Moviefone Editorial

Tag: @tvprogram:383260

  • James Marsden: ‘Westworld’ Will ‘Rip the Rug Out From Under You’

    If you watched the first episode of “Westworld,” you more than likely have some thoughts about James Marsden‘s fresh-faced frontiersman Teddy Flood.

    When Moviefone sat down with Marsden prior to the airing of the first episode of HBO‘s new sci-fi series, we both decided not to venture into spoiler-y territory; suffice it to say that our conversation hints at some aspects revealed in that initial outing that will have some relevance to those who watched it, while others waiting to binge may discover a few plotline clues.

    So proceed at your discretion as the prolific, dashing actor — best known for his stints in the “30 Rock” — digs into the allure of cowboying up for the ambitious production and the recreated worlds he’d most wish to visit.

    Moviefone: What was the thing, when “Westworld” came your way, that was the initial first hook, that made you say, “This is I think something I want to do”?

    James Marsden: The model that I’ve always had if I ever wanted to sit down and look for a project to direct and bring back to the screen in some way, that may or may not have been a classic, I would look for material that was a really sharp and interesting concept that may be … not, I would say, poorly executed, but something you can do something different with.

    The original film is a great, wonderfully terrifying and entertaining film. Ultimately, the dimensions are, “Here’s the theme of the park, and the robot sort of malfunctions and goes haywire and goes after the humans.” There aren’t many other themes to the film, like playing God and “what is consciousness?”, and this existential crisis that the humans and the robots have.

    These are sort of the things that we wanted to explore more, which made it really interesting for me when I spoke with Jonah [Nolan] on a Skype call, I was shooting in New Orleans. I was familiar with the original, but I hadn’t seen it so he encouraged me to see it. He said “Just take the concept and what we’re going to do with it is this, and we’ll flip it and reverse it, and turn it on its head,” so that was exciting. J.J. [Abrams] was involved. Jonah was writing. Jonah writing and directing. Most of the cast was already set, and I read the script and thought the potential paths and journeys that these characters can go on was so like vast and interesting.

    As Lisa Joy said, it’s not science fiction, it’s science fact. Artificial intelligence is, like, here. One of my favorite lines from “Jurassic Park,” actually, is Jeff Goldblum saying, “Your scientists spent so much time trying to figure out whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should.” I think we’re at that period now. So it’s a very interesting subject to explore against the backdrop of this sometimes maybe morally bankrupt, violent playground.

    But, like I said, I like the idea that Westworld is what you want it to be. You can be who you want to be. Your true character can be revealed, whether be it a noble person, or a debaucherous one, violently motivated. But it reveals who you are. So I liked that, and everything else we go to some very cool places after it all gets set up for the first episode.

    As an actor showing up on set, what was more exciting: the Old West stuff, or the futuristic environment?

    For me, it was the Old West stuff. It was jumping off of this real, however-many-ton locomotive that gets rolling into town, and shooting in these incredible landscapes in Utah around Arches National Park. You’re out there on a horse, with a real gun, wearing a hat and chasing the fair maiden across these amazing plateaus, and having a helicopter follow you around.

    It’s like shooting a John Ford film — without the helicopter, of course. It’s epic in scale and size, and to sort of immerse yourself in that world, this sort of dirty, gritty, lawless land, was a lot of fun. As an actor, it felt like I was a guest — I got a free VIP guest pass to the park, really, because I get to go and put on my chaps and my boots.

    It kind of was that “Fantasy Island” quality when you guys to showed up.

    Yeah, yeah! I mean, it ticked every box for me. It was like, HBO — I love what they do, I love their commitment to content and material and the quality of production. Shoots here in LA — I get to spend time with my kids. You shoot for about five or six months out of the year, then you can do whatever you want after that. And that it had the really grand potential to be something very special and unlike anything we’ve ever really seen before on TV. So I was like, “Where do I sign? I’m in.”

    When I spoke with Evan Rachel Wood, she told about how deep she went into AI research. Did you? Or did you just go with what was on the script page?

    I tend to usually do that. Unless the character specifically calls for more research than the script provides, or more research than the creators and the producers can provide. I think, from Teddy’s perspective, it serves him to not know everything that’s around every corner. It served me as an actor to not have every answer to everything.

