The one role Ed Harris grew to despise: “I didn’t like it, I still don’t”
It’s no secret that an actor’s performance can tear an audience apart. Think of the anguish that Leo DiCaprio caused generations of Titanic viewers, or the number of years it took for most of us to fully believe that Alan Rickman was a beloved, respected colleague to his co-stars rather than a pariah.
This sort of emotional investment isn’t limited to the audience, either. Actors are also susceptible to the moods and proclivities of their characters, and sometimes, that can really mess with their heads.
Ed Harris is no stranger to this phenomenon. This may come as a surprise, given that he spent the first half of his career playing (let’s face it) often extremely boring, all-American heroes. He did this very well, thanks in part to his old-fashioned leading man looks and stature. The Right Stuff, The Abyss, and Apollo 13 all showcased his talents as a poster boy of conservative American masculinity. As we’ve all learned since then, they were also severely underselling him.
In recent years, the actor has enjoyed a quiet renaissance of playing bad guys and avant-garde supporting players, and he’s scarily good at it. There was his role as “man” in Darren Aronofsky’s bonkers Mother!, his chilling portrayal of an evil industrialist in Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, and his unforgettably creepy turn as Kristen Stewart’s murderous dad in Love Lies Bleeding. The hair alone should have earned an Oscar.
However, it was on television that he traumatised a new generation of viewers. In HBO’s dystopian series Westworld, he played ‘The Man in Black’, a sadistic patron of the amusement park who commits as many unspeakable acts of violence as physically possible in his three-decade tenure. Harris did all of this quite well, but then the showrunners pulled the rug out from under him.
In the third season, ‘The Man in Black’ got a makeover, and Harris had to hold down the fort playing multiple versions of the character without knowing where it would all end up. It’s all well and good for the audience to be discovering the secrets behind the villain episode by episode, but for an actor tasked with bringing that evolution to life, a little bit of warning would have been nice. Harris had signed up to play the embodiment of evil, and then all of a sudden, he was tasked with playing something else entirely.
“I wasn’t the happiest camper to tell you the truth,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020, “because I really enjoyed the part I was playing, and I was hoping that he, ‘The Man in Black’, would continue to somehow be prevalent in the story”, and when the very essence of the character was called into question, the actor struggled to accept the new reality, just as the audience did.
While most stars would probably say something evasive and boring about this experience, like, “I was just grateful to be given such a unique challenge,” Harris didn’t mince words. “To tell you the truth, it was hard to enjoy,” he said, adding, “In other words, I didn’t like it. I still don’t. But that’s my problem.”
This level of candour is pretty refreshing, and it makes you wonder how many other actors have been frustrated when show-runners who are clearly flying by the seat of their pants try to liven a dead storyline with a rage-baiting plot twist (looking at you, Game of Thrones).
