O-T Fagbenle is an actor on the rise. He’s been working in movie and tv for over 20 years and has expertise in theater that goes even additional again, however with roles in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Marvel’s “Black Widow,” and most not too long ago “Loot” and “Presumed Innocent” for Apple TV+, audiences are lastly beginning to take discover of him. How might they not? The ease with which he takes on every efficiency has turn out to be increasingly more engaging, even when he’s enjoying a gross district lawyer like Nico Della Guardia on “Presumed Innocent.”
Chatting with GQ for a recent interview, Fagbenle mentioned the method of taking up the character and the way the writing guided him in the best path.
“There was a moment in the script where some of the other characters are watching my character on television, and they were like, ‘Oh, he’s so yuck.’ And I loved that description of the character,” Fagbenle stated. “So I just kind of went with my yuck, as they say. Followed my yuck.”
The British actor additionally discovered inspiration for his American political determine in real-life characters who carry that very same disingenuousness.
“I kind of spent a lot of time watching politicians on YouTube—some famous ones that I won’t mention—and just kind of going, okay, what is it about them that can compel some people and repel other people?” stated Fagbenle to GQ. “And so I was trying to find that line where you could hate this man, but still totally believe he could be an elected politician.”
If all politics are theater, then it helped that every actor on set of the series, together with Fagbenle, was a bonafide thespian, every with a laundry listing of stage credit filling their resumes.
“One of the other things that I found really interesting is almost every single actor in ‘Presumed Innocent’ started in theater,” Fagbenle stated. “They’re all theater actors. I did a theater workshop with Ruth Negga like 25 years ago when we were both first coming out of drama school.”
Adding to this sentiment later, Fagbenle additionally stated, “The set is a theater. A courtroom is literally a theater. And so there was this kind of combined sense while you’re acting that we’re all part of this ensemble, this theater ensemble, performing in an actual theater, which is obviously like a courtroom. It just had this kind of meta quality to it.”
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