Walton Goggins Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

I look back at some of the things that you've mentioned,

comedies or dramas or movies or TV shows

or big parts or small parts,

it's the sum total of all of them that led to this moment.

I am grateful to be known for all of it,

and none of it, I mean, really.

[upbeat music]

Vice Principals.

You don't want to tussle with Lee Russell,

'cause I have the muscle.

Busted, I'm busted by Lee Russell,

I'm busted, busted by Lee Russell.

I have been a fan of Danny McBride's

going back to The Foot Fist Way.

He is the funniest person that I have ever met,

but I think on camera, he is one of the funniest people

that has been photographed in the last 50 years, man.

The man is a genius.

[Everyone] For which it stands one nation under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I had an opportunity to read for him

on Eastbound and Down.

It didn't work out, but they called afterwards

and they said it was just a little too dangerous,

You're too dangerous for what we were looking for,

but we're titillated, you know,

and we wanna keep this conversation open.

Cut to three years later,

he was there in New Orleans when I was doing Django,

and he sent me this script for Vice Principals.

I read it and I thought, Oh, this is dangerous.

This is really, really dangerous.

I read Lee Russell for the first time and thought,

I understand this guy.

Mhm.

I don't make these decisions, I never,

I don't believe in playing characters,

I don't believe in making choices.

These people just, they jump off the page.

We're not partners, fuck this partnership.

I'm gonna get me a new partner,

someone who will actually help me get things done.

Someone who's not a fucking little pussy.

A fucking little pussy?

A hairy mustache pussy.

That's what you think I am?

These are two very, very insecure, very lonely people

that are looking to be seen.

You know, they just wanna be seen

and loved for who they are.

Regardless of how funny this is,

there's an underlying pain to their journey

that is a part of this process.

And if at the end of this they have each other, well,

what more could they want?

We've got this bitch exactly where we want her.

One push and she falls into the Grand Canyon.

[Neal laughing]

If she can fit.

[Lee and Neal laughing]

If she can fit, if she can fit.

'Cause she's so big that there's no way

she can probably fit. I got it.

Yeah.

I think Lee Russell and Neal Gamby

is one of the great love stories,

[Walton laughing]

in the last decade, I really do.

And we had such a great time filming it,

so much so that at the end of that,

I knew that Danny was going to be a friend

for the rest of my life,

and someone, if given the invitation,

that I would collaborate with forever.

[upbeat music]

Fallout.

[upbeat music]

[dramatic music]

Oh, you wouldn't happen to be a doctor, would you?

Because I happen to be looking for one.

You know your kind ain't welcome here.

Well, maybe not,

but I'm gonna make myself welcome.

If I'm being honest, I'm not a gamer.

As I've done with even Tomb Raider, or, you know,

several of the other movies that I've done over the years,

my job isn't to protect the player's experience,

my job is to interpret these words

and understand who this person is

and make them as real as possible.

I didn't know anything about the game.

There were so many people

that knew everything about the game

that made that experience tactile in a way that made the,

everything that was happening around you,

the environment of all of these different spaces,

it made it feel like, okay, for the player of the game

who's now watching this show,

you are inserted into an authentic representation

of the world, right?

Number one.

I didn't have to think about that.

And as far as the story goes,

and Jonathan Nolan's approach to it,

and Geneva and Graham, Graham Wagner,

who is also a very big fan of the game,

tried not to be influenced, or to be swayed,

by including things in the game that would get in the way

of a truly authentic story in the cannon

of the Fallout universe.

And a weapon in their arsenal was me, was The Ghoul,

I wasn't concerned about the player's experience at all.

I'm concerned about the person that I'm playing,

and making it as three dimensional and real as possible.

And if you do that and you come from your heart,

and if you believe it and the audience believes it,

and everybody else is taking care of the feel,

the vibe, of the Fallout universe,

well then they'll go on that journey with you.

And luckily for me, for all of us

that participated in the making of the show,

that's been the experience.

[lively music]

There's an old Mexican eulogy.

[Cooper speaking Spanish]

When I read these scripts for Fallout

for the first time, what I realized pretty early on

is that this is an extraordinary opportunity

to play the same person at two very different times

in their life.

One, Cooper Howard, the equivalent

of a retro futuristic kind of '50s Pax Americana world,

he is a western movie star in this time,

and with a beautiful wife, and a beautiful daughter,

and a family,

and a world that he loves.

