you just finished up Joe Goldberg you've been playing him for what since like 2017 uh yeah yeah so just about 7 years and now you're done I'm finished except for the release you know sure the the release which is its own kind of work its own kind of um do you feel in character for the for the for the pr no not not even close the part of me that is that might match it is that there's always something Grim about uh my relationship to to the character and therefore the whole thing because I am
s sort of tasked the one person throughout the entire apparatus who who who need who kind of like you know it it makes sense I need to ground it everyone else is allowed to enjoy it as a piece of um entertainment or froy pop whatever you know but if I don't ground it then it's like well that's when I think we're in danger of consuming it in a way that is like you know damaging to our to our digestive system you know what I mean because because at the end of the day he's a protagonist
who is uh who's uh who's uh just he's well he is what he is he's a murderer and he's a and he's a manipulator and he's um an abuser and all those things and those words are like they're so they're heavy you know but if they're not at least in directly in the context and the subtext and the preex text of of of all the conversation around the show to me I feel like that's ironically when I get uncomfortable I heard you say once it might have been to rain Wilson that the best actors aren't
aren't just like making something up they're not just pretending to be somebody they're kind of themselves in many ways and so like the best actors they access a part of themselves and you were talking about how it can be difficult to separate the actor from the the character and I found it really interesting and then I did think that you play a psychopathic murderer so what part of me is that that's right well not not Psychopathic or sociopathic but like okay so you know broadly what is the truth of this thing we call mental health
mental illness uh uh mentality what is the portal to what are the causes of sociopathy psychopathy you know we don't we understand some of them um well I think and then others we don't there's still this question of nature versus nurture for me it's my understanding and I suppose my personal conviction that there's no one is no one is made uh uh that way it's it's caused and its causes could be could be in utero still they could be you know the stress of mother the wound fetus all that stuff I don't know but so
what are the portals to it what do I understand of the portals to Rage or rather the portals to sociopathy and psychopathy for me are trauma and rage so then I think of for myself what you know what traumas do I understand in my past what what what do I understand about my own rage my own capacity for rage how it blinds my uh it blinds my my my other senses really you know so you're not accessing like the surface level part of the character but but looking at like the the causes of that kind
of behavior and tapping into that and presumably that's something you've got to work out for yourself like director writers aren't telling you yeah and they don't and I don't I actually don't think it's really their they don't need to you know [Music] we obviously for anybody who's seen the show it's like there's there's indications there's the there's the broad major signs of it and he he does have like serious childhood abuse you know um but actually many people do and they don't become like this so then what are the other causes you know I I
don't know there to be clear as well I think Joe Goldberg as a character is not in any way a clinical portrayal or portrait of a of a of a person who really has this psychological makeup in fact I whether I'm right or wrong I don't know but it's my it's my position now that all is said and done and I've seen the totality of his behavior I don't I think he's too many things I think he's too many things at once I don't think that that's possible for somebody um but you know that's where
we're a show and we're a construct meant to be a a portal into well I guess ideally a conversation like this one you know I find interesting the way that a lot of like antagonist characters evil characters are presented by modern media as complex result of their environment and that's something that you're hinting at there but for a lot of people it becomes a sort of apologetic for the character and so a lot of these like there's a lot of expanded universe stuff where people tell the Back stories of the of the Joker or evil
characters and and they almost sort of try to humanize them in a way that I think some people think is a little bit Troublesome interestingly some people don't do this like when Brian Kenston talks about Walter White who is undeniably an incredibly complex character he always just sort of says he's like stops people and says like no he's like a he's like a murderer and the Terrible person is is that the relationship you have with this character like do do you do any kind of defense of the of the moral character of this person based
on those characteristics or is it just like it's a bad guy like you know full stop I've suppose I've done both I've done the latter more uhhuh I've I've somewhat you know notably not spoken out against the character I mean some people have made it to be that I I think what I've just done is remind people in that way like no he's a he's a murderer don't forget he he kills her in the end sorry that's not a spoiler it's I mean it's clear you know it's from day one that's what he that's the
whole purpose of the it's the show is called you and it's called you because in the book which is based on um it's written in the uh in the first person you you walk into the store and I notice that you are wearing this and so so the so the the reader is made to feel uh through that literary device literally like the victim the object of this man's uh desire and eventually rage and and lethal uh rage and that's um I don't even remember what your question is at that point at this point but
you know that's that's a a very strong device it's a very very very strong device and and I'm recalling your question now so this point I would love for the work to speak for itself and I think in time it's Legacy it will but you know it we live in an age where it's like you can't do a thing and just let the thing be the thing you also have to talk about it a lot in press yeah you also have to talk about it a lot in press and um so because I have to
