My interview with the great James Spader

My interview with James Spader came out yesterday in The Philippine Star. The online link can be found here: http://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2014/10/06/1376847/get-james-spaders-blacklist. The full text is below.

James Spader as Raymond Reddington

MANILA, Philippines - “Welcome everybody! Thank you for coming,” was how Emmy-winning actor James Spader warmly greeted our group of journalists when we visited the set of his worldwide hit television series The Blacklist two weeks ago in New York.

The Blacklist is set in Washington D.C. but the actual filming takes place in a converted storage inside the Chelsea Piers in Lower Manhattan. On the day we visited, the cast was in the middle of completing episode four of the current season that premiered last week.

A recap of the Season 2 premiere: James’ character Raymond “Red” Reddington continues his pursuit of his nemesis Berlin. Harry Cooper, the FBI head, is still trying to recuperate from the wounds he sustained in the previous season while Donald Ressler is trying very hard to maintain a sound composure despite the obvious trauma he suffered from Season 1. Elizabeth Keen, meanwhile, is slowly moving on from the death of her husband, Tom, and was even granted an annulment of their fraudulent marriage. A Mossad agent was introduced to the story and so was one explosive plot twist: Red’s wife is alive and Berlin has her in captivity.

You have to tune in to AXN every Tuesday at 10 p.m. to follow what’s going to happen this season to Red, Liz, Harry, Donald and all your favorite characters of The Blacklist because I can’t tell you anything more than James shared with us during our interview.

Here are excerpts:

Are we going to find out this season if Red is the father of Liz?

“No, you won’t find out about that. I mean, what you will find is you are going to get closer and closer, and what you’ll find are the things that once we’ve reached the inevitable end of the series you will be able to look back and realize that there were things that you found out along the way that you weren’t sure how to process them in terms of that issue and, all of a sudden, those things will connect. It’s almost like a puzzle and we are giving you pieces as we go on and eventually you sort of put them together and they fit!”

By the end of Season 1, the blacklist is connected to Berlin and that everything is somehow interconnected. Will Season 2 play all that interconnection?

“Berlin is definitely intertwined in the greater story of the show — not in its entirety but he is and becomes even more entwined coming in to Season 2.”

What kind of Red are we going to see this season?

“We are just shooting episode four right now and already he’s faced with some circumstances that have not come up prior to this. How he responds to those circumstances allows for different aspects of his behavior that I hope will be, in different turns, surprising and also revealing about certain aspects of him. It’s a very delicate balance when you have a character that is very enigmatic and that’s part of the compulsion of the character. That’s what makes him compelling, what makes you curious.”

How did you compose Red, are there inspirations from real life?

“No. I tend to work from script and imagination. I read the pilot and I recognized something that I can hold on to and extrapolating on that, I realized that I could bring a lot here with that.”

What is it about the character that initially attracted you?

“I was looking for something that was dichotomous in its tone: One that is, in turns funny, other times not at all. The character has to be serious yet irreverent so that there will be a lot to play because you have to sustain it, it has to hold your interest and curiosity for a long period of time. So, I was looking for something where there was a real complexity in terms of playing that character but also I was very drawn to the fact that I knew nothing about what direction it could go in and what direction this character might take by the end of reading the pilot script.”

Many are saying that it is your acting that makes the show so successful.

“I just do the best I can. I wanted to work and if I don’t think that I can make a character work then I turn it down. If I really don’t think that I can bring enough to it, I turn it down. If I sign on for a piece of material, I know that I am going to be able to do a job with it. It’s an hour-long broadcast network television show that swallows you whole and chews you up — you are just in it! And that’s great! I like that, I like that. I really don’t take the time to reflect about those other things, I’m really concentrating on the show.”

How does it feel when a show is marketed as a James Spader show?

“I think that’s the function of the character, really. Any actor who has been around long enough has a baggage and a reputation that they are bringing with them and therefore it is a Sisyphean feat to market anything. Therefore, whatever advantage they can have in terms of marketing they are going to take advantage but, I think, in the case of this, of course, they are using the opportunity to have someone with a name that’s recognizable and a face that’s recognizable and so on and so forth. But ultimately, if you see the show, it’s really marketed on Reddington because he is provocative and that has worked for them and they continue to do that.”

Is Hollywood itself kind of a “blacklist” environment in terms of how you operate as an actor to get roles?

“I have been doing this for decades and I still have no idea how to ‘operate’ in the business. I just read scripts and decide what I should be doing. I have been very lucky in the last five years. I have been really able to work. I finished doing a television series, came to New York and did a play for a year on Broadway, then was working on film and then visited for a year in another television series, took a break then shoot the Lincoln film and then started this and did another film with Tommy Lee Jones (The Homesman) — it’s becoming all one business.”

xxx
Raymond Lo

My coverage of "The Blacklist"

Season 2 of the hit NBC series "The Blacklist" premieres tonight in the US and in Asia via AXN. This writer visited the cast on the set recently and my story of that visit is out today in "The Philippine Star". The online link can be found here: http://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2014/09/23/1372096/compelling-antihero-blacklist 

Here's the full text of my story:

James Spader

MANILA, Philippines - When this writer flew to New York last week, it was to rendezvous with the notorious criminal Raymond Reddington, known the world over as Red, because he was supposed to be in town chasing after his nemesis Berlin, who almost had him and FBI agent Elizabeth Keen killed several months ago. And, while in town, I also got to meet with a “transformed” Elizabeth, her fellow FBI agent Donald Ressler and their boss Harry Cooper.

I received the invitation via e-mail a couple of months ago and everything was vague until about a week ago when I finally got the confirmation including my flight details.