    This is a massive jigsaw puzzle, this show. Evan very early on wanted to figure the whole thing out — all her pistons were firing. I was like, “You are just like running around chasing your own tail right now! There’s no way you’re going to get it all.” By about episode five or six, when we got the scripts, she was like, “I think I got some of it, some of the big ones.” I was like, “What? I don’t know about that.”

    I don’t know — I’ve just learned not to even try and speculate, because as soon as you go this way, Jonah and Lisa will subvert and rip the rug out from under you. I think, hopefully, that can be a fun thing for the audience to experience. But then Evan was pretty close, actually, as it turns out! But it’s a fun, very enigmatic, sort of mysterious journey that these characters go on. It’s a very exciting thing to be a part of. It feels very big.

    Minus any technological glitches or moral conundrums, would you go to something as immersive as a Westworld if it existed?

    I certainly would have a hard time resisting the curiosity about it. I think I would be really tempted to go. But maybe I’d be scared to see what that revealed about myself. I’m not sure. It is sort of tailored to the dark side a little bit.

    What would be more interesting for me would be to with everyone I feel like I’m close with in my life, and see how they behave, from a voyeuristic vantage point, and see if they are the people that you really think they are, because it’s interesting: when some people get in certain scenarios and certain environments, they do become different people, or they allow their character actually to reveal itself.

    Is there a “‘world” that would appeal to you more than, say, the Old West? If you could pick your world?

    Yeah, in the original movie, it was like medieval and ancient Rome. That’s an interesting question — I don’t know! I mean, like 12th Century England could be kind of cool. The sort of Napoleonic era. Boy, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about that, actually, what sort of era. I’d go back to the ’60s, actually. I know that’s not like — it’s just a big drug park, probably, with great music.

    Sixties Rat Pack Vegas is where I would go.

    Yeah, that’d be fun! That would be fun. You can go back to mobster times, like in the ’30s, during Prohibition and all that. Could be a fun one to go back to. I still think the 20th century is probably — I mean, because I lived in it — one of the greatest of all time. The acceleration of what we had at the beginning of it to what we had at the end of it. It was like “Cars, flight, internet, the evolution of music” to such a great degree.

    It was a great century, so I would probably stay in that century somewhere. I wouldn’t really want to go run out and have, like, sh*tty water, and flies buzzing around and sticking in those showers. I like the modern conveniences of air conditioning and microwave ovens.

    Almost everybody involved in this show comes primarily from film. This is the the first TV series for you in a good long time. What was the fun surprise of having this sort of broad canvas to work in?

    Well, I think you said it. It’s like a testament to material, that you have all these people that are Academy Award-winners and great film actors, and I think it says a lot about what HBO wants to do with their material. I feel like there’s this gap, in the film world, with these $300/400 million action hero movies, some of which I was a part of and very grateful to be a part of, and then you’ve got the $5 million and under movies, which are mature storytelling and not expensive to make. But there’s nothing really in between. There’s very little risk being taken, anything over $5 million.

    And I feel like now, with TV, with HBO and some of the premium cable networks, you’re afforded the opportunity to really go dark, to really challenge the audience, to really do something original and different. I think that’s why Tony [Hopkins] and Ed [Harris] and Evan and Thandie [Newton] and Jeffrey [Wright] and everybody were attracted to this. The actors, and the artists, and the writers, and the directors, they all follow where the good material is.

    I think we all saw something really special in this. As an actor, you want that great safety net of being in good hands, like with J.J. and Jonah. So I think that’s how it all came together, if that answers your question. I’m not sure that [it] did. But yeah, it feels like we’re just together making a very epic, big ten-hour film.

    New episodes of “Westworld” air Sunday nights on HBO.

  • HBO’s ‘Westworld’ Promises a ‘Deeper Game’ in Another Gritty Trailer

    HBO’s hotly anticipated sci-fi thriller series “Westworld” finally debuted Sunday night, bringing yet another intense trailer along with it.

    Called “In the Weeks Ahead,” the preview hints at the twists and turns awaiting viewers as the gritty series continues. There’s definitely plenty to wonder about, especially given that the trailer basically tells us to expect the unexpected. “You think you’ve got a handle on what this is going to be,” we’re told. “You have no idea.”

    As the trailer jumps between time and place, fantasy and reality, we get hints of how characters may react over the course of the season. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve (Thandie Newton), in particular, get screen time, and both are shown questioning their world. It’s clearly going to be an interesting ride, and we don’t doubt it when we’re told, “There’s a deeper game here.”

