The Hollywood Reporter recently gathered Riz Ahmed, Ewan McGregor, Billy Bob Thornton, Sterling K. Brown, John Lithgow and Jeffrey Wright for a drama actor's roundtable interview. Here is an excerpt:
Jeffrey, there's a big reveal in Westworld where we find out your character, Bernard, is a robot. How much did you know?
WRIGHT I found out that morning. I showed up to shoot and …
ALL What? No, no! (Laughter.)
WRIGHT No. No. (Laughs.)
Some actors prefer that.
WRIGHT I don't think it would have been possible with this because … if you look back at the previous episodes, you'll see these bread crumbs. I didn't know when we shot the pilot. But when we came back, [showrunner] Lisa Joy pulled me aside and said, "Bernard's uh …" You know, an incredibly articulate woman who stumbled around for 20, 30 seconds. "Um, um, he's very complicated. How do I say this? How do I …?" And then she dropped it on me. And yeah, it was necessary because there are little flashes of forecasting that I would throw in.
Do the rest of you like knowing where your characters are headed?
LITHGOW I've been in two situations now where when I was offered a role — the first was Dexter and the second is [NBC's] Trial & Error — the writers told me the entire story but said I couldn't tell anyone, including the other actors. So I went through Dexter playing the Trinity Killer with all these secrets. They didn't intend to tell me everything, but when they pitched it to me, I kept saying, "No, but what about this? What about that?" So I knew the whole story and nobody else did, including the directors.
AHMED Wow.
LITHGOW There was a moment where my character was sitting at a counter watching TV and a murder was being reported and it was clear to the audience that I had done the murder. In [truth], I had not. And the director, Keith Gordon, who's a really good director, said something to me that [revealed] that he didn't know himself. I had to take him aside and say, "You know what's going on, don't you?" And he didn't!
WRIGHT On Westworld, we all had our own secrets and there'd be a flurry of texts among the cast when individual secrets were revealed. We'd go, "What?!" I knew more than most because there were multiple layers to this thing. I was satisfied with my pile of knowledge, but there were betting lines being offered and odds being issued.
Riz, you did a phenomenal amount of research for your role. How did it inform your performance?
AHMED I went to the Rikers Island prison, which thankfully I hear they're closing because some of the stories that I heard there were wild. Forget turning up there as a new inmate; if you turn up there as a corrections officer, the inmates will test you. So, if you're a new guy, the inmates will start messing with you or just disobeying you or being verbally abusive, and you've got to prove yourself. And I said, "Well, what does that mean? Are you extra harsh in laying down the rules?" One guy goes, "No, you have to fight them." I was like, "How do you mean? Psychologically?" He's like, "No, you take them out in cuffs, you go out into the corridor, you make sure the cameras are shut off, and you uncuff them and go at it. That's how you win respect as a C.O." So there's a kind of crazy, gladiatorial, dog-eat-dog situation there. Interviewing people who have been through the prison system, those stories are all very flashy and they stick with you, but it was [also] the detail of things, like how people just let go of family because it's too painful after a while. I'd go nuts and record people for hours.
THORNTON I've shot in a lot of prisons, and that's an environment that can really put you in there. You get it right away and you start to see how people operate. We were shooting Monster's Ball in Angola Prison in Louisiana. They call it The Farm. And Sean Combs, who was in the movie, he wasn't an actor, but he was a huge, huge star.
BROWN Never heard of him. (Laughs.)
THORNTON I'll tell you all about hip-hop later.
BROWN School me, boss.
THORNTON There is a scene when he was going to the electric chair and we shot it on death row, and it was the electric chair they used. Well, Sean is in there before the scene, and they shaved his head and all this stuff, and he said to me, "Listen, I'm nervous as hell. Man, anything you can do to help me. You got anything for me?" And I said, "You're already there, dude." He says, "What do you mean?" And I said, "You're going to the electric chair, man." And he goes, "Oh, yeah." (Laughter.)
Read the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter.
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