Paul Bettany Wants "Visio

Zhou Xingbiao

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Transcript

00:00We spent a lot of time in that car, just going like round and round and round and round.

00:03We sure did.

00:04We sure did.

00:06Free us all and save your son.

00:10I want to walk back to the trailer because when it dropped on IMDb,

00:13fans picked up on the father-son reunion and just ran with it.

00:18So I want to talk about what was the first scene you guys shot together?

00:21It was me strapped in the chair at St. Maven's in episode two.

00:26So it was the meeting.

00:28It was the meeting.

00:28So it was actually worked so perfectly.

00:30I think Christopher Byrne, who was directing that bit, did that on purpose.

00:33Because it's when I meant to be so afraid of you.

00:35And we'd not really met yet.

00:36Well, we'd met at the screen test and things.

00:39But that was the first one.

00:40And you step in and you have the red light that's spinning,

00:43shining on your white vision face that makes it look like the man that's been in my head all along.

00:48And it's that beautiful moment of you're like, no, I'm not here to hurt you.

00:52And that's the first moment of connection we have in the show.

00:56Yeah, I remember that, man.

00:57Did the dynamic kind of just land immediately between the two of you in that scene?

01:01It's taken a lot of work.

01:02Yeah.

01:04Very difficult.

01:05I've been carrying him through the whole show.

01:08No, it's been the relationship, I think, in the show goes through lots of different versions.

01:15And there's some fun stuff.

01:16There's stuff in the car where it should feel like when your dad was giving you your first driving lesson

01:23or whatever.

01:24And it should have that sort of energy.

01:26And then there are moments from vision that we've never seen before, like anger and feelings of revenge and acceptance

01:35of who his son is.

01:37So I think it goes through a lot of different kind of stages.

01:41Yeah.

01:42Now, Rory, the series kind of plays out like a mystery.

01:45As we learn more about your character, did you get the full picture of Tommy from the get-go or

01:49did you discover him script by script?

01:51Well, fortunately, like all of Tommy's memories that he's battling with are all stuff that I could watch in WandaVision.

01:58I had access to his whole previous memories.

02:01So that was like very, very handy.

02:03And then obviously I'd been reading all the comics that speed features and things like that to get an idea

02:08of the tone of who the speedsters are.

02:10But ultimately it's in Terry Metallus' writing.

02:12I read scripts and you feel the character arc and even just like playing off of each other as we

02:17like became closer and allowed things to be able to exist or find other jokes and things.

02:23And as you go on, you get, you do get, you get more comfortable and you do feel like there's

02:28a point where you're like, no, I am this character now.

02:30I, I, I know it.

02:31I get him.

02:32And that does allow an extra moment, extra freedom for sure.

02:37Now, Paul, you have been with this character since 2015.

02:39Is there a piece of old Vision that you clung to, or was it kind of a process of you

02:44just getting to invent with this amazing script from Terry?

02:47No, it was, there's, um, I realized who Vision was later, actually, when I met the fans and I realized

02:56who he is for.

02:58And really it's me when I was a kid, you know, I was bullied and I felt like an outsider

03:04and I didn't know where I was going to fit in.

03:06And, and, and I think that is the contract with the, with the audience is that Vision is always in

03:12a state of change.

03:13She's always trying to discover who he is and what he is for.

03:17And so I think that has always stayed the same since I realized it.

03:22And in this version, when we meet Vision, he has his memories, but he seems unable or maybe unwilling to

03:28attach any feelings to those, um, those memories.

03:32And it is through a process of accepting the truth, the impossible truth of his son and who his son

03:41is, and through an acceptance of who he is, and the terrible things that have happened to him, that he

03:48will finally become the most powerful version of himself.

03:51I wish to understand my hopes with a genocidal maniac inside your head.

03:57James, talk to me about revisiting Ultron.

04:00What was it like rediscovering that voice and finding something new?

04:03It felt so familiar right away, you know, all of the themes and ideas that one would want to play

04:10and goof around with and challenge oneself with in the age of Ultron were all present in this show.

04:20I first heard about this idea from Terry when he came to New York and spelled it out for me,

04:25and I saw the show right away.

04:29I knew what the foundation of each of those scripts was going to be.

04:33Yeah.

04:33Because I've been told, but to see how they were told and what these characters, really the conversations that they

04:42were having with one another and the conflict that was happening.

04:45And then to go on a road trip and then, you know, to experience this AI experiencing love and not

04:54just attraction.

04:56God, we did eight episodes, eight little movies.

04:59Eight movies.

04:59And you know what?

05:00It could have been eight more.

05:02We could have easily gone on.

05:04Now I'm going to finish what I started all those years ago.

05:08Fans know you and love you as Stevie from Schitt's Creek.

05:13What was the biggest adjustment going from that world to the massive secretive world of the MCU?

05:19Well, you know, on Schitt's Creek, just the sets I'm used to, like, you open a door and the whole

05:25set shakes.

05:26In this, I went into this mind space, which is inside Vision's mind.

05:31It's basically a mansion.

05:33It's my dream home, pretty much.

05:35And they built the entire thing very sturdily inside a studio.

05:41And it has a working elevator.

05:44Like, when I've had an elevator scene in a show, there's two guys on either side of these doors, like,

05:51pushing them, trying to make it look like an elevator.

05:54This worked.

05:57What's interesting is I expected it, like, other than the scale of it, I expected it to be scary and

06:04not as easy to get into in terms of, like, just the cast and everything.

06:13And it was the total opposite.

06:15It was, like, instant family, instant AI family.

06:19I also was lucky that I'd worked with Terry Metallus, the showrunner, before on a show called 12 Monkeys.

06:24And he said when he was writing Edith that he kept hearing my voice.