    Watch the preview below (as long as you can handle the sight of fake blood).
    “Westworld” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.

  • Evan Rachel Wood Has a Request for Critics of ‘Westworld’ Sexual Violence

    HBO’s new futuristic theme park series “Westworld” premiered last night, and there are already protests, backlash to the protests, and requests to keep watching for the “full context” of what has only just begun.

    The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which often takes aim at “Game of Thrones,” released a statement that “HBO is building a legacy of rape culture entertainment” with this new series. Here’s part of what they issued in a press release October 3:

    “The first episode of HBO’s latest series, Westworld, contains a reference to the raping of a corpse, uses brothels as a backdrop for full frontal nudity, and includes a disturbing rape scene that would likely re-traumatize viewers who have experienced sexual assault. Why does HBO insist on making sadistic themes of sexual violence against women the cornerstone of its entertainment formula? No corporation that so regularly promotes the degradation and abuse of the female body can respect women. I am calling on HBO to stop piping scenes of sexual objectification and violence into millions of American’s homes. HBO’s commitment to portraying sexual objectification and sexual violence against women is not only socially irresponsible, it is anti-woman, and more importantly anti-human.”

    Evan Rachel Wood — who plays Westworld’s oldest “host,” the perpetually tortured Dolores — is not in any way anti-woman or anti-human, and she called for patience, promising there is more happening than gratuitous exploitation.

    Here’s part of what she told The Hollywood Reporter:

    “[The show’s violence] is absolutely very rough. I don’t like gratuitous violence against women at all, but I would wait for the context in which it’s being used. As the show progresses, the way it’s being used is very much a commentary and a look at our humanity and why we find these things entertaining and why this is an epidemic, and flipping it on its head. The roles for the women on this show are going to be very revolutionary. It’s very gender-neutral. I would ask, as somebody who is an advocate against any kind of abuse or violence and is outspoken about it, to give it a chance and wait to see where it’s going. I think it will surprise people.”

    The premiere showed Dolores being dragged off to be raped by longtime “guest” the Gunslinger (Ed Harris). It was implied that he has done that many times in the past, and gets off on the fact that she always fights to stop him. Dolores’s love interest, another host called Teddy (Jason Marsden) is killed multiple times, suffering his own tragic loop.

    Producer Jonathan Nolan told THR:

    “We were fascinated by the idea that if you make a good game space, a good and durable environment like this, it would last for generations. People would come back and bring their kids to meet Dolores, the same way they met her when they were a kid. Dolores has been the girl next door with aspirations to travel and see the world and escape her modest little loop for going on 35 years. That, to us, enhances the horror of her situation.”

    Here’s the trailer for Episode 2, “Chestnut,” which seems to include a stronger role for Thandie Newton’s madam Maeve Millay:
    “Westworld” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.

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  • How Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy Built a Bleaker, Badder ‘Westworld’

    Premiere Of HBO's "Westworld" - ArrivalsIs Westworld an amusement park, or an abusement park?

    That’s the question at the center of HBO’s sumptuous new sci-fi series, based on the increasingly prophetic 1973 movie written and directed by novelist Michael Crichton, in which he first explored the topic of a cutting-edge public playground where the amusements — this time in the form of cowboys rather than “Jurassic Park‘s” dinosaurs — wreck havoc.

    In the new “Westworld,” however, the human guests may pose far more danger to the AI hosts, acting out on some of their cruelest, most debasing impulses against the mechanized inhabitants of a realistically recreated Old West environment. But what happens if the artificial entertainments suddenly become knowingly and painfully aware of their treatment, both good and horrible?

    Screenwriters Person of Interest”) and Pushing Daisies,” “Burn Notice”), who also happen to be husband and wife, have teamed with executive producer J.J. Abrams and an all-star cast — one that includes Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Thandie Newton, and James Marsden — on the project, bringing a disquieting and increasingly existential twist to the original setup, as they revealed to Moviefone. “The original film is about humans trapped in a theme park with robots running amok,” says Nolan. “Our show is about robots trapped in a theme park with humans running amok.”

    Moviefone: When you both sat down with this project in mind and looked at Crichton’s work, tell me what started popping in your brain as to the things you wanted to figure out what to do with and the way you wanted to go in different directions.