I needed to understand everything in that world,

as Cooper Howard,

to understand 219 years after the bombs fell

and everything that he had lost

and everything that he had seen over those 219 years.

I mean, this is a man who has been

walking a post-apocalyptic wasteland for 219 years

and seen the absolute worst that human beings have to offer.

He is cynical, and beyond indignant, you know,

he is just walking and walking

and trying to stay alive long enough

to find out answers to questions

that only he knew, until we get to the end of the story

and you realize it was for his family.

And so it was an incredible opportunity,

it was a unique opportunity to play these two people

that are so similar,

and have them speak to each other over time,

but at two very, very different points in their life.

It was the extreme version of the lives

that most people live, you know?

We're all very different at 19 than we are at 52,

or at 62, or at 72, or at 82.

And his was just interrupted by the ending of the world.

[upbeat music]

The Shield.

[upbeat music]

Lem, I'm sorry.

But I had to, right?

But you know I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, man, buddy.

No one knew what it was going to become,

it was just a great pilot.

No one knew if it would get picked up or anything else.

Michael Chiklis and Kenny Johnson and I

became very, very close, very, very quickly.

And I'll never forget the first day of filming,

downtown Los Angeles, I'm a serious guy.

I like to think I'm a funny guy too,

but I'm a pretty earnest, serious guy,

and I take what we do for a living very seriously.

But we were messing around, downtown LA,

and we had our badges on,

and we were just bonding, like that first day of work,

and the badge was out, and this police officer

who was security on the set, came up to us.

He said, What the fuck are you doing?

I said, I'm sorry, what do you mean, 'What are you doing?'

You see that badge, it's not a joke.

There's a hit out on a police officer right now,

take that fucking thing off and put it in your pocket

until they call action.

And it was in that moment that I realized this is for real.

You know, that's the culture of this show,

it's the tenor of this city,

and that's how we're gonna approach this.

Lock and load, baby. Ah, yeah.

This is not gonna be any beauty pageant, ladies.

He's got steal-enforced doors, which means we gotta go

through a window and we gotta be fast

before he starts flushing.

Knock, knock who there?

Strike team, Mr. Drug Dealer.

[everyone laughing]

When it was all said and done,

we were all became very, very close,

and that was it, you know.

We waited, and two months later, 9/11 happened,

America changed, the world changed.

And we're sitting on this powder keg

of visual experience that vilifies police officers,

at a time where police officers were running up those stairs

to save people at 9/11.

It was sacrilegious to even contemplate

telling a story like this.

And the decision had to be made sometime in December,

I think, by the higher-ups at FX,

and they decided that, yes, this is the time.

[Vic] You made that decision on your own?

He wouldn't go to Mexico.

Ah!

I told him about the goat farm, about the way out,

about the money that we were gonna send him.

He said that if he wouldn't take the ride to Mexico,

that we would know that he turned.

He didn't turn. Well, I know that now.

I did 84 episodes of The Shield,

that had never been done before, right?

No actor had ever had the opportunity

to play a linear story,

and over that extended period of time,

and explore every facet

of a person's psychological condition

and have that psychological condition evolve over time.

No one had ever done that.

And we were like kind of the test pilots in that way,

and I'm very proud of, and very grateful

for that opportunity.

So no one knew, I didn't know

that it was going to go that long.

I didn't know that it was going to become that nuanced

and that complicated.

Not only did I not get bored by that experience,

it was riveting, daily,

and remained that way up until the last cut

that we heard on the series finale.

An opportunity that I have never taken for granted,

no one took it for granted,

and everybody understood how special this opportunity was.

I was just lucky enough to get to do it again.

[Walton laughing]

[upbeat music]

Justified.

[upbeat music]

You gonna shoot to stop me?

Maybe.

I'm pretty sure you're empty.

You gonna bet your life on that?

No, Raylan, I'm gonna bet my life

on you being the only friend I have left in this world.

When I was offered the role of Boyd Crowder in Justified,

it was just to be in the pilot episode, right?

I read it, it's extremely well written,

you know, it's Elmore Leonard as a source material,

you can't really go wrong with anything

that Elmore Leonard has written.

And Graham Yost and Michael Dinner and Tim Olyphant,

they all did such a great job of

putting his words on the page.

I turned it down twice because of a speech

that Boyd Crowder made in the middle of the show,

and just a feeling that

they're just selling Southern culture down the river,

this is just a one dimensional interpretation,

or perpetuating a stereotype, if you will,

of a Southern character that I no longer needed to play.

