The Blacklist Declassified

Interview w Talk Stoop

I’ve seen this interview quoted in fragments in several places (especially on Tumblr), but the NBCNewYork Site does not have a transcript, nor could I find one anywhere else, so I transcribed it below:

NBCNewYork/TalkStoop (9/2/2014): James Spader on Acting Advice and New Show http://bit.ly/12nIdYx “the camera looks through your eyes”
// 9/2/2014, NBCNewYork, with Cat Greenleaf

INTERVIEW
September 2, 2014

CG: What’s been on your mind this last week?
JS: I’m just starting to feel moved into my apartment.

CG: Congratulations. What makes you feel moved in?
JS: Figuring out the showers. I live in an 1860s townhouse and it’s got a lot of idiosyncrasies of which – none of which am I familiar.

CG: What’s your most hard to figure out idiosyncrasy?
JS: I haven’t figured it out yet.

CG (laughs): What’s the one you keep hitting your head up against?
JS: How to turn off that just grinding engine in my head that just keeps going and going and going until I finally fall off to sleep.

CG: It’s like we’re the same person, because that’s exactly what I was going to say when I think about asking myself that question. I have no off switch
JS: I don’t either.

CG: What do we do about that?
JS: Drink a lot of wine.

CG: Do you have any?
JS: Not with me, but I’m headed toward that soon.

[Clip from The Blacklist opening scene, outside FBI headquarters.]

CG: We probably should be taking about Blacklist. Part Robin Hood, Silence of the Lambs, part sexy, intriguing and great-looking FBI agent which is never hard to wrap your head around. But I love watching you –

[Red: “You got rid of your highlights. You look much less – Baltimore…]

CG: I love watching your face during this show, so nuanced.

[Red: “I have no interest in cases I have no interest in. Personally, I think my proposal was incredibly fair.”]

JS: I mean, that’s a trick, you understand, –

CG: No –

JS: You know, part of that. They shot him very, very tight.

[Extreme close-up in intro scene with Agent Keen.]

CG: Okay, no, it’s not a trick, your still making things –

JS: Oh no, there’s things going on. There’s definitely things going on. I was very lucky. Someone once, when I was very, very young, just starting out as an actor (said) “a camera doesn’t just see your face. It looks through your eyes and into your head. And that’s true, I think. The camera cannot, though, decipher what you’re thinking. It can only see that you’re thinking.j

CG: Right.

JS: And an audience projects an awful lot. So part of the trick of working as an actor is to be comfortable enough to just live and think and breathe in front of a camera and the camera takes care of a lot of the rest of it.

[Red: Laughs, “Oh, of course not…”]

CG: Do you have an idea of what you want the audience to be thinking, while they’re watching your face?

JS: No, if you don’t make any attempt to show the audience anything, then the audience wants to look further and further and further and further…

CG: Which is the goal –

JS: And I think that’s what that character does – he doesn’t show a great deal, but he draws you to look further in.

[Liz: “Why me, I’m nobody – the first day, nothing special about me.” Red: “Oh, I think you’re very special.”]

JS: Watch the show. It’s a great show. I don’t know which is my camera, but …

CG: Yes watch The Blacklist. It’s on –
JS: Have you seen it?

CG: Yes! That’s how I know about your face –
JS: Did you like it?

CG: Yes, I liked it very much. Did you not hear what I said that I liked watching the show? forget that I said I liked –
JS: I did, but I became much more intrigued with the other things you were saying…

CG: You weren’t listening to me –
JS: No, I listened to everything.

CG: You’re a charmer. I’ll see you in Brooklyn.
JS: You’ll see me in Brooklyn.