    Lisa Joy: When I first agreed to do the project, to be totally honest, I hadn’t seen the movie yet. And I didn’t know if I should see it at that point, because we’d already started talking to J.J., and just the concept of, it’s a theme park with robots where you can go and do whatever you want — I thought, “My God, that’s genius!”

    And it is genius. Crichton is genius. The possibilities of new types of characters that I hadn’t seen before in Western or sci-fi started fumbling around in my head and in our conversations. I was just really excited to explore that. Now, Jonah had seen the movie.

    Jonathan Nolan: I’d seen the film as a kid, yeah. It scared the crap out of me. I still have issues with Yul Brynner. The original film is so cool. Crichton directed it — wrote and directed it when he was 30 years old — it was his directorial debut, and it’s so packed with ideas. Even watching them again, it’s so hard to understand how much he was thinking about the future.

    One good example is, at one point, there was a passing reference in there, when the chief scientist of the park is trying to figure out what’s going wrong with the robots. There’s glancing reference to, it’s spreading between them like a virus. You can kind of roll your eyes, and you’re like, “Right, a computer virus.” I went back and looked into it: he wrote it in ’72/’73, and the first computer virus didn’t appear until ’74. So here’s a guy who’s anticipating — and that’s a pretty big idea, the idea of a virus might be applicable to digital creation.

    So the original film is packed full of ideas. It’s breathless. And that was Crichton all over: so brilliant and so many ideas, and he barely had a chance to explore them. I’ve worked in film and TV. Film is good for some projects. What was so attractive for us about this as an episodic piece of storytelling was the ability to really dig deep into that question of consciousness, of artificial consciousness.

    That key insight about starting with the host’s perspective and kind of coming into it with the guests, I think, really unlocked the experience for us. I love stories and storytelling that involves some limitation on the protagonist’s understanding of the world, and this is a really fun one. They’re not allowed to remember the things that happen to them. They’re not allowed to see the cracks in their world. The joke is on them. And watching them not only come to consciousness, but also come to the realization of where they really are and what they’re really designed to do, is a really cool journey.

    The idea that our technological offspring might pose some problems for us has been around in different forms, from “Frankenstein” to “Blade Runner.” In this day and age, what were the issues that really caught your attention that you wanted to explore, to express in a literal or allegorical way?

    Joy: We often talk about the show as an examination of human nature. I think one facet of that is these AI are creatures of our creation. We are their mothers and fathers. That’s a way of looking at it. So you start thinking about what their characterizations mean as merit to us. If they do bad, if they do good, if they are innocent, that’s part of what we fed them. That’s part of what we put into them. So in that way, it’s a mirror into our own psyches.

    I think now, as we’re developing these actual technologies, the thing is, just like with an actual child, you hopefully — I think, if you’re a good parent — want your children to be better than you, in every way. More moral, more happy, more kind, more giving. At least that’s how I believe. But they don’t get that if you don’t code that. And you won’t code that if you yourself don’t feel that. So it’s about inputs and responsibility of what inputs we feed these synthetic children.

    Is there an aspect of that equation for you, Jonah, that also kind of kept itching at the back of your brain?

    Nolan: Yeah, very much. For me, we’ve seen an awful lot of film and television that considers this question from the sort of pejorative or dystopian perspective. The AI is going to kill us or enslave us. I, for a long time, have been more interested in looking at it from the other perspective of, “What will they think of us? What will they make of us?” In the same way that when you have a child, you begin to wonder what they think of you.

    You begin to think about what you do, and the work that you do, and how you behave, and how you hold yourself, how you comport yourself from your child’s perspective. You find yourself getting upset or using bad language. You change. So I’m fascinated by this proposition of what they will learn from us, take from us, and whether they will want to be human.

    And everyone involved in this project and everyone watching this project has the same limitation, which we are all human beings. And [Anthony Hopkin’s] character, Ford, talks about this in a later episode: we only have human consciousness, it’s the only yardstick we know for consciousness. But it is clearly very flawed. Look at the world around you. We’re far from perfect. So these creatures looking at us and wondering, do we have to be like them? They made us like them, do we have to remain that way? It’s one of the questions we wanted to ask.

    With a project like this, with hopefully a long future ahead of it, a lot of the heavy lifting has to be done creating the mythology. Tell me about the fun of that, the challenge of that, and maybe where your friend J.J. Abrams, who knows his way around that came in and sprinkled his little spices along the way.