And I don't believe in that, I've never believed in that,

the South is way more complicated

than it has been depicted in movies and TV,

and I didn't want to participate

in selling out my culture anymore.

Some of the most interesting people I've ever met in my life

are from the South,

and the funniest people I've ever met in my life

are from the South.

And after the second,

Thank you so much for the opportunity,

but no, I can't play this, I'm sorry.

Tim Olyphant gave me a call, and he said,

Listen, I think it could be special, you know,

and I think that we could be special together.

What do you need in order for it to be a yes?

And I think I talked to him and Graham, and I said,

Two things, I need for Boyd Crowder

to be the smartest person in the room.

That's the only way that I would play him.

And, I need, whenever he's going on this racial rant,

I need you to say to me

that I know you don't believe half the shit

that's coming outta your mouth.

That it's performative.

See, I'm giving you the benefit, you weren't mental.

I know you're not stupid enough

to believe that mud people story.

Well, you think you know me?

Well, I know you, Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens.

The chemistry between Tim and I was just palpable,

you know, from the first day that we worked together.

And I just fell in love with the guy,

to be quite honest with you.

I loved the creators and what they were doing,

but that was it, I just walked away from it.

And John Landgraf and the people at FX,

obviously I'm like family to them,

and they're my family, because of The Shield,

they came back after testing the show and the audience said,

Oh, that guy, you can't kill that guy.

See, we gotta have that guy around.

And so they came back

and offered me the opportunity to stay,

and to be quite honest with you, much like the audience,

I just wanted to see where this relationship could go,

and so I decided to stay.

There is one thing I wander back to.

[gentle music]

We dug coal together.

[gentle music]

That's right.

I'm 52 years old, right, I've been around for a while,

and I have met many different people

over the course of the life that I have chosen to live,

that I've been given an opportunity to live.

And even now, meeting new people in my new milieu

is so special,

I have more in common with them than I do with the people

that I grew up with in Georgia, certainly now.

But the one thing that I will never have with them,

that I have with the people that I grew up with,

is history, and struggle, and experience, time.

Time is something you can't get back.

The stars align and you are with the group of people

that you're with in the early years of your life,

and if you are lucky enough to hold onto those friendships,

and they evolve over time,

nothing and no one can replace that.

Nothing.

And the same thing applied for me

in the telling of the story Justified,

and something that we all talked about ad nauseum,

was that regardless of how different they are,

regardless of how similar they are,

regardless of their life choices,

they dug coal together and they struggled together

and they had that history together.

So, that was present in every conversation

between Tim and I.

It was antagonistic in each other's company,

but the antagonism had an underlying love to it,

and a respect and an appreciation.

I like to think that Raylan Givens is an asshole,

but he's my asshole.

You know?

[Walton laughing]

[upbeat music]

The Righteous Gemstones.

[upbeat music]

This place that used to be a Sears,

a place you could buy slacks.

[crowd cheering]

Or some power tools for all you men out there,

but now you can buy Jesus, say amen.

[crowd cheering]

You can buy Jesus, say amen.

[crowd clapping]

But you can't put him on layaway.

[Baby Billy laughing]

This part wasn't written, you know?

And what I mean by that is,

Danny, in a conversation we were having

at the end of the Vice Principals press tour, he said,

I'm working on something, I got something in my head,

I think I know what I wanna do next,

and I want you to be in it,

and I want you to play a 67-year-old man.

And I said,

[Walton laughing]

Of course you do.

Uh-uh.

Uncle Baby Billy, we see you.

Ain't nobody here named Baby Old Billy.

Dude, we see half our body right now.

We talk all the time, so he went off and he wrote it,

and he kinda came back with this idea,

and we said, Okay, well let's do like a proof of concept

and let's see kinda what this is.

And there were scenes kind of written,

but they were just kind of a general outline

of who this person was.

And I flew down to Charleston,

and we made him up, we did, came up with,

Okay, this is Baby Billy.

And they pulled out this wig and we just put it on,

[Walton laughing]

and this turtleneck, and this suit,

and I just kinda walked out and he, Danny filmed it,

and I just started doing this monologue, you know,

and it's like, you know, this and that, and,

Oh, how does he, oh wow, why does,

I didn't know he had a limp, where did that come from?

You know, I didn't know any of these things.

And that was enough, you know, to convince us both

that, yeah, Uncle Baby Billy needs to, he needs to live,

and there's a place for him in this world.

