Presumed Innocent's O-T Fagbenle Talks About Stealing Scenes Without Saying a Word

After years of nice-boyfriend/husband roles on everything from The Handmaid's Tale to Loot, the English actor reinvented himself as an unscrupulous district attorney on AppleTV+'s hit legal thriller.
O. T. Fagbenle in 'Presumed Innocent'
Photo by Michael Becker/Courtesy of AppleTV+

Presumed Innocent’s O-T Fagbenle first caught my eye this spring, during the second season of Maya Rudolph’s AppleTV+ series Loot, when he joined the cast as Isaac, a love interest for Michaela Jaé Rodriguez’s character. Warm, and cool, and hunky, he was basically the dream boyfriend, a solid rock for Sofia, a woman only just starting to realize she was still finding herself. I quickly realized that I’d seen Fagbenle before—all over the place. He earned an Emmy nomination for his work as Luke, Elisabeth Moss’s husband in The Handmaid’s Tale. He was a love interest for Natasha Romanoff in Black Widow, and Frankie Alvarez’s musician boyfriend in the 2010s HBO series Looking, along with roles in everything from Doctor Who to WeCrashed.

Then in June Presumed Innocent premiered on Apple TV+, and there Fagbenle was again, this time playing the slimy, smarmy district attorney Nico Della Guardia, who tasks Peter Sarsgaard with prosecuting their colleague, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, for the murder of a fellow co-worker with whom he was having an affair. The show itself—based on the novel by Scott Turow and previously adapted for the big screen with Harrison Ford in the lead—is a David E. Kelley joint, with crackling dialogue and an absolutely stellar cast doing top notch work. Ruth Negga, Bill Camp, Nana Mensah, Renate Reinsve, Elizabeth Marvel, Lily Rabe… the list goes on. But somehow, among all those great performers, Fagbenle kept drawing my eye.

As Nico, the actor is off to the side in many scenes, in the background, watching as Sarsgaard and Gyllenhaal square off, looking aghast as his great prosecutor seemingly goes off the rails on a personal vendetta, while doing everything in his power to maintain his political standing. Where other stars on the show get to shine with long, complicated bursts of dialogue, Fagbenle is just as often silent, simply reacting to what’s happening in front of him with subtle and often hilarious gestures, his mind always racing, always calculating. The London-born Fagbenle recently told TVLine that Della Guardia’s accent and manner were partly inspired by William Atherton’s EPA inspector Walter Peck from the classic Ghostbusters. It’s a strangely show-stealing performance, particularly when he gets to spar with Sarsgaard, whose own performance of an often erratic character brings out the best in his scene partner.

Hours before AppleTV+ dropped the Presumed Innocent finale, I spoke to Fagbenle about crafting his character, bringing his theatrical training to the role, working with such a great ensemble, and mixing it up after playing a string of “nice boyfriends.”

GQ: I’ve been itching throughout the entire season to interview you about this performance because it's just been gripping. You’ve said some of the inspiration for Della Guardia came from William Atherton’s character in Ghostbusters, but I wanted to ask you bit more specifically, what were you looking for when you found that inspiration for Nico?

O-T Fagbenle: You know, I’ve got such a great writer. There was a moment in the script where some of the other characters are watching my character on television, and they were like, Oh, he's so yuck. And I loved that description of the character. So I just kind of went with my yuck, as they say. Followed my yuck.

There's a type of politician who just oozes self-righteousness and has such a lack of authenticity, yet somehow walks this line of being able to take people along with him. And so I kind of spent a lot of time watching politicians on YouTube—some famous ones that I won’t mention—and just kind of going, okay, what is it about them that can compel some people and repel other people? And so I was trying to find that line where you could hate this man, but still totally believe he could be an elected politician.

He's got this slimy quality about him, but not completely. He is credible in that role.

Right, right.

He doesn't always have a ton of lines, but he's there a lot, in the background, or in scenes with Peter. I'm curious how you were able to inject that level of personality into a part that’s not necessarily about big dialogue scenes.

In some ways, you're given a little bit more license with roles like that, because Nico is like a flavoring. He's not the whole dish. And if you add too much to the flavoring, it would just overwhelm the dish. And so the fact that he's there as an extra flavor means that you can push things a little further, potentially.

I guess the other thing to say is that Peter in particular is a very generous actor and he creates space and opportunities within scenes for the actors he's working with to do their thing. So I think I was also very lucky that the team around me created space for Nico.

Can you talk about that relationship? A lot of what you’re doing is bouncing off of Peter.

He's one of my favorite actors that I've ever worked with, because he matches this absolute dedication to the truth of the moment with a crazy playfulness, a completely unexpected creativity. And at the same time, he's an absolute gentleman. So it just means that every day when we got into it, it felt like there was no limit to what could happen.

And it's funny—every now and then I'll catch up with where we are in the show and I'll see scenes and I'll remember all the other takes we did because there were just some times where we just went off on one. There's basically a bunch of outtakes where Peter and I just start improvising the end of the scene together. But the work always felt like that. It always felt live and experimental.