    Nolan: You know, we joke about the obvious analogy to “Game of Thrones” — very different shows, but we looked at “Game of Thrones” as a model for, how do you do a big-scope television show — in a lot of ways, in terms of the scope and ambition of the storytelling, but also the production value?

    Obviously, we have the original film, which has so many brilliant ideas in it, but we don’t have the novels. We don’t have George R. R. Martin and the books. So our joke has been that part of the season in writing this thing was, “First we write the novels, then we adapt them internally.” That’s been daunting, but a lot of fun. A great deal of fun. There are so many places this story can go.

    Joy: There’s so many. I remember when we were first breaking it, Jonah and I, we just had our first child. Actually, we started breaking it even before when I was still pregnant. We would work in my office at home, and we had all these pages and pages that we would write on and scribble on, and then stick to the wall. And by the time it was done, all four walls were just totally covered in pages with like arrows to here and interconnecting different things and different characters we were exploring, and backstories.

    We wanted to really have an understanding of which characters — it was at that point that all the characters were coming alive for us, and we were exploring all that. We got through some of that in the first season, but we actually thought far beyond that into the next few seasons. With the kind of middle point and even an end point to it. So we did a lot of initial thinking about the mythology, and it helped us, I think, even if we haven’t gotten to some of that yet. It helped informed how we write what we’re writing now.

    There’s something analogous to your jobs as writers as to what some of your characters are doing in this show. You sometimes have to torture a character for drama. Sometimes you fall in love with characters you write and you don’t want to do these things to them. Can you talk a little bit about that element of transference from your life to this fantasy world?

    Nolan: Yeah, there was a great moment when a couple of our actors were rehearsing a scene. They said, “We finally figured out what this is like.” They were like, “This is us. This is what we do. This is you. You’re the writers, and you tell us what to do.”

    I’m not typically drawn to workplace dramas, and I don’t think what we do is terribly interesting, which is why we tend to write about things that are in genre, in terms of the writing and producing and the directing. But there is a little bit of a crossover here, and more than a little bit of an analogy between the creative work that’s going on down below, and the narratives that are being lived out up above.

    I hasten to point out that Simon Quarterman‘s character, Lee Sizemore, the writer, bears absolutely no resemblance to any writers that we may know or worked with over the years, whatsoever!

    “Westworld” premieres Sunday, October 3rd, on HBO.

  • Why Evan Rachel Wood’s ‘Westworld’ Role Is Her ‘Favorite Character’ Ever

    When we first met actress Once and Again.”

    Times change: Today, Wood’s a 29-year-old single mother herself, with a knockout resume of prestigious TV and film projects to her credit, including “True Blood,” and “Mildred Pierce,” and her return to series television is as high-profile as it gets, playing a consciousness-gaining android “host” used and frequently abused in the artificial Old West setting of “Westworld,” HBO’s ambitious, lavishly produced reimagining of novelist and filmmaker Michael Crichton‘s increasingly prescient 1973 sci-fi film.

    The role of Delores offers Wood an unparalleled acting opportunity, playing first the Old West reality — and realities — that the character experiences, then her experiences as an artificial being tended to in the futuristic behind-the-scenes environs, and at least the provocative middle ground, as Delores develops the beginnings of an awareness of who and what she really is. And the actress has enthusiastically embarked on the journey, with all of its promising and potentially frightening philosophical and existential implications, as she revealed to Moviefone in a candid conversation.

    Moviefone: As an actress, when you get a role who is a synthetic creation but is also starting to feel real emotion, where do you start to try to get into the head of that type of really unique character, something that you don’t encounter in everyday life?

    Evan Rachel Wood: Actually, I’m really into Ray Kurzweil and read “The Singularity Is Near,“ and that really just explores the inner workings of AI. I put a lot of that into play with how I approach Dolores, and watched every TED Talk and spoke to some futurists. Because it’s just a completely new way of approaching a character. Especially because she’s very much like almost three different characters at once, because she has many different modes.

    So, in character, she’s this very innocent prairie girl, this princess / damsel in distress, but underneath that, she’s actually a very advanced, intelligent being, with kind of unlimited power. The question is: What would happen if she realized she had that power? I think that’s something we’re going to be kind of exploring as the show goes.

    It was interesting not knowing what my character arc was going to be, and where the show was going, and finding out, episode by episode. It’s a good thing that my role, for at least the first half, is very much in a state of confusion, because that’s how I felt most of the time. She’s my favorite character I’ve ever played thus far, for sure.