06:29And so my entry into the very daunting MCU was through Terry.

06:34So it was kind of like going home.

06:37Fans met Edith as Tony's tech in Far From Home.

06:41How much of that did you carry with you?

06:43And how much did you just, like, build anew?

06:45I definitely wanted Edith in Vision Quest to come from what had already been established.

06:51So I definitely, I watched that.

06:54And to me, that's her origin story.

06:57So I built from there.

06:58I was like, this is somebody who, Tony Stark created her, put her in a pair of sunglasses, called her

07:04Edith with the acronym Even Dead I'm the Hero.

07:07So, you know, there's a bit of Tony Stark ego in there, a bit of fun.

07:11And yet she has access to terrifying amount of weapons.

07:15And he gives her to a teenager.

07:18So I'm like, from there, who is this AI who breaks out of the glasses that we meet in Vision

07:26Quest?

07:26And I was just like, God, she's dying to break out.

07:30She's dying to have fun.

07:32And yet her idea of fun is blowing stuff up.

07:34So I feel like that's the link is that in Spider-Man, to me, that Edith is at work in

07:42a job where she has to do very tactical things.

07:46And Vision Quest is Edith on her day off.

07:51I want to walk back to the initial conversation you had about how far to evolve Ultron from where fans

07:58last left this character.

08:00You know, the idea stemmed from who does Vision talk to in this series without Wanda?

08:08We knew that he would eventually encounter Thomas and Tommy, but that had to be a goal.

08:14And in the meantime, he needed to really be having some exploratory conversations about humanity.

08:21And the first thing I thought of was Ultron.

08:26And that last scene in Age of Ultron between Vision and Ultron is just one of my favorites in the

08:30MCU.

08:31And I was like, what if it's a show with James Spader and Paul Bettany chewing it up?

08:37It was one of the first conversations I had with Paul.

08:39I said, what do you think about Ultron?

08:42And he goes, I love James and I had such a great time doing the press tour in Age of

08:46Ultron.

08:46And he's like, that's a great idea.

08:47And so that was an amazing opportunity because you have this humble villain who's been a prisoner who has grown

08:55and has this strange relationship with Vision that's father-like, but also not.

09:02It's adversarial, but also kind in a very unique way.

09:06It was just, it just felt like a great opportunity for stories.

09:09We talked a lot before we made the show about what we wanted the show to be about.

09:15I wanted it to have a really male energy in a really positive way.

09:22A father-son, grandfather thing.

09:24Well, that came in when Terry suggested bringing Ultron back.

09:28And I was like, now we have it, we have, we have it, but I wanted it to be sort

09:33of positive male energy because I think we need that and we need to see men that we can feel

09:41positive about.

09:42And it is a story of acceptance, you know, and accepting my son's truth and accepting, you know, my truth.

09:53I love the verbal wordplay that happens throughout all the scenes among all the AI characters.

09:59But talk to me about the dynamic between playing off of Paul's vision when you're basically just kind of living

10:05inside his head.

10:05That's funny. I never even thought of that.

10:08And probably because when I first met Paul, it was like we had always known each other and were basically

10:16the kids in class who would get separated.

10:18So we're always like poking each other.

10:21And so the main task for me was trying to not laugh and not make him laugh.

10:27But then at the same time, I was kind of in awe of what he can do as Vision, who

10:33is a robot, who can spew all this information.

10:37And Paul, who's a human, is the one doing it.

10:40And he's brilliant.

10:42Can you cite a specific example where the words on the page was elevated by the execution that James had

10:48on set?

10:49All of them. Every single one of them.

10:50We go through the script together beforehand.

10:53But on the day, it's magic. It's really where it comes together because, you know, you have all the different

10:59voices and they find things.

11:01Paul and Terry and I really work well with each other. That's really the bottom line of what...

11:06Yeah, shooting that finale was really fun. It was the most fun I've had in my professional career, without question.

11:13It was so, so fun.

11:15I had a family, a mother and a father.

11:19Was there a moment during filming where you felt like, man, I have settled in. This now clicks for me.

11:25I get who this character is.

11:27I do think after the big car scenes where we're driving together, we had Spader in the back. We had

11:31like Dummy and you and everything.

11:33And like we spent a lot of time in that car, just going like round and round and round.

11:37We sure did.

11:38We sure did.

11:39And then, yeah, you really connect, you know, honestly, the first day we filmed her entry into the show when

11:49she crashes through the skylight and I could not ask for a more Edith way into the show, like parachuting

11:57in crashes through a skylight, which probably wasn't the plan.

12:04James, you have played some iconic antagonists in your career. What does Ultron give you that a human villain doesn't?

12:13I like to play characters who are very, very strong identities, even if their struggle is with their identity.

12:23And maybe that's just me. Maybe it's lazy, you know, maybe it's lazy. It's just for me, that's something that

12:32just comes naturally to me to commit to something and have real conviction.

12:37If you can be absolutely convicted in being wrong, imagine how convicted you can be in being right.

12:44So I like playing characters of a strong identity. Also, along with being, you know, emotional or startling or frightening

12:54or disturbing or so strange or whatever it may be.

13:00All of that is fun for me.

13:03But I just want to jump in.

13:05But I was able to do all that with this.

13:07But to echo the strong, again, one of the things in the writer's room that we would take a little

13:11break and do is play Robert California from The Office, which to me is easily up there with the best

13:16of that show and offer and kind of was ahead of its time in so many ways.

13:20The 1% are suffering two people.

13:23And that is a character who has a point of view, a conviction, and there's a lot of that in

13:31Ultron.

13:34I love that story, by the way.

13:35Yeah, because Robert California is the best.

13:37The best.

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