Mr Robot creator and director Sam Esmail discusses his favorite shows of 2017, with Mindhunter at number two. Esmail and Ringer hosts Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss the show and Jonathan’s performance in particular from 57:00.
Sam Esmail: It’s well made, in the classic 70s film, crime-noir sense, but it’s also very present, very new and still feels very thrilling, and Jonathan Groff...
Andy Greenwald: Can you talk about that performance, as a director?
Sam: I mean, it’s, well, you know....
Andy: Because we had him on the podcast before I saw the last three episodes, and the last three episodes go ‘masterpiece, masterpiece, masterpiece’. And his performance in them is one of the great reasons why.
Sam; The weird thing about Groff is, the thing he plays, the subtext he plays, is that he is like one of these guys. And he doesn’t play that at all. He plays the exact opposite. He plays this nerdy, vulnerable, almost the exact opposite of these guys. And yet, I sense, oh no, there is something, a little off about Groff, but he hides it in a way that a person like that would.
Chris Ryan: That character starts out, and he has the, ‘Oh, I want to move up in the FBI, white ambition. And then it turns out that the thing that he’s actually interested in, is deviance. And he’s interested in creating a new language for why these inexplicable things happen. And then the greed comes back, and the ambition comes back, and his desire, and he’s covetous of credit for all the things that people are starting to say, ‘Yeah, I guess you’re kind of right about all of that’. But he’s like, we have to do it my way, we have to understand these guys my way, I am weirdly protective of these awful, awful people because I want them to be understood through my lens. And it’s all about this idea of how you use language to describe something, and how you talk about something is what defines its reality.
Andy: If you have resisted watching Mindhunter on Netflix, it is not what you think it is. Almost guarantee it is not what you think it is. It is not a murder mystery, not gory. It is deeply subversive in what it is. It is a terrific watch, it is entertaining. I am so excited for a second season...