    What was the first element of this project that initially got its hooks in you?

    I met with Lisa [Joy] and Jonathan [Nolan] [the co-creators of the re-imagining], and they explained to me how the park worked, and the possibilities, and I realized that it was so much more than just a theme park gone awry and robots malfunctioning. They were taking it so much deeper than the original film, and it was a real exploration on humanity and how these technologies are actually real, and are being worked on right now. When film was originally made, it was a little more science fiction, and now it’s unsettling because it can all very well happen.

    So that intrigued me, and just the idea of having an immersive experience in a world where there were no rules and no consequences. With the incredible cast — and I just knew that everyone working on it was at the top of their fields. Going into it, there’s just this energy of, “This is going to be the one. This is going to be the one that everyone wants to be remembered for.”

    So I’m just grateful every day that I go to work that I’m a part of something that seems less like a TV show, and more like a revolution. So really everything about it. I knew when I signed on, I signed on to a really cool show, and that it was going to be good, but it wasn’t until about Episode 4 that I started having a panic attack. I was overwhelmed by the quality and the writing, and realizing more and more the character they’ve entrusted me with was just kind of mind-blowing. So I’m just excited for people to really see what it’s about.Evan Rachel Wood and Ed Harris in HBO's WESTWORLDAs the actor who puts on the wardrobe and gets to work in the show’s different contexts, do you prefer the frontier element of it, or do you prefer the sci-fi world of it?

    It’s funny, I actually prefer the frontier! I was raised in the South, and I’ve been horseback riding my whole life, so it’s a scene that I’m very comfortable in. So I like it. I’m a desert child.

    With all the research you did, what are you excited about or intrigued about as far as the future of AI and what’s right around the corner?

    I was really terrified of it at first, and there were some theories of how, eventually, we will be obsolete and AI will surpass us. I thought, “What does that mean for the future of art and love and emotions? Will things be real anymore? Will they be sterile and cold?” There are some theories that they’ll be so much better than we are. Better problem solvers, all the petty problems we get snagged on will be nothing to them, and the art that they’ll create is so beyond our comprehension, and the empathy that they will feel will be so much bigger, and the capacity for love will be so much larger.

    So that made me feel a little better, I was like, “Oh, okay — actually the world is going to be a better place,” but it also made me terrified as a human being, because that means we will eventually be apes to AI, and they’re going to decide our fate. I feel like that’s kind of where the show is picking up. It’s a terrifying thought. I think that’s why the show sticks with you a lot.

    There’s a common commentary about the generation who’ve grown up immersed in technology are in some way disconnected from people because of that technology. You’ve made the point that you’re actually more connected to people, which I agree with: there are people in my life that 20 years ago I would have had to go to great effort to stay connected to. So tell me about what you see as the positives of the connectivity that the technology has provided us.

    Yeah, there’s so many possibilities. We have more power in the palm of our hand than the president of the United States had, maybe, 20 years ago. So the information and the knowledge out there at our fingertips is so vast and amazing, but yeah, with that comes also the dark side. Your kids are vulnerable, and also vulnerable to propaganda, and to just negativity, and all that’s there. So the world that we’re leaving for them is really interesting. It’s hard to keep things from children and to protect them.

    But at the same time, I do feel like it can be used for good, and it’s kind of our job to steer them in the right direction. I don’t think at this point we could keep it from them. I think we have to learn how to work with it and angle it the right way. But, as a mom, I think about that, because I think I stopped at around Nintendo 64, and that’s as far as I got, and iPods and anything else was just too much. My three-year-old can already work my iPhone better than me. So I’m curious to see what they’re going to do with that kind of power.

    What do you like about the allegorical quality of science-fiction storytelling in this particular instance? The bigger things that you guys are saying about life and humanity and AI.

    It’s holding up such a mirror to who we are as a species and what we find entertaining, and why we are so broken and why we are so disconnected from each other. I think using this platform to explore that and to create beings that see humanity in an objective way, hopefully will make us look at ourselves in the same vein, and hopefully think about a few things.

    Assuming there’s not actual technological breakdown issues, would you want to visit a “Westworld” -style place? Not necessarily to like have carte blanche in your behavior, but to be in that immersive experience.

