Our very own Justine Browning was on the red carpet at the Roxy Hotel in New York City to talk to the cast of the new TNT series Good Behavior.
Good Behavior tells the story of Letty Raines (Dockery), a thief and con artist whose life is always one wrong turn or one bad decision from implosion. Fresh out of prison, Letty tries to stay afloat; reunite with her 10-year-old son who is currently being raised by her mother Estelle (Strus); and show up for the mandatory check-ins with her parole officer Christian (Kinney), who carries his own demons which cause him to relate to Letty in a way that threatens his ability to do his job. Chaos returns to Letty’s life when she overhears a hitman (Botto) being hired to kill a man’s wife, and sets out to derail the job. She soon finds herself on a collision course with the killer, entangling both of them in a dangerously captivating relationship.
Check out our interview with with Good Behavior Cast and Producers Michelle Dockery, Juan Diego Botto, Terry Kinney, Lusia Strus, Blake Crouch and Chad Hodge.
J. Browning: I think we haven’t seen a character like Letty on TV before, or really anywhere. How would you say she’s incredibly unique?
M. Dockery: She is. There are lots of great female roles being written at the moment, but they’re not just strong women, they’re women with many sides to them. Smart women, funny women, vulnerable women, mothers, daughters, I mean it feels like there is more and more being written, and Letty is a fabulous character to play. For me, it just was such a joy to dive into. Yeah.
J. Browning: The creators have spoken about the fact that they’ve drawn inspiration from noir. The show’s being categorized as poetic noir. I’d love to know more about where you drew your inspiration for such an incredible character.
M. Dockery: Well, for me it always starts with the writing, but then I watched shows, like Nurse Jackie, were really useful, I’m such a fan of Edie Falco anyway, but that show was a great one to watch for some inspiration. We also watched a documentary called The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, which is a documentary about this thief. It really kind of tells you this fascinating life of this thief, which, she’s very much like Letty, and some of the references from the documentary were used in the show.
J. Browning: I would say I have never seen a character like this on TV before. How would you say he’s strikingly different than anything we’ve seen, just from an acting standpoint for you?
J. Diego Botto:Well, the biggest challenge with this character was that he’s a hit man, he kills people for money, that’s what he does. Other than that, he’s a very nice guy, which is impossible to understand, but, and it was difficult for me, but it’s true. He has a moral code, he follows the rules, he’s caring, he’s emphatic, but has that little thing that he kills people. So, that’s what makes Javier so different and so peculiar.
J. Browning: Well, I think what’s unique is the dynamic between Michelle Dockery’s character, Letty, and yours is that she’s fallen off the deep end and somehow this hit man is going to restore a bit of order in her life. Can you talk about those scenes?
J. Diego Botto: Yeah, that’s the fun of the show. These are two outcasts somehow. These are two that really are trying desperately to find their place in the world because they don’t fit in. Somehow, and unexpectedly, they’re becoming each others own redemption. That is, I think, what I’ve really loved about this show when I first read it. It was that you don’t expect these two characters, she being a thief, con-artist, drug issues, me being a hit man, not just to have a positive side, because that’s for the audience to decide, but to get involved in this complicated but fascinating dynamic that makes the show, I mean, I think makes the show so special.
J. Browning: What’s great is that you bring an element of humanity to this character. You’re drawn in by him. He has this charisma. Can you speak to developing that aspect of him? Balancing those two elements?
J. Diego Botto: Well, that was one of the things because … Beforehand, this is the first time I do TV, so when you do theater, when you do film, you have the script, and in a script you have the beginning, the middle and the end. You know where the character is going to land and you know all the background. It’s all there. In TV, in this case, you don’t. So I had asked Chad Hodge, the creator of the show, a thousand-million questions beforehand, trying to understand, and he gave me a lot of information that was so useful. He’s an extremely talented man. That information, I mean, there’s a depth to Javier. There’s a burden that he has that I try to, you have to just give little pieces. You can’t give all the information in the pilot. You have to just give little tiny little details.
J. Browning: He answered your questions for you, but did he let you fill in some aspects of the character? Maybe his past at all bring your own elements as well?
J. Diego Botto: Well, there was a funny thing. I was born in Argentina. I live in Spain. I live in Madrid. When we shot the pilot there was this scene that I’m on the phone and I speak Spanish, and when we shot it, I spoke in my Spanish accent from Madrid. Then, during the shooting, we talked with Chad a lot. I told him about my past. My background in Argentina. Then when I came back to actually do the actual series, the rest of the episodes, he told me, “You know what? Now the character is Argentinian,” and so I went, “Okay.” So, actually, we did that scene, the phone scene, again with … Because I told him, well the accent in Argentina and Spain, it’s very very different.
J. Browning: Of course. Yes. Argentina has such a unique culture, a unique history to it, of course. What would you say that making the character Argentine actually brings to the character, changes it?
