This was published 7 years ago
Gangster movies and a passion for books led James Spader to an acting career
From the day he walked into government custody promising to help the FBI track down the most dangerous criminals in the world, James Spader's character in The Blacklist, Raymond "Red" Reddington, has played a high stakes game.
"When I was a kid, and I first was watching James Cagney movies or Humphrey Bogart movies, those gangster movies, I thought they were great, you know? They were the characters I loved the most," Spader says.
James Spader and Megan Boone in The Blacklist.
"[They are] people who live sort of in the fringes or extremities of our society, their lives are lived in the extreme, and that makes for a good drama," Spader adds. "But it also allows people to visit those sort of extreme aspects of our societies, and it transports people to a different place and a different sort of sensibility."
In the original outline for the series, Red Reddington was written as a far more serious – and sinister – figure than he ultimately became. The shift occurred, producers John Bokenkamp and John Eisendrath have said, mostly because of the wry nuances in Spader's performance.
James Spader: Inspired by James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart.
"I saw a great opportunity for humour, or irreverence," Spader says. "I think that is a better way of putting it really, because it's not a jokey show at all. Just a sort of irreverence, and a way to have fun with it, in the middle of the intensity. It's nice to have some lightheartedness, it makes it more fun to play."
As the series has evolved, and a larger mosaic to Reddington's character has been revealed, a daughter-like figure (if not an actual daughter) is in the narrative – FBI profiler Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone) – and a tender side to Reddington has been revealed.
"You've got a guy who's spent a good portion of his life being faced with adversity, he's capable of very, very bad things, but he's got a very well developed heart, which you see in a lot of his dealings with a lot of people," Spader says.
"He has a tremendous feeling ... and when faced with a child, I think the child represents life, you know? The beginning of life. For a man who's lived right on the brink of death, he's so close to the end of his life throughout his whole life. He's just one misstep away. To be faced all of a sudden with life, it's incredibly moving."
For the most part, Spader confines the bigger conversation – about the show's over-arching themes, its direction, and his character – to one long talk each year.
"After we finished shooting the pilot [producers] John Bokenkamp and John Eisendrath came over to my house and we sat and talked about the show as a whole, where it could go, and what the shape of it could be," Spader says.
"That has continued; what we tend to do is, in the spring, during our vacation break, we tend to talk about the long term, the whole season and how that fits into a larger picture of the future," he adds. "Then we talk about the specifics."
The last season wrapped with Reddington in a very vulnerable place, seemingly betrayed by the person he trusted the most. "I think you saw a lot, frankly, for him, considering who he is, I think you saw a lot of [vulnerability]," says Spader.
"But he's got to move forward," he adds. "He's got to find a way to move forward. He's not a person to wallow. So, the season opens with everybody in trouble. The whole group. They're all at odds and conflicted. It's a mess. I think that's a pretty good starting point."
The new season opens with a sequence set in Cuba, however the series did not film there. Instead the scenes were filmed in Staten Island.
"I would have loved to have gone there and shot it there, I keep trying to persuade them that we should go places, but there's neither the time nor the budget for that," Spader says.
"[Cuba] is a place that is such a foreign country and foreign culture that's so close to the United States, and so close to where this show is centred. [Reddington's] world can collide with that country."
Away from the set, Spader and his partner Leslie Stefanson live with Spader's two sons with former wife Victoria, Elijah and Sebastian, and a younger son, Nathaneal. In his spare time – of which there is precious little – Spader says reading is his greatest passion.
"There's not enough time in a lifetime to read even a fraction of the amount of stuff that you may want to read in your life. I devote a lot of time to that," he says. "Besides eating and the hangout with the family and sleeping and making love, I can read for months. I just love it. I love it."
Spader says reading, more than any other factor, drove him into his acting career. "It's not about acting, really," he says. "It's really because I love stories, and I love other people's lives and I love other things that I am not familiar with. I love the consumption of that.
"It all started with just playing make-believe as a kid, but your playing make-believe is also informed by your reading, what you read as a kid, the stories you're hearing," he says. "I didn't watch a lot of television or go to the movies and stuff as a kid. It was all books."
WHAT Blacklist
WHEN Seven, Wednesday, 10pm