    You know, it’s part of the human blessing and curse, that curiosity. I went to that place, Sleep No More, which is an immersive choose-your-adventure theater experience, and I was obsessed. I went seven times. I ended up in the play, and I fell in love with the characters and the narratives, and something about it just took over and there was something so satisfying about being so immersed in a different world, and getting to leave yourself at the door.

    So I think I would be drawn to it, but I think it would definitely terrify me. Especially after doing this show. It’s that old Michael Crichton/Jeff Goldblum saying, “Life finds a way.” There would be human error, and there’s always cracks in codes. With some things as intelligent as these hosts, I just feel like you would always be kind of at risk.

    Did you find any kind of parallel between the role of the hosts in this story and being an actor, being somebody who’s in service of material?

    What’s so funny is, we were filming one day doing another scene where the hosts are being put through these horrific things, and people are being entertained by our pain and our emotions. Someone went, “How messed up is it that these people are getting pleasure out of watching you cry?” And I thought, “That’s what I do. That’s my job.” Like, I know what it’s like to be sort of like a doll and dressed up and told to do things. For entertainment, I put myself through these horrific experiences. So I certainly relate to it on a deep level, yes.

    Having been in this business since you were a kid, and having been connected to so many high quality productions, what are you looking for now? What are the things that get you excited, professionally, as you sort through and try to figure out what the next project is going to be?

    I want to say, I feel so spoiled after doing this show, because nothing is ever going to feel as good. I’m just looking for revolutionary, groundbreaking roles, and better roles for women. I’ve started writing. It’s just kind of slim pickings out there. I just feel like you have to make your own things at this point and not wait for them to just come to fruition. So I’m hopefully going to start directing and making my own things. That’s hopefully where this is headed.

    Looking for projects that offer good roles for women — I mean, I know that there’s more now than there were —

    Yes.

    — but it’s still a struggle, and even this show is a commentary on that. You see the place of a woman in the historical context that “Westworld” is trying to recreate, but also the way that people treat the female hosts in that context. So where are you hoping to take material in what you generate for yourself?

    Well, what’s cool about the show is that it’s a reimagining of the 1800s, so there is that element, but the men hosts are getting just as abused as the women, and women can also come to Westworld and change their story, and they can be Dirty Harry if they want. They can be in the saloon with the girls and at the poker table, you know. There’s no rules. So there’s something really interesting about that to me.

    I feel like Westworld is one of the few places that it truly feels like an even playing field, and everything’s very fluid, and there’s gender equality. No one is safe, really. So all of that’s there, but it is also very much there for the men. So I feel like we’re already taking it a step in sort of changing that template. It doesn’t feel like it’s beating you over the head with it on the show either. It just is. It’s just how the world is set up.

    But it’s also okay to acknowledge that it is a bit more of an epidemic when it comes to women, and I think that is another theme that we’re showing on the show, and why that is, and why that’s entertaining.

    I’ll close out with noting it’s been a long time since you’ve been a regular on a TV show.

    Yeah!

    What did you love about it then, and what did you rediscover you loved about it now?

    I love being able to get so involved with a character. When you’re with a role like that for so long, you just know it inside and out. So I feel like I’m the best actor on TV because you have a chance to really sit with the material and dissect it, year by year, and tell — you have the time to tell epic stories. So I love it. I really love it. And I love HBO. They’ve just been so good to me. They feel like family at this point. So it’s great — it’s really great.

  • HBO’s ‘Westworld’ Explores Eerie Dreams in New NSFW Trailer

    Evan Rachel Wood in WestworldHBO is set to blur fantasy and reality in its eerie new sci-fi series, “Westworld,” when the show debuts in October. In the meantime, the latest trailer has dropped, showing off the twisted drama to come.

    The preview starts out innocently enough. There’s a beautiful couple, a Western town, and talk of dreams. That changes pretty quickly, though. Before we know it, Dolores (played by Evan Rachel Wood) is being questioned — naked, mind you — by Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins).

    From there, it’s off to the races. The trailer contains an orgy, blood, and some terrifying violence — basically, all of the controversial elements that have been buzzed about in the run-up to the series premiere. Not surprisingly HBO labeled the trailer as “mature,” aka probably NSFW.

    Check it out for yourself below.
    The series’ stellar cast also includes Ed Harris, Tessa Thompson, James Marsen, Thandie Newton, and more. “Westworld” premieres on HBO on Oct. 2 at 9 p.m. ET.