While “Black Bird” deals with difficult subjects, Paul Walter Hauser enjoys listing the reasons why he agreed to play real-life serial killer Larry Hall in the Apple TV + crime drama.
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“All the elements were there. The script was immaculate, the character I was playing was going to be a challenge – which I prefer – and it’s exciting to do something that’s quite brooding and gritty,” said the Golden Globe-winning actor. “They think about me for a lot of stupid things. It was nice to think of something that felt like it would be done by (Darren) Aronofsky, or (Frank) Darabont, or in this case, Dennis Lehane.
However, as Greg Kinnear shared during his conversation with Hauser for IndieWire’s Awards Spotlight series, their first day on set was anything but reassuring. “’This couldn’t be built worse. Are we going to start the first day where Larry (Hall) basically sits down for a cross-examination with my character?’ I just thought, ‘Oh, my God, we’re so unprepared for this,’ said the actor who played Det. Brian Miller in the limited series. “But I felt like Dennis, who writes so strongly, but he’s actually very funny and relaxed, he was there on set that day and he took a lot of the pressure off us, and it actually went surprisingly well. “
“It went really well,” Hauser said. “But I definitely wasn’t thrilled that that was the first scene, because I really thought if I didn’t nail it on this first day — this is Larry Hall’s intro, so if you don’t nail it, then it’s almost like auditioning. , where you screw up in the first sentence, and then you move on. It’s like, ‘Yeah, this isn’t going to do.'”
But then the pair nailed it, broadcasting how the show exposes the implied misogyny that has helped get away with murder for years. “I actually think it worked out great, great for your character, because you were in a little bit of a different gear at the time,” Kinnear told Hauser. “But you needed to be in a slightly different gear (in) that moment than all the scenes you developed with Taron (Egerton).”
Hauser agreed. His character goes through a remarkable descent into insanity when he moves from interrogation rooms with Miller to prison with Jimmy Keene (Egerton), who is trying to extract a confession from him while gloating over the possibility of winning his conviction appeal. The actor, who also recently won a Critics Choice Award for his performance on the show, added that that first scene with Kinnear, “in a weird way, worked really well, because (Hall) is kind of in incognito ‘I’m still a citizen’ mode. And he didn’t switch to that craven comfort that he has in prison. So, in a way, it really worked and I was glad we did it the way we did, because I just had to keep it small and honest,” Hauser said. “And I didn’t have to make too many big swing choices like I do in episode 5 or 6.”
Watch the full Awards Spotlight conversation between Hauser and Kinnear in the video above.
