I have to tell you coming up in a few episodes is some of the best acting I have ever done in my life, Peter Sarsgaard told Rolling Stone in a recent interview. He was talking about his role on the new season of The Killing, where he plays Ray Seward, a cold-eyed man imprisoned, perhaps wrongfully, for the brutal murder of his wife. He sits on death row, a month out from his execution, and the shows heroine, Mireille Enos, is on a timeline to prove him innocent or not. Unlike the typical movie trope of an innocent man sitting wide eyed on death row awaiting a call from the governor, Seward is not particularly likeable. Instead, he is darkly thorny, shifty and more than willing to get his hands bloody, and if he is innocent of killing his wife, he is surely guilty of something else.
Sewards riveting complexity is due in large part to the skill of Sarsgaard, a film actor who stepped back on to the small screen for the first time in 15 years to play the role. The star of films like Garden State, Jarhead, Shattered Glass and An Education returned to television to play Seward on the strength of not only the shows first two seasons, of which he is a fan, but because of the shows creator Veena Sud.
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Veena is very daring, Sarsgaard says. Shes not very interested in satisfying expectations. Shes an iconoclast. That works well for Sarsgaard, who wasnt initially hooked on the role, as he didnt want to play the typical innocent-man-behind-bars. I am really anti-death penalty. I dont believe that even psychopaths deserve to be killed not that I would describe [Seward] as a psychopath I want to play someone like him, who still doesnt deserve to be put to death.
In Sarsgaards hands, the character of Seward is a constantly shifting chameleon who would fit in on the set of The Shawshank Redemption one minute and Oz the next. He doesnt stay the same he really changes, Sarsgaard agrees. There are many sides to the guy. Theres the version of himself that he projects and the version of himself that he is. I found it like a constantly shifting target. There are significant things that happen to him during the journey that change who he is.
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This season is so different than the other seasons. It took me a second to adapt to the tone of it. Its scarier. Its more graphic, Sarsgaard adds. To prepare for the role, he only watched one movie: Into the Abyss is the only one. I was in Dead Man Walking, as the murder victim, so I watched Sean [Penn] first hand. But in Into the Abyss, the character hes going to die in eight days. Hes filled with fear. Its there, but hes able to carry on a conversation. My character does all kinds of things in which hes not thinking about it. It was very moving to watch that kid in Into the Abyss hes not scared for himself.
Ray Seward isnt the only dark character Sarsgaard has been playing lately. His role in the forthcoming Linda Lovelace biopic, Lovelace, where he plays Chuck Traynor, Linda Lovelaces husband, is also painted in dark grey tones. To play those roles, Sarsgaard taps into universal feelings instead of specific criminal acts. Im not a rapist or a killer or anything like that. Thats not what you need when you go to play something like this. You need injustice and anger. Its what I call The Unabombers perspective of me against the world. Or in Lovelace, its a guy who is so needy that he needs to hold her by the throat. These are all feelings that we all know. The feelings of jealousy and envy.
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Sarsgaard doesnt only choose dark characters, though. The father of two also has a part in Blue Jasmine, the forthcoming film by Woody Allen. The character I play, well, hes a politician. Thats pretty much all I need to say about him. Hes a diplomat who wants to be a politician. The comedy, which costars Cate Blanchett, was Sarsgaards first foray onto one of Allens sets. Working with Woody was very intuitive and easy, Sarsgaard said. Not very many takes. He doesnt over work anything. Its very clear whether it works or not. Ive worked with directors who try to get into what youre doing, who try to be you. He doesnt do that.
While working with Allen was a dream come true for Sarsgaard, so was working with director Kelly Reichardt on the forthcoming film Night Moves. Years ago, Maggie [Gyllenhaal, Sarsgaards wife] told me to write [Reichardt] a letter to tell her that I wanted to be in one of her movies. The way I like to act fits well in her movies. When I went to work with her, it was exactly like I wanted it to be. It felt real. In The Killing, theres a sense of timing thats in your head. You know it has to be edited to fit a length of time, and that everything needs to be sewn together. In a Kelly movie, that doesnt happen.
Not that Sarsgaard felt constricted by the confines of the hour-long drama. In fact, he compares it to shooting an entire independent film each week. I really just enjoyed myself, he said. We never had a frivolous scene. It was all small and juicy.