And then Danny opened that up,

and kind of included him in that way,

and the rest is, you know, history for the people

that watch the show or like what we do.

It's exactly Family Feuds.

There ain't no Family Feud,

this is Baby Billy's Bible Bonkers.

Bible Bonkers?

Baby Billy's Bible Bonkers.

Baby Billy Bible Bonkers. Baby Billy Bible Bonkers.

Bible Bonkers. Bible.

Bible Bonkers Baby. Baby Billy Bible Bonkers.

Yeah, roll that around your mouth, it's fun, ain't it?

I don't believe in playing dramas or comedies,

I see them the same.

I mean, I think there's a different tonality

to all of it, right?

But, any person that I've been given the opportunity to play

has to be rooted in life,

they have to exist in the world, in my mind.

I'm not playing an idea of someone, right?

That would be antithetical to my belief system.

So I, even though The Righteous Gemstones

and Vice Principals is very funny,

when it lands, there are real consequences, right?

Even though The Shield is very serious,

there are some really fucking funny moments in there,

the same with Justified.

So, I don't believe that I've transitioned at all,

I believe that one has always informed the other.

Sometimes, I guess comedy, to use your word,

is accentuated, right?

And sometimes the drama is accentuated.

But all of us, you know, those two realities exist

in every human being in the world.

You know, whether you're around

to hear someone tell a joke, or not,

chances are most people in life are funny

at some point of the day, right?

It depends on whether or not you wanna photograph that.

[upbeat music]

Django Unchained.

[upbeat music]

Like everyone that reads a Quentin Tarantino script,

I was in awe of what this experience was

and what it was saying.

I couldn't, it blew my fucking mind.

I called a friend of mine, a director by the name

of Robert Rodriguez, who I had worked with,

and who I deeply respect and admire.

I knew he was friends with Quentin,

and I just texted him, and I said,

Robert, I just read 'Django Unchained',

I know Quentin is your boy,

please, brother, I've never asked you for anything,

and I'm not the guy to ever ask anyone anything like this

in my life, ever, I'm not that guy.

I said, But would you please text Mr. Tarantino

and just tell him, you know, ask him

if I could read, or if I could just talk to him,

or just tell him that I read it and I just love it,

if nothing else.

He probably has no idea who the fuck I am, you know,

but would you please do that?

And Robert, to his credit, said,

I got you, Goggins, not a problem.

Five minutes later, he texted me back

with a quote from Quentin, who said,

Absolutely love Walton Goggins, yeah, that would be great.

And it blew my fucking mind, I started jumping up and down

and screaming, Oh my God, Quentin Tarantino knows my name,

what, are you kidding me?

Robert, are you fucking with me?

But he wasn't, and then as fate would have it,

we got a phone call, a dear friend of my wife

who used to work for Quentin, and she said,

Walton, I just finished reading 'Django Unchained',

and you're perfect for this, man.

Like, You gotta, I gotta hook you up with Quentin.

Like, I'm gonna, we gotta have a dinner together with him.

So we did have this dinner five days later,

from a completely different source,

and we met at her house and we had this incredible evening

and this long kind of winding conversation

about art and politics, and obviously cinema,

and all the rest of it.

At the end of this dinner with his friend, he said,

You know the script,

pick one of these four or five roles,

whatever speaks to you, and come in next week.

I said, Okay, great.

And I read it again and again and again and again

and again and again and again,

and I came in with these five roles, or four roles,

and it was like, Oh yeah,

really good to see you again, Walton.

So good to see you too, Quentin.

And all the rest of it.

And I did these four roles.

He said, That was fantastic, man.

Is there one you kind of gravitate to more than other?

I said, Well, this is really interesting.

You know, and he said,

Well, that one might not be available, but what about?

And I said, Oh, this is really interesting.

And he said, Okay, man, all right, this was a great time.

You know, Thank you so much for coming in.

And I said, But, I'm not leaving.

He said, What do you mean?

I said, No, I wanna play all of these roles,

like I wanna read all of these roles.

He said, What are you talking about?

I said, I wanna read Leo's role, I wanna read Sam's role,

I wanna read all of them.

Because I don't care if I get this job,

like that's irrelevant to me,

the only thing that I care about is having the opportunity

to say Quentin Tarantino's words

in front of Quentin Tarantino.

Getting the job is irrelevant to me.

And he said, Are you serious?

And I said, Yeah.

