Hi, I'm Pat Duggins, and this is a special preview of tonight's APR notebook. Imagine waking up one morning, opening that day's copy of The New York Times and seeing yourself described as TV's king of creepy. My guest tonight got that distinction just last year. Two time Emmy Award winner Michael Emerson is a University of Alabama graduate, and he once worked at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Since then, he portrayed Ben Linus and lost and fans of the horror cult classic film "Saw" might remember him as the creepy hospital orderly Zep Hindle. In this preview of APR notebook, Emerson and I talk about all that and his days at the University of Alabama.
MICHAEL EMERSON-- Well, because nothing about my career has been direct or had any likelihood of success. You know, I started late. I was a magazine illustrator for years. I moved to Northeast Florida, got divorced, had my bridges burnt, and I thought, well, it's time for me to start over. I'm in my middle 30s now. I might as well do the thing that I always wanted to do. So I worked odd jobs and started doing community theater. And then finally, friends prevailed upon me and said, you know, you've done everything you can here. You got to get out in the world more. And my friend Ian was a friend of a guy named John Preston, and he said, You should go up to Alabama. My pal John is up there. He got his master's there. He's in the equity company. All he does is Shakespeare. He loves it, and it's, you know, he has a life in the theater. He works with great directors and great actors. And I thought, well, all right, let me take a look at that. And that's how I ended up there.
PAT DUGGINS-- Well, the results speak for themselves, but I'm wondering, anywhere in your career, did anybody ever say Alabama, Shakespeare? What's up with that?
EMERSON-- People always think you know that you're joking, because it just, it seems, it seems just unlikely to and but I think people in the industry certainly have heard of the Shakespeare festival there. It's, you know, it was one of the, one of the five in the day, you know, Utah and Oregon and Alabama. And there was one in Connecticut, well, and, and there's much, there's a bunch of smaller ones too. But, yeah, it was a, I'd say, in the days when I first went there, it was quite a draw. We used to see buses from all over the southeast in the parking lot during the full run of our repertory, there would be people coming from, you know, New Orleans and Chattanooga and Atlanta and Florida. You know, it was a it was a real draw. And I think the quality of the productions was pretty high.
PAT-- Many years ago, I had the chance to talk with actor Roger Moore. Now, for the younger listener in our audience here, he played James Bond in the 1970s and 80s. And I asked him at that time, if he had the chance to play a Bond villain, would he do it? And only as Roger Moore could respond to it, and I'm going to do a terrible invitation here. He said, ‘well, of course, Bond villains don't work as hard, and they get the best lines.’ And your career theater, television, motion pictures, and it seems as though you've played more than your share of bad guys. I mean, are they more fun?
EMERSON-- They are indeed more fun. Who wants to be the good guy? I mean, the most delicious roles are either sinister or mysterious or hilarious, and if you can be all three at once, then, you know, that's a gold mine. And it's so much fun to play because it it's it has it has more layers. Villains have things to hide. Villains have plans that they don't share with the people around them. You know, there's a lot of interior to a villain, and I feed on that kind of thing. So I have, I have always enjoyed those roles, and I learned to enjoy villainy by playing Shakespeare, of course, because in Jacksonville, Florida, the first role I played was Iago and Othello, and there you have it. There's your there's your education in how a bad person engages the audience, charms them, makes them laugh and makes them complicit in his villainy. And It don't get no better than that.
PAT-- I've read interviews you've done where it's like, it's the it's the nuance in the bad guys that kind of appeals to you. Let me give a couple of examples here. In addition to, you know, stage and movies and television, you've also done voice acting, and now in the APR newsroom, we've had current or former staffers who love to talk DC and. Marvel comic movies, and the fact that you were the voice actor behind the Joker in a Batman animated feature and then Brainiac in a Superman animated feature, I assure you there's going to be geek out action big time in the newsroom, when I tell everybody, but I noticed with both of those characters, it's not the scenery chewing bad guy, but it is that nuance that you referred to in previous interviews.
EMERSON-- Yeah, you don't want to go well, you'll have a director on that work. It's difficult work. You need a good director. And then they'll tell you kind of what scale is, right? If you're smart, you'll also pay attention to other actors who have played similar roles, and see what they've done. I, as I get older, I'm do I continue to strive to do less, to make it more detailed and less Titanic or heroic or what have you you know, make that. He to to humanize them and and let, let the editors and post production sound designers make the thing have scale. But I don't feel responsible for scale. I mean, the we had a tough director for those Batman things. And that's scary work, because there's been a half a dozen famous guys that have played that part before. You either on the big screen or in an animated setting, so you know you're going to get compared. And so it's a little terrifying. And then you have somebody, you're in a booth in New York, and the director's in a booth in LA and you're in there like cackling or crying out or screaming with pain or Glee or what have you, and she's pushing you, pushing you to do, let's go. Let's go again. Only go further. Go further. Bring it up from the toes. You know that that kind of thing, and it'll, it'll wear you out. It will wear out your voice too. But she eventually gets what she wants, and it's, it ends up sounding great on the finished product.
PAT-- Join me tonight at 7pm on APR notebook for my complete conversation With two time Emmy award winning actor Michael Emerson.
