Nuanced Portrayal Quotes

I was curious. Here was a character where I just didn't know how they were going to write him into 13 episodes without it being one note. My fear was that I didn't want to join something where I was just going to be this prop and this mustache twirling character.

It's funny how you can be thought of as somebody who humanizes bad guys, and I'll take that, but it is something that gave me pause, and I started speaking to my team about finding a good guy.

One of the things that I like about 'Narcos' is that not only Pablo but with all the characters - this is not a black and white show. This is not a regular American cop show where two cool cops go to save a country from a bad guy. All the characters are very complex.

A lot of times I watch TV and I watch film and there's so many things I'd love to talk about that I feel don't get the opportunity to be shown. Sometimes things become very stereotypical and one-sided, and I feel like it's such a colorful world.

I never try and play a bad guy to be bad and to be brutal and to be nasty and vicious, because I think you're going to be very cliche there. You know, you've got to find the truth in that character and what he believes in. It just happens that, you know, he's wrong.

I think people have turned terrorists into these larger-than-life devils and so are unable to write about them in the obvious way, which is as human, petty, bumbling.

I think first-person narrators should be complex, because otherwise the first-person is too shallow and predictable. I like a first-person narrator who can't totally be trusted.

I did not want to depict Al Gashey as evil. I wanted him to come across as someone who did what he did for reasons that were compelling. Whether or not we agree with him is a different matter.

In the case of 'Disobedience,' the very secretive way of life and religion and tradition that the North London Orthodox Jewish community has was a huge invitation to explore an unknown world. And also a possible trap, and I tried to overcome that by portraying it, hopefully, with great nuance and detail and texture.

The more intelligent the storytelling becomes and the deeper the character development, people will realize in film and television, like they do in real life, that human beings possess both good and bad.

I've played people that are on the line of evil and good, but that's life. We are always playing with the good and the bad. I see them as people. I don't see them as caricatures. I try to not make them caricatures. Maybe I fail, but I try to see what' behind them. Would I play the hero? A superhero? I don't think so. But, I play good guys. There are some there, but you have to look.

It's easy to show terrible people's behavior on screen, and we all just kind of nod and go, 'Isn't that terrible.' It's more interesting when you can show terrible behavior in the interest of something good.

When I play a good guy, I try to explore them and figure out what shapes them and makes them interesting. When I'm playing a bad guy, I try to explore everything that makes them good. No one ever really thinks that they're a bad guy.

I found that with Rooney, her instincts in films was always to underplay and to sort of reduce down what was necessary to bring you in - a sense of economy, a sense of scale, which just seemed to understand the medium so well. When you see that in a younger actor, I always think it speaks to incredible knowledge. I can't exactly figure out where that comes from, that confidence to know how to be quiet.

If I had cast someone else who didn't have that kind of timing, it would have been leaden and one note. But Ann [Morgan Guilbert] made her really human and really funny without being caricatured or over the top. She feels like a real person.

The difficult part of writing about someone you don't admire is that it's easy to demonize them. What you get then is a cackling villain, twirling their mustache at every dastardly deed they commit.

The beauty of Sudhir's protagonists is that they are not shown as black and white. There are various layers to the characters.

I think I've always been interested in playing people who are judged very harshly.

I don't like the terms 'positive' or 'negative,' as I think every person has good and bad in them. It's high time that we explore all these sides on television as humans.

What the writers do, and we hopefully can bring to life, is that they present characters who, on the surface, aren't always heroic and their acts aren't always devoid of selfishness.

Any time you stop looking at evil as a black and white thing, it's helpful. So the fact that there won't be any obligatory Islamic terrorist stereotypes in movies any more, that'd be helpful.

As a feminist, just to speak to what women go through, I think women are put in a box way too often. What I love about 'You're the Worst' is that no female character is portrayed as a black-and-white cartoon character. We're all complicated, messy human beings.

The way Hollywood portrays mothers - you're either all good and saint-like, or you're all bad. And I think the real honesty of motherhood is not given a voice in movies. I miss that as an audience member.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

Positive characterizations are complex characterizations. That's all we need to know. They shouldn't be saccharine. They shouldn't feel like medicine.