We couldn’t hope for anyone better to have as our first interview on The Warm Glow. Lance Reddick featured throughout all 5 seasons of the greatest tv show ever made (you know the one), as well as smaller roles in similarly great HBO titles The Corner and Oz, and was a cult hero on LOST, despite amassing little screen time. His current project, and second long-running television show – Fringe – comes to an end in 4 episodes time – Nestor Watach chatted to him about his career thus far, and the projects he has coming up.
Starting out as an actor, one of your first acting jobs was on David Simon’s The Corner – would you say it’s a fair assessment that that was the catalyst for your career?
Well, in terms of television I’d say my big break was actually Oz about six months after The Corner – when The Corner happened it was the beginning of me starting to do a lot of television, the floodgates started opening. It’s funny because the person who cast me in The Wire cast me in Oz, and originally I came in because I played a crackhead on The Corner so originally I came in for Bubbles.
I remember hearing that. Elsewhere I heard that on LOST the creators actually wanted you to play the part of Mr. Eko. Is that something you were aware of at the time?
No, I didn’t – I didn’t know that until I read it in Entertainment Weekly after I’d been cast. It’s one of those things where my agent may have mentioned that there was some interest, but you hear things like that all the time so it’s really in one ear and out the other. It’s not something that I remember.
Speaking of LOST, do you think of your character arc on that show might have gone differently had you not had commitments on Fringe?
I’m fairly confident that would have been a much bigger character had I not been cast four months later on Fringe. I knew that I was Widmore’s right-hand man, that’s how the character was described to me – I remember, when I originally spoke to Damon Lindelof, the way he described it was “I was the Darth Vader to Widmore’s The Emporer”
Believe it or not, this is overwhelmingly the question that most people wanted me to ask you when conducting this interview – do you have a particular workout regime? People seem to be very impressed!
(laughs) I’ll be honest, since I was in junior high and high school, I always worked out a lot; I was something of an athlete. And then I really wanted to wrestle in college but they didn’t have a team. I’ve always been kind of methodical about the way that I exercise, but as I’ve gotten older I don’t exercise as hard. Back when I was on The Wire I was still working out pretty hard. It’s mostly a lot of calisthenics and a lot of heavy aerobics.
Moving on, earlier this year you starred in the web series DR0NE (above) – how did that come about?
Actually, that came about due to Clark Baker and Robert Glickert, the producers – they thought I’d be great for the role and wanted to be interested in doing it. When I read the script I thought it was really cool and my manager and I said we’d love to do it if we could co-produce it with them. Quite frankly, I didn’t expect it to be as cool as it was; it looks great.
I was impressed by the special effects, especially for something on YouTube. The fact it was a web series, did the format itself come into your consideration or were you motivated purely by the script?
Well, for me the script is always first in terms of my consideration, and the character, and the venue. It’s usually in that order. I really loved the script, and the character was going to be a lot of fun. The fact it was on YouTube, I had never really done that yet, but the fact that it was on Justin Lin‘s channel and the writer/director was one of his protégés was definitely a perk for me.
We’ll move on to Fringe, which wrapped up filming last week. I suppose you can start talking about that in the past tense – I’ll ask you some reflective questions – but first from the audience’s perspective we’re still very much looking forward to the final few episodes and wondering how it will end – can you tease those final few episodes?
Well, man… I really can’t say much. The thing that’s been so cool for me about this season is how completely serialised it is, in some ways it’s kind of abandoned the case-of-the-week format. And so in that regard it feels almost like a cable show, and in some ways it’s the most fitting way for the show to end because that’s really where it lives. That’s just my opinion but it’s really where I saw the show when it started, primarily a serialised ride from the beginning until the end.
This is the second show you’ve been on from the beginning until the end – how did the experience of finishing Fringe compare to the end of The Wire?
