Details in fiction are everything. Even kids write and say, "I like your books because people brush their teeth." I mean, it's that kind of, you know, everyday stuff. And that gives us a bond with the characters.
I'm more interested in depicting a reality that I'm more familiar with, which is intergenerational debt, struggling, single parenthood, and it's more interesting to me to write stories with characters who subvert these expectations of what an immigrant and a woman should and can be in America.
You look for ways you can empathize with every character. And if you're playing a scoundrel of any stripe, you just try to make it interesting. You try to figure out what made him that way.
What we're doing is we're creating a hero's journey for somebody. And what we're surrounding him with are this cast of bizarre, eccentric weirdos and hopefully carving out a path for him to become the leader at the end and have his 12 Angry Men moment where he inspires us all and unites us and then we pull the curtain back and celebrate him as a human being.
I think actors look for characters that are layered and by that I mean may contradict themselves. They break the stereotype, let's put it that way, if they contradict themselves.
4mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
