
IESB: Is it exciting for both you and your wife (Carrie Preston plays Merlotte's waitress Arlene on True Blood) to be a part of two of the most popular shows currently on television? Are you guys very supportive of each other's career?
Michael: Oh, yeah! We're thrilled. This is a good chapter in our marriage. Both of us are on genre shows that have cult followings and we both get a lot of attention from it. And, we're able to play the mortgage.
IESB: Have you given any thought at all, as to what you'd like to do after Lost?
Michael: I would like to bounce around a little bit and maybe do a stage play. It would be nice to get back to that, before I forget how to do it. I think that's likely. But, I don't have any solid plans at all yet. We'll see what happens.
IESB: Are there any specific types of roles or particular genres you'd still like to do, but haven't gotten the chance to do yet?
Michael: I'd like to play someone funny for a change. Comedy comes easy for me. I'm very good at that