I wanted draw the cartoon characters, and then it all started to make sense as I was watching these classics come back to the theater like Lady and the Tramp and so forth. If you want to animated the dog, you have to know where the ribcage is and the hip bone and all that.
I love escaping into character. It's a chance to try on people that you wouldn't be brave or stupid enough to be in real life.
Sarah Cornwell has a brilliant eye for the telling detail, and a wonderfully original way of embodying family history. I was captivated by her memorable characters and the perfectly paced revelations of their surprising relationships.
I was the offbeat character that had to kiss the offbeat boys and, ugh, some of the boys they brought in. There was one boyfriend in particular, we had to climb a mountain, and he was just weird and awful, and I hated it. So the producers left a big bag of Hershey Kisses after that taping saying, "Here are some kisses you will actually enjoy. Thanks for doing this." Isn't that so nice?
I wanted to work with Barry [ Jenkins]. I am a big fan of his from Medicine for Melancholy years ago. Tarrell [Alvin McCraney] is my favorite playwright. I will do anything he asks. The characters were so clearly drawn and three dimensional. It was an easy thing to say yes to.
I just want to play interesting characters, and I want to work with the best directors I can work with.
If I find great material, or a great character, or a great director that wants to do something on TV, or whether it's in film, or whatever it is, man - as long as it's good, and on the level, I'm open to it.
It [Moonlight movie] deals with drug addiction, drug dealing, and single parenthood, but they are three dimensional characters. You understand where they are from and what they are trying to do with their lives. It is not a stereotype that has been pasted onto somebody. These are stories that come from Barry's [ Jenkins] and Tarell's [Alvin McCraney] mothers.
To me, the psychology behind the character is critical. So I work very hard to get into the mind of the man that I'm going to be playing, because number one, I want to understand why he's doing what he's doing. It's essential, it's absolutely essential.
A lot of times, when you're acting, you have to explain things to the audience, and it's boring work to do that. It's really hard to make that interesting. I like the discovery of characters. I think people are smart. Audiences are intelligent and can figure things out by just watching behaviors.
Ugly Betty' has been the most important thing I've ever done, easily. I was able to do more with one character than I can ever imagine doing again - Hilda was hilariously funny and emotionally deep... I really got to showcase what I could do with a character.
I don't think about competition. I am definitely attracted to not just playing a regular character - I don't know there's any such thing as "regular. In American Crime, I get to play a runaway who's living with her pimp in North Carolina and she's a prostitute, but she's a victim of human trafficking because she's under 18. I like those roles. That's what I wanted; I wanted to play someone that was a challenge.
The history and baggage of certain actors and characters - it goes into the movie and becomes part of it. If Keanu Reeves wasn't Keanu with all the things that make him Keanu, it wouldn't be the same for him to come in and become his Bad Batch character The Dream. It's kind of meta or next-level interesting for me.
I don't personally do that many castings. But I did get involved in "The Bad Batch," because we couldn't think of an actress that was a 3-D embodiment of the character. But when I saw Suki Waterhouse on tape, I knew she was 'it.' And I can't describe that any more than to say that I never had to really express to her the the ideas that were on the page, she just instinctively embraced it. She was Arlen, and I didn't want to f**k it up. Her instinct was just it.
I only noticed this after I had finished the film 'The Bad Batch,' and watched it again a few months later... Arlen, main character, is kind of like a shark because she keeps on moving forward. I do feel that in modern society that still is the best way to survive.
Works like 'Brave New World' and 'The Handmaiden's Tale' develop their atmosphere from a movement or a revolution, as if the world has ended and has come out to this other side. When I wrote 'The Bad Batch,' I thought that the world outside the gates that confine the 'bad' characters is simply our world today.
I'd like to say that parody is a celebration of a person's specific characteristics, as opposed to mockery.
Writers tend to hate recurring characters; there's this writer snob thing about it. But I don't have that. I feel like the challenge is always to find a cool and innovative way to do it and, obviously, to not repeat your jokes.
I actually like character work, so for me, generally speaking, I enjoy it. It's a little bit more of a comfortable suit you put back on. You can explore it and have fun with it and push the limits of it.
Losing yourself in the character opens you up in a way that no amount of precise preparation can.
I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.
Imagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing, which means, in one sense, that none of it is true. Yet in the writing, and perhaps in the reading, some of a character's actions or lines are truer than others.
As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.
She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another form behind, more and more, until his looks, his character, his soul would have eroded away . . . I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into someone quite mundane, mortally wounded with tiresome habits and irritating imperfections.
I read the script and I really liked it. It was high energy, crazy and it goes to any level to get people nuts and I thought Eve was an interesting character. At first I didn't get her, so it made me want to do the role because I wanted to dive in and see what she was about. On top of that I also wanted to work with Jason Statham because he's an amazing actor.