do that I have just thought like how much can I bring reality into this conversation because he's not people speak about him like he's a romantic hero and um you know he's not he he's clearly not but the point is that he is dangerously and disturbingly close to and following the logic of romantic heroism yeah which is so often the case for the self-justification of the of the character himself not you justifying the character but internally the world it's it's I mean that's what Joe Goldberg constantly does like I'm doing this because I have to
this is for love this is for this is for you um I'm in you particularly here though because you're the second bigh that I've had on the show the other being R Wilson that's right and we I sort of dug into the be high Faith a little bit with rain Wilson but I'm sure that you've talked a lot to interviewers and to curious members of the public about how difficult it is to play a psychopath and all of this kind of stuff but specifically with regards to a religious belief I've heard you complain before about
how you'll sometimes read scripts and there'll beist with like essentially blasphemy people saying oh my God you know Jesus Christ and how like being a be believing Jesus is a manifestation of God it's a little bit uncomfortable and you kind of would rather not and then I think surely that's turned up to 11 when it comes to this kind of character so is there any like religious conflict for you in trying to access that that part of yourself with this character definitely as the way you named it definitely you know as a person who grew
up feeling profoundly like resistant to and wary of and and just against religion you know um that's not the word that that that it it's not the way it kind of appears in my own sort of thinking and Sensibility but yeah basically as you said it yeah you know the the funny thing about the name Jesus which is invoked somewhat ironically or paradoxically or fittingly by you know all of Western Civilization regardless of what they Proclaim their belief to be God actually a word too you know with a lowercase G um a word I never
would have used seriously you know until my mid 20s um they're expletives you know both both the name Jesus and the word god are are are words that are that are inimitably unparalleled in their invocation of a certain kind of like ah God you know or Jesus Christ you know those those two words I'm telling you man those words are those three words God and Jesus Christ are used as much or more than any other expletive in in scripts in a way that it's clearly part of a modern vernacular and it has and I'm telling
you when you try to replace that word with something else it doesn't work at least for the person who wrote it I I I got into this um and you know by the way I approached this never having thought about it deeply yeah I just started to realize this being the first role I took after becoming a bah High and um yeah like reorienting my interior life you know as I understood it to be in relationship to the body of baha's teachings I I found that saying the word god which I had come to say
reverently in prayer personally you know in my in my mind um and the name Jesus Christ which you know again growing up so not so not religious or Christian really really did view uh religious religiosity and Christianity as well I mean I think I think I just adopted this loose approximation of the Marxist view like religion is the opiate of the masses you know and having never read any of that literature myself right it's funny how that happens yeah exactly so you know so in a sense I I've never thought of it in this particular
way right now but in this particular way but becoming a bive for me was becoming was truly coming to think for myself and once I truly thought for myself all words had a different meaning particularly God and then this other one Jesus Christ and I just noticed they're everywhere they're they're just littered everywhere as expletives this is the longest answer possible to such a short question but yeah it it's it's a really interesting one because I just started to change it I I tried to change it in the voiceovers i' made it a joke I
would invoke all the names of different Saints and different um I think at one point I said Thon is which I believe is the is the something from Scientology isn't it oh I was just trying to use other something I think I said Mother Teresa I think I invoked the name of Gandhi at some point I was just trying to use other ones and I knew that none of them would work yeah but it was sort of a joke that I was playing with myself um because nothing works the way the like God nothing works
like the name of God I think I think there's something in the idea of being an expletive too though because like it's easy enough to replace words but the point of expletives is that they say something very specific and it is a bit cring making when if you watch like a a pre-watershed soap Opa and the characters aren't allowed to swear and it's like uh you know somebody's getting robbed yeah and they're like give me the flipping money right now and it's just it's it's not just a bit cringe but it's also like unbelievable it's
authentic yeah like I don't think that's how people speak and it is true that it's just become so embedded in the language that that's that's probably why but I do think that people aren't actually thinking about cursing God or Jesus Christ as people when they say these words no not at all no yeah and by the way I I don't see it as actually Blasphemous yeah right I just see it as me realizing the power of those words and wanting to not use those words in that way because I had all my life again yeah
it's it's it's kind of it's kind of eerie to think like you know you might be it's like sorcery or something you saying a magical spell Without Really realizing it you're invoking this this really important name and yeah not knowing what you're doing you know yeah I mean again you know yes on one hand but I you know the mention of something like sorcery or Superstition you know that to me is like also not to me it's not it's not and I mean you're rigorously rational so I know that's not what you're saying but but
I but I think if if if I if I try to dig into what it is like what I what I think it might be it's a difference yes it's it's an important difference and that difference is not because I'm afraid of sinning or some kind of evil uh consequence I think that difference help helps me at all times to continually reorient myself towards reality if you enjoyed that clip you can watch the full episode with pen badley by clicking the link that's on your screen to support my work and get early ad free access
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