It’s funny because similar to my experience on The Wire, it seemed like on each season I had less and less to do, and yet from the outside it didn’t look that way to the fans, and also similarly when the shows ended, I felt like I was so ready to do something else, and yet when it ended the emotion hits you, I really got choked up both times and that really surprised me.
Is there one particular favourite episode from Fringe?
I think the one in Season 4, the big Astrid episode where her father passes away and she comes back through the other side to get some insight into her father. That really was heart-wrenching for me. Jasika Nicole was quite frankly brilliant in that episode.
Despite the heavy mythology, Fringe has a lot of fun elements such as the LSD episode (above) and the musical episode, which have allowed you to play subtly different versions of the same character – has that been an interesting challenge for you?
That’s actually been the most fun thing about this character, and in that regard it’s different to playing Lieutenant Daniels. I feel like I played five different versions of Broyles so in some ways it’s been like five different characters – I mean, the main alternate universe version was the most like the mainstream version, but even he is different because I feel like he made choices in terms of being a traitor for the sake of his family, which the mainstream Broyles wouldn’t have made, which I think is evidenced by the fact he lost his family for the sake of his job.
Having mentioned the musical episode (above) – where you got an opportunity to showcase your singing skills. Do you plan on doing more musical things – will there be a follow up to your first album?
It’s really been on my mind lately – in the past couple of months people have been asking me about that a lot. Now that I’ve got some time in front of me, I’m going to focus my attention on writing more music and see where that takes me. I think it’ll still be quite in the style of jazz, but similar to my first album, I think it will be quite eclectic, probably more eclectic than my first album. I’ve already got 8 songs that I’ve written in preparation for a second album and musically I think those will be pushing the boundaries a little more.
You have a lot of different films coming up, one perhaps more in the pipeline is the sci-fi thriller In War They Come. Also on the horizon is the Danny DeVito-directed St. Sebastian. Could you tell us about those?
In War They Come is in development and hasn’t actually started shooting yet, but we’re talking about shooting it in London. Stuart Gallop is the writer-producer. I’m partnering in producing that with Steven Adams.
With St. Sebastian, I actually got a note from Danny recently that he’s almost done with all of the post-production, we should have a really great cut to look at at the start of the new year. The story stars myself, William Fichtner and Costance Zimmer – it’s about a drug dealer and a cop in a nearly-abandoned hospital in the middle of a warzone. It’s about the cop trying to get the drug dealer – whom I play – back into custody, and them playing cat and mouse all through the night, and all the creepy stuff that happens.
You’re due to star in the Spike Lee-directed remake of Old Boy. What can you tell us about that?
For those people who don’t know the original, the story is set over twenty years – It’s about a guy who’s kind of a tool (laughs) who is abducted and held for 20 years, and the movie is really about him figuring out why, and getting kind of closure-revenge. I play a character called Daniel Newcombe, who is a very wealthy successful business man, who may or may not be involved in what happens to this characters.
How was working with Spike Lee?
Well, it’s Spike Lee, so you know, it was cool. It’s interesting, because moving from independent film, to television, to mainstream films, – I also just finished working on a Roland Emmerich film, White House Down, which is a huge action movie starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx – and just in terms of pace and style, it’s been so interesting for me to go through all these three things. On the one hand I was surprised at how quickly Spike moved – don’t get me wrong, he covered the heck out of everything – but on the other hand, I guess I should have known because he’s such an iconic legend but I was surprised at how much he completely knew what he was doing and what he wanted from the start.
And working with Josh Brolin – I’ve worked with him once before – I’d work with him again any time. He’s fantastic.
Another of your upcoming projects is doing the voice acting for Beware the Batman as Ra’s al Ghul. How was that?
Well that was actually really intimidating, because I’m a bit of a comic book geek so the opportunity to play Ra’s al Ghul was… (laughs) wow. Except for the joker, he’s probably Batman’s greatest nemesis. I’ve been wanting to do something like that for a long time. The project is going to look fantastic.
The Warm Glow 