How does it work with the script? Because on the one hand, the dialogue feels very precise. There's a rhythmic quality to it. But at the same time, it does feel kind of lived-in, like it is just coming out of your mouths. How much improv is there?

Basically, we have [David E. Kelley], one of the greatest writers of our generation, creating scripts for us and creating these extraordinary characters for us. So we're not in a situation where it's like, Oh God, how do we piece this thing together? It's there, it's brilliant. But at the same time, with our two directors, there was always space given for us to explore things that we saw within the themes or impulses that we had. And like I said, a bunch of it doesn't make it in, but the moments that do can often create a whole new dynamic. I think that was just a great balance of awesome writing, but also room to play.

One of the things that I find so great about what you're doing is that often Peter and Jake will be going at it, and then you're having these great reactions in the background. I feel like you'll see a lot of actors in shows and movies sort of reacting in very generalized ways. But when I watch you, suddenly your jaw goes slack at something somebody says, and it feels like it speaks volumes. How much are you thinking through those details?

It's all just found in the moment. I really had fun playing Nico and once I found him, it was very intuitive how he felt about every situation. And moreover, because Jake and Peter—and everyone you're in the scene with— are actually doing extraordinary work, it’s very easy in the moment to just respond to what they're doing. Because they're not toeing the line, they're not walking through the most simple, obvious ground. They're being surprising, and invested, and the stakes are so high. So I'm mainly just responding to that.

For me, one of the best film performances of all time is Peter Sarsgaard in Shattered Glass, where he plays a journalist who’s catching onto his colleague fully fabricating magazine stories. He’s onto this guy’s bullshit, so you’re constantly seeing him quietly seething, because he’s trying to catch this guy. I could feel a similar energy from you in Presumed Innocent, where you can see the calculations happening in your head. I’m so curious how you translate that sort of thing, what’s happening in the character’s mind, so the audience can read it.

I sometimes do workshops for like young actors for free in my community, and I think one of the hard things for young actors to trust is that if you feel it, people will see it. But if you show it, it won't connect with people. People won't relate to it, I don't think, on like an intuitive level. To some extent, I try and not think about, how will I convey this to people? I just focus on if I'm really feeling it and I'm really engaged in the person I'm in the scene with, then the audience will know everything and will see everything. Even if your character's trying to hide it, they'll see it.

Right, which is a big thing, because in your character's case, there is a lot of hiding the ball, especially in scenes with Jake.

Yeah.

How much does the physical environment of the set help the performance? Because there are also these big courtroom scenes, with extras and all of that. Does that make it easier to inhabit the character?

Oh yeah. I mean, we had a whole courtroom there and it felt like a courtroom. So you're just there, in the moment, all the time. And one of the other things that I found really interesting is almost every single actor in Presumed Innocent started in theater. They're all theater actors. I did a theater workshop with Ruth Negga like 25 years ago when we were both first coming out of drama school, you know?

Oh wow.

I think everyone's so good in this, but having known Ruth for so long, I just think what she does in this finale is, oh my gosh. I think the award goes to her because she's just extraordinary.

So the set is a theater. A courtroom is literally a theater. And so there was this kind of combined sense while you're acting that we're all part of this ensemble, this theater ensemble, performing in an actual theater, which is obviously like a courtroom. It just had this kind of meta quality to it.

That's so interesting, because I was going to ask about your theatrical training. One of the big differences with theater, especially in ensemble pieces, is that when you're on stage, everybody on stage is in full view. An audience member can be looking at whoever's talking in the scene, but also at the actor in the background. Is that different for you as an actor on a TV set?

I don't know. I think if there was any difference, I think it was to the extent of what I mentioned before, about the fact that it was such a theater-trained group doing an ensemble piece in the theater. But yeah, you are aware that, the way it was shot and covered, you can always be looked at. But I don't know—it's not like on other shows I can turn off when the camera's on.

You've spoken elsewhere about working with the Method approach to acting, which from some people gets a bad rap. They think about it only as staying in character, but you’ve cited the actual methods of Stanislavski for finding emotion and motivation. How are you using those techniques for a character like this?

Earlier on in my career, when I did less staying in character, I just didn't like the outcomes as much as when I did stay in character. You know, I'm not walking around going, “My name's Nico Della Guardia.” (laughing) I mean, I'm just kind of inhabiting his physicality and voice a little bit more, which just helps, I guess, my thinking. I don't entirely know the process. I know plenty of really talented actors who do nothing of the sort. I just found what works best for me. I think, especially when you have like an idiolect, a very specific dialect, I find it helps me be consistent if I'm continually using it.

I write about film and television and I try to understand how things are made and put together, but I’ve always found acting in particular very mysterious. I don't know if it's the same for you.

It's mysterious to me too. I find it absolutely extraordinary. I love watching other people's process, and there's such a gamut of the way that people do what they do. As far as I'm concerned, as long as you're nice to everybody, figure out your own path. I mean, I've learned so much from watching other artists, and taking bits of what they do and trying things out on one TV show or movie, and then dropping it and trying something out in another, kind of like an exploration.

Do you have examples of that?