The flight was uneventful, thankfully. I flew on the same week New York was to commemorate the 13th year of the 9/11 terrorist attack and this writer was a little bit hesitant to fly — not to add the curious timing of having a terrorist in the big apple on the eve of the anniversary of one of the worst attacks in US soil! But I marched on! It’s not every day you get to be on someone’s exclusive invite list, right?

And it is one list you normally wouldn’t one to be on!

Okay, before we all get carried away, it’s time I start telling you the truth: This writer did not meet with a terrorist — a real-life terrorist, that is. Raymond Reddington is the character played by Emmy-winning actor James Spader in the worldwide television hit The Blacklist and this writer was among a select few who received the exclusive invitation to meet with Mr. Spader and the rest of the cast of The Blacklist. We were also given a tour of the show’s impressive set inside a huge converted storage at the old Chelsea Piers in Lower Manhattan. During the same visit, we also got a glimpse of the iconic props and the distinctive costumes used on the show — including the fedoras used by Red in the series.

The cast was filming the fourth episode during our visit and the actors had to be whisked away to have a quick chat with us whenever there’s a lull in production. Mr. Spader was the first actor to see us. He was the complete opposite of Red in person. He was charismatic in person like Red but without the mysterious and terrifying demeanor that fans of the series has come to expect every week from him.

It’s funny but most of the journalists, including this writer, was addressing him Mr. Spader when we would normally call any actor by their first names. We were either in awe of his greatness or we were scared of Red. I think it was the latter. James is one of the few actors to have won multiple Emmys — and he is the only actor in history to have won Emmys for the same role in two different series. He won Best Actor at Cannes and he is the title character in the sequel to the record-breaking Marvel movie The Avengers — but we are not talking about it today.

During our interview, I asked James for his thoughts on what made The Blacklist so popular all over the world. The series features a really bad character on the mend but appears to be somewhat above the law. Why is a character that’s done really bad things connected with audiences worldwide?

“I am not entirely sure what it is that people respond to,” he replied. “Over the years, I’ve never been able to figure out what people might like and not like but I think people respond to the dichotomy in any antihero. I think they really respond to that and if you pay real service to both aspects of that word, if he’s at times the antagonist and other times the protagonist, if you really pay service to that balance, I think everybody will be enormously disappointed if all of a sudden you discover that Reddington is really a righteous guy. That he is really doing the right thing; that it’s all about redemption. I think that would be so disappointing.”

(The interview with James lasted about half an hour and will be featured in another story.)

As Red in The Blacklist, James portrays an ex-government agent who, for decades, has been one of the FBI’s Most Wanted fugitives. Brokering shadowy deals for criminals across the globe, Red was known by many as “The Concierge of Crime.” In the series’ first season, Red mysteriously surfaced and surrendered to the FBI but, instead of being put to prison, he was able to strike a deal with the FBI by proposing to release a “blacklist” of politicians, mobsters, spies and international terrorists. He promised to catch them all with only one condition: Elizabeth “Liz” Keen, a rookie agent, would become his partner in tracking all the criminals in his list.

The Blacklist is part police procedural and part serialized drama with the main narrative hook being the unanswered question on whether there’s something that connects Red to Liz — could Liz be Red’s daughter? That is one of the lingering questions from Season 1 that no one among the cast would dare to answer.

“No, you will not find out about that,” was James’ quick reply when asked if Season 2 of the series would finally give fans a definitive answer.

And when we asked Megan Boone, the actress who portrays Elizabeth Keen, about it, she played coy as well. Although she did tell us that only her and James, among the cast, knew the answer to the mystery.

 “Oh, I know!” she exclaimed. “I am probably the only in the world who isn’t frustrated by the mystery — me and James are the only two that are not frustrated.”

 “Towards mid-season, you will start to really know the root of her behavior and her actions,” she teased.

At the end of Season 1, Liz’s husband, Tom, was shot and is assumed to have died although majority of fans are hoping he is still alive. “Everything about Tom is a mystery,” was all Megan would allow herself to share. (Note: The actor who portrays Tom was not on the set during our visit. Is it a hint?)

Harry Lennix

But one actor who is happy that his character is still alive is Harry Lennix, who plays FBI head Harry Cooper, who was in mortal danger, too, during the first season. “You are going to see me from the first episode,” he declared to our amusement.

Harry, who is also an accomplished film and stage actor, offered some theory on why people all over the world are connecting with a bad guy like Red.

“There’s something about James Spader, the fact that he’s playing the character makes him, kind of, delicious,” he said. “It fits into the mold of a classic American antihero. It’s the 21st century and I think we’ve come to realize that good and bad is a lot more nuanced and there’s a million shades of gray and we all fit somewhere along the shades of gray. How much bad are we willing to put up with in order to get something good, something valuable? I think Red, more than anything, presents us with that question.”

During the course of our set visit, this writer also got to meet with several other cast members including the latest cast addition Mozhan Marno, who will portray a Mossad agent who may or may not have a shared personal history with Red.

Diego Klattenhoff

The last actor we interviewed was Diego Klattenhoff who portrays FBI agent Donald Ressler in the series. It was about four in the afternoon when Diego sat with us for a quick chat.

He was in a good mood. The handsome actor, who has German ancestry, even obliged to speak his version of the German language after a German journalist asked if he could say something in German. “Hmm… Tune in next week?” he uttered. Apparently he can’t speak German, after all.

And much later on, Diego would crack another funny joke about his character’s fate this season after the bloodbath in Season 1 that killed off many characters.

“I’ve been shot enough and beat up enough, I made my donation to the blood bank, so I think I might be safe for a while,” he said before adding the all-important word, “hopefully.”

(Season 2 of The Blacklist will premiere tonight at 10 on AXN.)

XXX
Raymond Lo