And he said, Yeah, let's fucking do it.

And he sat there with me in that room

for another 45 minutes, maybe an hour,

and we just read through his script,

and I read like Sam's role,

and he read every other role as if he was filming it.

And then I read Leo's role,

and he read every other role as if we were filming it.

And it was one of the greatest days of my life as an artist.

And at the end of it, I mean, I think I hugged him

and I just said, Thank you.

You know, That was a dream come true,

and good luck with your movie.

You know, I can't wait to watch it, man.

Couple of months go by, a month goes by,

and I get a call that he wants me to come and play with him.

And that was the beginning of, you know,

two of the greatest experiences of my life.

[Billy screaming]

Django!

I think anyone would be lying if they said

they had any real influence in developing a character

in a Tarantino movie.

What I mean by that, let me qualify it,

Quentin has said this,

and I think it's one of the reason why he is who he is,

and a number of the great directors I've worked with

over the years have said the same thing.

They hire an actor that will give them 90 percent

of what they're looking for, without conditions,

they just know whatever they bring to the table,

90 percent of it, they're gonna love.

And the other 10 percent is just nudging them

in certain directions.

So you don't deviate from the words

in a Quentin Tarantino script, the commas, or the periods,

or the semicolons, or anything else.

It is word for word, the uh, the the, the and,

the it, all of it.

It's perfection.

It is like the best meal you've ever sat down to eat,

you just don't wanna stop eating it.

But that being said, you bring what you have to the table

and he looks and he sees it.

And that's why he casts the people that he casts.

Because of Django and my time there,

with all of those amazing artists, all of those days,

and everything that kinda happened in those days.

And it's even, there are things that happened

that you don't know about that I still can't talk about,

but it was a surreal experience,

but that's what led to The Hateful Eight.

[upbeat music]

The Hateful Eight.

[upbeat music]

You get business in Red Rock?

Yes, I do. What?

I'm the new sheriff.

Horse shit. 'Fraid not.

[John] Where's your star?

Well, I ain't the sheriff yet.

And once I get there, they swear me in,

but that ain't happened yet,

and that's when you get your star.

When Quentin reached out to me

about this movie called The Hateful Eight,

it wasn't to do the movie, because the movie

wasn't going to be made at that point,

it was to do a stage reading

of the script that he had written.

He was going to do the rehearsals

in this space in Los Angeles.

I was out in New Orleans working at the time,

and he called and said,

Okay, I need you to get here on these days,

there's this character I want you to read.

But I need you to, you know, kinda come in

and read with, you know, everybody

before we kinda put this thing up.

I know as well as anybody else

that he didn't ask me to audition, you know,

he offered me the opportunity to come in and read.

But any actor worth their weight in salt

knows that when a director of that stature

is asking you to read their words,

with or without admitting it, it is an audition,

and it's an audition for everybody in the room.

You know, either you're gonna get it,

if this movie ever gets made, or you're not.

And, I had been working all night the night before,

I got on a plane, I flew into Los Angeles,

I got there at 9:15 in the morning.

I had to be in this room at 10:00 a.m., no matter what.

And I made it, got the taxi, got there in time,

I was running up the stairs, and it was so quick

that I didn't let myself get fearful

until right before I was about

to knock on the door to go in.

It wasn't some fancy space, man,

I think it might have been on Santa Monica or something.

And I ran up the steps, I ran up the steps,

and then I was going to knock on the door and I stopped,

and then my heart started beating,

you know, really quickly, 'cause I thought,

On the other side of this door

is Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, Sam Jackson,

and Michael Madsen.

These are my fucking heroes, man, these are my heroes.

And I just, I started having a panic attack,

and I just said, get really quiet, you know, It's okay,

just walk in there and come from your heart, man.

I walked in, Quentin's like, Hey!

You know, Hey, Walton, come on in, take a seat.

You know, Sit down, sit down, you know,

we've been reading a lot of other things

because you weren't here, you know,

so now we're gonna start with you,

how do you feel about that?

You know, and I said, Ah, well.

Catching my breath, and Sam,

who's one of my dearest friends now,

he leaned over to me and he said, You got this shit.

And then we started,

and we just picked up with Chris Mannix scenes,

and it was like I had been saying those words my whole life,

you know, that's how good Quentin's dialogue is.

Oh boy, did my daddy talk about you.

I heard you gave those blue bellies sweet hell.

Before you know it, we did two days of rehearsals,

this thing is just coming alive

in the hearts and minds of everybody that's there to read.

