You could totally see Justified’s Raylan (Olyphant) and Boyd (Walton Goggins) in that elevator.
Exactly! And so you want to make sure I’m not falling into a different thing. But when we started doing the scene, I was like, wait, I’ve done this, I know what this scene wants to be. These are working-class guys, and you have the same troubles I have. You work for your guy, I work for my guy, and we could hang out and talk shop. Once we clicked into that, it was like, Oh, this is a super fun game to play, I can’t wait to get back together. That sense of, we share a lot of things in common…but we may have to kill each other.
Another great example of Noah being open to where it wants to go as opposed to what he may have had planned. I knew he wanted this relationship between the two of us to continue to unfold and try to reach some sense of a peak before we wrapped, and he came to me one day and said, “I think I have a great thing for you and Babou,” and I said, “I only have one question: is there violence involved?” And he said, “There could be.” And I said, “It’d be nice if there was.” [Laughs.]
Up until the reveal that Kirsh was letting all of this happen as a way to capture Morrow, it was easy to be suspicious of his lack of action. It seems like he’s just following Boy Kavalier’s orders, but how do you view his ongoing motivations?
I’m still not convinced that he doesn’t potentially have his own ideas in mind. When they talk about the difference between an animal that’s been tamed versus domesticated, a wolf can be tamed but it’s never going to be domesticated. The wolf is constantly thinking, You turn your back and I might change my mind about this whole arrangement. I saw this as a similar role. Yes, he seems to have done everything he’s supposed to do, but I don’t buy that he’s not constantly crunching a lot of numbers. As the story goes, he continues to withhold more and more. Noah will say he has been seemingly programmed to not hurt Boy Kavalier, and I’d say, “Sure…but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought of it.” And I also know that there’s always a version of what I think keeps people up at night now, which is, is AI going to solve all our problems, and if we are asking it to, are we going to like the answers? Because that’s the danger.
How would you tee up the finale for viewers?
All I can tell you is that, when we shot that ending, I had one of my favorite feelings, which is that it felt totally unexpected, yet inevitable. Like, of course this is where it was headed from the jump. I think it’s going to be both a very satisfying ending and have people really leaning forward. The idea of another season is a year-plus away, but, boy, that ending feels like, okay, let’s get to it!