I want to ask you, what did you think?
Of the ending? I think it’s a cohesive ending in line with the characters and their values.
I’ve never seen it.
You haven’t seen the finale yet?
I’ve never seen any of it, no. I don’t watch it.
Can you not watch your own stuff?
Not really, no, to be honest. But I’m intrigued if [the ending] feels right for them.
What do you make of Rob’s growth over the season? Did making that transition feel continuous or more segmented?
I think it’s one of the great joys of being in a long-running show: you get a genuine arc, genuine development and progression that you get to be a spokesperson for as well. You get to collaborate on that with the writers by this point. When they first wrote the show, they didn’t know who was going to play these characters, so you’re writing into an empty space. Whereas now, I always imagine it [like] those frames with the cutout faces and you can put your head in them. When they write—whether they like it or not—it’s our face in the thing. Naturally, our own lives and characters bleed into the roles and the lines become more blurred and you become more of this amorphous thing. I’ve certainly felt that with Robert. In the final stages of my audition, I remember Mickey and Konrad telling me, “Just be a bit more you”—whatever that means—because the character that I identified on the page wasn’t necessarily what they wanted long-term, and I didn’t have that kind of context, presented with someone quite reprehensible and pretty vapid and unlikeable. What they wanted in the long run, I suppose, was a lot more texture and humanity and humbleness—someone we could root for.
Do you have any insight on a potential Season 4?
There’s not really much I can say to that, really. It’s sort of above my pay grade, to be honest. I dunno if anyone really knows for sure—it’s always been in the hands of HBO, who have always been really supportive. From my perspective, it feels like they’ve always taken the leash off and just let us see what we can come up with.
You’re also in the new Joker film. Can you tell me about your experience on set?