J. Diego Botto: It changed it a lot. To me it was special because it’s very easy for me to understand that background and he comes from a place that I really can understand and I know Argentine history very very well. So that gave me a completely new perspective, when I was able to bring my own personal thing to it.
J. Browning: One of the things that you’ve said in the past is the fact that this character that Michelle Dockery plays, Letty, she would be, if Mary from Downton Abbey were alive today. Can you expand on that a bit more?
C. Hodge: Michelle and I were actually talking about this today. If you look at those two characters, Lady Mary is a very strong, vulnerable, dark, funny, she has a lot of life that she’s lived that character. She, having been the head of that family, she takes on a lot and there are similar … it’s 2016 versus the 20s. It’s a totally different thing but it’s the strength and the vulnerability and the humor of both characters, I think, are very similar. Then, in many ways, they’re totally so different. They’re very very very different, but I think that, if those two people met each other, Lady Mary and Letty, there would be a sympathy, and I think many women will feel that about Letty.
J. Browning: Oh I agree. I love the summary of the show as a Breaking Bad in reverse, with a female character at the center. Can you speak to where you drew your inspiration in terms of those types of films?
C. Hodge: The first thing, when this project became a reality, the first thing I insisted on was that the person who directed it be a woman, and I knew who that woman was going to be, or who I wanted it to be, but I wrote it, but no matter how great the script is, no matter how great the actress is … It’s like, to understand what it means to be in the point of view of a woman, which this entire show is, is something I could never fully understand, because I’m not a woman. Really, the inspiration for how this show looks and how this show feels is from the director of the pilot, which we then carried through the rest of the episodes. Her name is Charlotte Sieling. I remember she called me one day from Copenhagen two months before we were shooting the pilot and we were talking every day about what are we going to do, how are we going to do it, what are we going to do, and she called me one day and said, “I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to do poetic noir,” and I said, “What’s poetic noir?” She said, “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.” Then we did.
The character you play is so interesting in terms of the relationship he has with the lead character played by Michelle Dockery, Letty. Could you speak to their dynamic and bringing that to the surface?
T. Kinney: Yeah. I mean, it starts off as a sort of a push-and-pull. He’s trying to sort of prod her back into the straight and narrow for the sake of her son. She would like to get custody back of him, but she’s having a really hard time doing that because it’s just terribly boring. He not only is frustrated by that, he sympathizes with it, and so he puts in an extra effort to go after her, find her, try to sort of take care of her so she won’t get into worse trouble when she doesn’t show up for her check-ins. That being said, that’s when everything changes because, once he’s out of the office and he finds the kind of fun of this, all bets are off. He gets more lured into her palette than she into him.
J. Browning: Something that we’ve been sort of discussing is the fact that this show draws a lot of unique inspiration from noir cinema. I think it really utilizes the scenery in such a unique way for sure. Can you speak to being a part of it, and just from an acting standpoint, in where you drew your inspiration?
L. Strus: Well, I think that we definitely the vision of Charlotte Sieling and Chad Hodge and Blake Crouch and our cinematographers and it’s beautiful, I think. It’s just such a beautiful, and it’s like poetic noir. It’s this, and I really, when I watched the pilot, I’d never seen anything like it. I’ve really never seen anything like this. As far as what drew me to it, I didn’t even know that I was involved in it. It was really just being directed to just keep it honest and real and be intent on each other, and so that’s what I did. I don’t think that we’re acting within the scope of what this is. I think we’re being human, and allowing the people who know what they’re doing with that to do that around us, but my responsibility is to try to be a human being and talk to another human being. Because this is my very first series, to figure out how to do that with cameras up in my grill. Instead of being in a bubble of light on a stage in a theater.
J. Browning: What would you say the learning curve has been, or adapting to this new kind of pace because this is a hell of a show to start with? For sure.
L. Strus: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we would get together on weekends sometimes and rehearse lines. We’re all pretty much theater-based. For me, it was just, there’s no, like I will work 16 hours a day. I have no problem with that. I like it. I’m an immigrant’s kid. I’m sort of like, give me more, give me more work. I’m pleased with that. There were no complaints from any of us about that, and Dockery, she, I have a really good work ethic but I’ve never seen anything like her. I’ve never seen anything like that girl at work. Day after day after day after day, and then she’d order an ice cream truck for everybody, and I was like, “What the hell? Like, what are you? Who are you?”
J. Browning: I can’t imagine because the whole show was her perspective. It was everything riding on her.
L. Strus: Yeah. I mean day after day after day after day, and then we’d have dance breaks in the hair and makeup trailers. I didn’t concern myself, I don’t think we did, with a style. We tried to be honest and then the design of it took care of itself and we respected that within itself. Everyone took their responsibilities and we all, the crew there in Wilmington is incredible. They’re just incredible. We worked so hard, and long, and on location and in rain and heat.