We did the reading downtown at the Ace Hotel,

packed house, and brought the house down, you know,

the way that Tarantino experience always does,

and it was euphoric.

And that was it, we all walked off stage

and it was like, God, man, it was so lovely to meet you,

what a great experience, what a high, unbelievable.

And never thinking that we would get the opportunity

to actually play these people,

and then I suppose a couple of months later,

or however long it took Quentin to make his decision,

he decided, you know what, it's worth telling the story.

And so he did, and I got the invitation,

the Golden Ticket yet again.

You know?

Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, really.

And, you know, you open the bar and there it is,

two golden tickets in one lifetime,

are you fucking kidding me?

And then we set out,

and I had, again, one of the best experiences of my life.

Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States?

Yes.

Of America? Yes.

Wrote you a letter personally?

Yes.

Personally as in, Dear, Major Warren?

No, personally as in, Dear, Marquis.

Dear Marquis, Abraham Lincoln,

the President of the United States of America.

It was eight people who went through

that experience together, with so much love and respect

and admiration of the other, and daily,

if it was one person in the scene, if it was two,

or if it was three, the rest of us, depending on who was up,

you could be on camera.

But the rest of us stayed there in the cold

and watched every one of these masterclasses,

watched Quentin do his thing, and Bob do his thing,

his whole crew do his thing,

and these actors do their thing.

Everybody supported everyone,

and it shows in the movie.

So I guess it must be time for bed.

Respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln.

[gentle patriotic music]

Oh, Mary Todd, that's a nice touch.

Yeah.

[Marquis laughing]

Thanks.

Am I the sheriff of Red Rock?

You know, I asked Quentin that question, he said,

That's for you to decide

and I don't wanna know your answer.

And so I did decide, and no one will ever know my answer.

[upbeat music]

I'm a Virgo.

[upbeat music]

So I did this show, I'm a Virgo, with Boots Riley.

Like so many people after Sorry to Bother You,

I was blown away by that experience.

And, he reached out and he said,

I have this thing that I'm working on,

this character that I want you to play,

this person I want you to play,

and he is the owner of this comic book kind of empire,

this kind of global media empire, if you will.

And he eventually sent me the pages and I was reading it

and I was like, Oh my God, this is,

people are gonna lose their mind.

A 13-foot black man walking the streets of Oakland,

and everything that this show is saying,

it's so of its time and timeless, simultaneously.

And so we began talking about this person, Jay Whittle.

I looked at it as him being a superhero

going through a midlife crisis.

I had a real specific idea of who this person was,

just because I had been reading it for so long.

When I showed up to go to work for the very first day,

to do a camera test, if you will,

I walked into the makeup trailer

and was getting some makeup applied

and looked over at this like crazy long wig

with a gray streak in it, and I thought,

That's a fucking crazy wig.

[Walton laughing]

Like, Who's wearing that?

And the woman said, What do you mean?

I said, The wig, who's wearing that wig?

And she said, Boots didn't tell you?

Tell me what?

That's your wig.

And I said, What?

She said, Yeah, he wants you to wear that wig.

So I put the wig on, walked on stage,

met Boots in person for the very first time,

and without even saying hello, he just said,

So what do you think about the wig?

And I said, I don't know who this person is.

I have no idea who this person is,

but I'll wear it if you go on this journey with me,

and we find out tomorrow, when I start work,

who this person is together.

Because you can't control it,

and I can't control it either,

this wig is going to inform this entire experience.

And he said, Bet.

Let's do that.

And then I showed up the next day,

and it was off to the races.

And, you know, something about a superhero,

something about a person with means

going through an existential crisis,

who knows that the system that he is propping up is corrupt,

that he is suffering under the weight

of carrying the mantle,

or supporting a system that in his heart

knows isn't sustainable and is unfair

and fundamentally has to change.

But like an alcoholic, who the closer he gets to sobriety,

drinks more and more and more and more

and more and more and more,

the same with Jay Whittle.

Like, he can't change his universe, his way of thinking,

because the world only makes sense

if there is structure and law and order.

And he is incapable of making the leap

from this way of thinking, even though in his heart,

he knows it's wrong, to this way of thinking.

And, again, you know, that's what Boots did for Jay Whittle

and what he did for me, and hopefully for people

that watched the show,

was fundamentally challenged the way that you think,

and give you an opportunity to evolve as a person

and see some of these things for what they really are.