I'm trying to think. Coming from a theater background, where very often you might rehearse for six weeks, and you'd be very clear about what's going to happen in every moment kind of thing. Then, moving to television and especially my time on Handmaid's Tale, watching Lizzie Moss, and how I would see so much discovery happen for her during camera rehearsals and how she would use the camera rehearsals and the moments before filming to have a very kind of shorthand rehearsal and exploration period, I think has been really instructive to me. I used to do character bios anyway, but I remember having an extended conversation with David Morrissey, the actor, about his character's biographies. He’d set and develop his characters.

Funny enough, there's a theater director called Terry Michaels, who used to run a theater workshop in London, and he taught me this exercise of writing everything down that other characters say about you, and then using that to inform the truth of who you are. Because, you know, very often characters might lie about themselves, but what better way to know a character than how other people talk about them? And that is the key of how I found Nico, because I was like, Oh, they say this thing about him that he's yuck, but what if he is yuck? And what if I follow that intuition rather than what he says about himself, which is that he’s an upstanding guy who just wants justice?

That's interesting because that feels like—not that your character's a villain, per se—but so often when actors talk about playing an antagonist or a villain, they actually they were approaching it like they were the hero of their own story. But you were sort of doing the opposite. Is that unusual for you?

Well, that exercise of making a list of what other people say about you is something I do every single time I look at a script. But I don't know. I mean, look, I think the ideal is you get a script and your first intuitions are perfect and you go and do a brilliant performance. But I think the practicalities are that very often your intuitions fail and so you need to go back to the actor’s toolkit and find ways of making up for your shortcomings. So, depending on the part, I'll go and try different things out and explore. Most of the time, the most important thing is right in front of you, whoever you're acting with. Most of the answers, you're gonna find in front of you.

Was there something that you found that way, in the play and experimentation with this character, as you were filming, that became a part of the character?

(Laughing) Well, yeah, because, you know, the way Peter plays his part, it's so unnerving to someone who really cares about the way that they're seen. And because the stakes for Nico, as far as he's concerned are politically life and death, to have such a live wire in front of you, I always found myself in character trying to kind of like manage him, as it were, to control him, and try different techniques to try corral him to the kind of prosecutor I wanted him to be. That's why it was just so fun to play with him, because he was so unpredictable and so off the rails that for someone like Nico, who wants order and control, it's constant tension and pressure.

I've seen you in quite a lot of stuff. You've been pretty successfully working for quite a while, in good parts, award nominations and all. But I was watching Loot and then watching this, and they’re such wildly different characters, it actually took me a second to be like, that's the same guy! The range, it’s impressive and exciting to watch an actor do that. Does that inform your choice of roles?

Thanks so much. I really appreciate you saying that. And it's a big compliment for me. I mean, what's funny, particularly about Loot and Presumed Innocent, is that there were multiple days where I was shooting both of them on the same day.

No way.

Yeah, we were shooting on lots across the freeway from each other. So I would finish shooting for Presumed Innocent in the morning, and then we'd get in the van and drive across to the other lot. And it would be weird for me because I'd be changing accents as well. As much as I'm English, the accent I do for Loot is slightly different from my natural accent.

Right

I had this weird thing where I'm sitting in a makeup studio, and I'm like, Oh my God, am I doing the right accent? But I love— like, I love acting. I really love acting. I like the opportunity to express in different genres from comedy to thriller to historical drama. I’m doing my first animated TV show this year, and with a whole different character, really, really fun character, I can't wait for people to see it. And I just love it. I just love it. So I'm definitely interested in doing different types of characters, but not because of the sport of it, just because it's fun.

You’re also a writer and filmmaker. You co-wrote and co-directed a comedy TV series, Maxxx, which was very hard to see in Canada, but I managed to check it out, and it's great. But again, so different from what I might've expected based on some of your other work that I had seen. Are you chasing that variety even in your filmmaking?

Yeah, I think it’s kind of what you said before, it's mysterious, acting. And I think artistic inspiration is mysterious as well, like what stories you're called to do. Sometimes it feels like characters and projects kind of find me, like Nico. It’s almost like Nico will come visit me and I'm like, Okay, you! All right, sure! Like, let me and you play together then. It kind of feels sometimes the same as writing ideas and stuff that I'll develop. I don't know where artistic inspiration comes from. I've remained thankful for it whenever it does come. I wish it was more conscious. I wish it was more of a kind of thing where I'd be like, I want to do this, and so I go and do that, or, I want to do that, and so I go and do that. I think it comes from the ether, I guess. I don't know.

There's this great Elizabeth Gilbert TED Talk that talks about how genius comes to visit her, and I relate to that a lot. It feels like your want isn't in control of where inspiration comes from. I don't know if I'm making much sense.

I think it makes perfect sense. I think there are some people who are more conscious about it, but opportunities arise and things hit you, right?

Yeah, yeah. I guess I would say that like, through my career on television, I've played a fair amount of “nice boyfriends,” or “nice husbands,” and because especially through my theater career I've had an opportunity to play quite a range of characters, I'm excited about the opportunity I have at the moment to kind of express some of the breadth of my interests.