It’s Okay if you Hate me

That favorite acting teacher from my first post also gave us this little gem: 

“The theater isn’t interested in perfect people.” 

Truly, how BORING would any story be if all the characters were perfect and made right and perfect choices at every turn? That theater, and by extension film, tv, all media predicated on a narrative structure, has little use for perfect people is just intuitively, obviously true. How many sitcom scripts are predicated on a simple misunderstanding that we just can’t reveal until the last minute? Source: every episode of Three’s Company. As far as Aristotle is concerned, in order to have a tragedy, that protagonist is kinda gonna need that tragic flaw. 

So we accept that our characters are imperfect. We want to play flawed, complicated people. Don’t we?

Last year at school a breakdown went out for a play set in the American South during the Civil War and I noticed more than a few actors were reluctant to audition. They expressed concern that they- as individuals– would be judged by their characters’ actions and words. The general anxiety seemed to be: “what if people think I’m really like that?” 

What if the show is hateful?

Honestly, fair. For one: there’s no glory in glorifying bigotry. This particular play doesn’t have that issue (because even though it depicts bigots, they aren’t the moral or narrative center of the story) but once an actor leaves the relative safety of the academic garden and starts taking on scrappy new projects and working with younger, less pedigreed writers, it is up to us as individuals to decide where we want to put our efforts. We should look with a critical eye at the productions’ overall values, messaging, and quality before we give it our literal body, mind, and spirit. As actors we’re only responsible for a small part of any production but we give our whole selves to it. I might be 16% of the cast but you’re getting 100% of me. To appear on screen or on stage as our whole selves does seem to suggest an implicit endorsement of the shows’ values. 

This is troubled, like all things, by the bleak economics of our business. We all have to earn our bread somehow. Earlier this summer I was contacted for a role by a production company owned by a high control group– you know the one– and I had to consider it because they paid. Scheduling conflicts saved me the trouble but still. I wouldn’t have been spewing racial slurs I don’t think, but I would have had to consider that my visage would’ve lived in their morally dubious footage a lot longer than the money would’ve lasted me.

What if my character is the worst?

For two: we live in a world of constant, immediate feedback. I remember speculation that Jack Gleeson, who portrayed a pitch perfect sh*tstain as Joffrey Baratheon on Game of Thrones, was so hated by fans who couldn’t separate fact from fiction that he had to take a break from acting. Turns out, “speculation” is the operative word in that sentence. Gleeson has spoken about his reasons for taking time away from acting, however, and they have nothing to do with the fans.  Anna Gunn, who played Skyler White in Breaking Bad, actually did get a ton of well-documented hate from fans of the show– but she also won two Emmys for the role and her most recent credit is an Apple TV show starring Colin Farrell. To say nothing about the terror of a truly vitriolic fandom, her work and her career are spectacular. No actor wants to be crucified in the court of public opinion for the actions of their characters but professionally it seems like good work on unsavory characters is still rewarded.

What will my character do to me?

For three: if I’m giving you my whole self as an actor then I absolutely should consider what it will do to me, as an individual, to put these characters’ potentially hateful words in my mouth and actions in my body. That’s a heavy cost. Even sweet little lambs of characters can change you on a deep level, affect the way you think or move in the world in ways that might not feel good. We have to learn to draw those psychic and emotional boundaries for ourselves but the cost is inevitable. I did the iconic “get thee to a nunnery” scene from Hamlet (III.i) in class last Spring and sharing my body with Ophelia took me to some dark places. Situationship? Check. Abandonment? Check. Losing grip on reality? Check. And we only did a bit of the scene! But that’s the gig isn’t it? Isn’t that the kind of emotional extreme sports we live for? 

I’ll speak for myself: yes, yes absolutely. 

What can this character do for us?

I guess my point is that, yes, there’s plenty of reasons to wring our hands over auditioning for or taking any particular role– especially if the show depicts the evils of our history and potential, especially when we face the immediate backlash of public opinion, especially when the job puts such a toll on our internal lives– but isn’t that what we signed up for?

As Hamlet said:

“… to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to

 nature, to show virtue her ⟨own⟩ feature, scorn her

 own image, and the very age and body of the time

 his form and pressure.”

  (III.ii.23-26)

How can we possibly show the age and body, the size and shape, the truth of the time, for example the American antebellum South, if a few brave actors aren’t willing to inhabit the scornful characters of the time? Leo did it in Django. Everybody loves this meme. 

We still love to hate villains. 

Moreover, we still need to see villains and evil on stage and on screen so we, as an audience, as a people, can learn how to deal with it. So we can look at it in stark, high def relief, and go, “oh yeah I don’t want to be like that.” 

“Oh shit is that what I sound like?”

“Fuck I hate that this happened.”

“How can I make it right?”

This is the sacrifice we make as actors. 

It’s Okay. You can hate me.

I’m okay if you hate my character and I’m even okay if that hate bleeds into who you think I am as an individual because my good faith assumption is that that hate is reflective of something you don’t like in yourself or the world we share. Maybe seeing me, or any actor, doing something hateful, will motivate us to change.