Cheers to richard dower for the heads up
What excites you about the character?
He’s a truly honest man. The last honest man in a city full of crooked people. It’s very tricky nowadays to play a true, honest-to-goodness hero. Everybody is so cynical of people’s intentions. What’s interesting about him is he comes into this city that he hasn’t lived in for two decades, since he was a kid, and has fresh eyes to a world he doesn’t actually know. He thinks he knows it, and his journey will be to figure out how to make it better both for Gotham and himself without completely [losing] the moral standing that he has. He’s not an anti-hero, he’s a true hero — but he will have to compromise.
From reading the pilot script, it seems like, given the tightrope he has to walk in just the first episode of the show, it’s hard to see how Gordon could maintain his ideals throughout the series.
He won’t. And that’s one of the things we talked about very early on. This is not a Batman-from-the-’50s kind of show, with moral duality in black and white. In this world, everybody lives in the grey. Everybody is on the take. Everybody is compromised. There is no way he’ll emerge unscathed from that. How does he hold onto the thread of his mortality while getting things done?
How have you prepared for the role?
I went to lunch with [DC Comics chief creative officer] Geoff Johns and asked, “What do I need to know? I’m familiar with Batman and Gordon, but what’s my responsibility here?” He gave me Gotham Central … and said two things: The origin story of Gordon hasn’t been fully explored before. As central as he is, Gordon has never been the focus. And second, you can’t worry about that. “We hired you to play you and to make this character fresh.” And he said it without provocation. That coming from the guy who’s so well versed in this, saying to make it your own, it was a real pat on the shoulder. There’s a tendency with such a familiar world that it can be intimidating. But you got to relax and do it. It ought to be bigger and grander and — frankly — cooler than most, but you have to treat it like a job.
What’s been uniquely challenging in terms of shooting the pilot?
To me, this show has to be shot in New York. New York is Gotham and Gotham is New York. It’s been incredible to be here. This is my first time shooting here. It’s exactly the look and feel and energy that you just cannot fake in a backlot. But it’s been 20 degrees and windy. Plus, there’s the more practical challenge of creating a new world. If a Toyota Corolla drives by in the background, it doesn’t make any difference what you’re doing performance-wise — it’s not usable.
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