James Spader (Boston, 1960), now in Spanish cinemas for the revival of “Crash” (1996), does not like to talk by video call, so it is time to interview him by phone from New York, where the actor lives and records the eighth season of “The blacklist”, the thriller that Movistar Series broadcasts every Saturday after its broadcast the previous night on the US television channel NBC. The conversation takes place on the same Friday that they have filmed the ninth episode – out of a total of twenty-two – and the same week of the announcement that there will be a ninth part. Raymond Reddington, the main bandit, remains for a while.
It is the second television series in which I have played a character for more than 100 episodes, “he says. His first character on television was the rogue Alan Shore, first in “The Lawyer” and later in his series, “Legal Boston” (2004-08). He then won three Emmy Awards for best actor in a drama, although the bosses did not have all of them with them. “I was told that no one would want James Spader in their salon. People would see his movies, but they would never let him into their homes, ”recalled years later television producer David E. Kelley. “The Blacklist” was released in 2013 and, although it has never had buoyant live audiences, it has crept into the top ten most-watched titles on Netflix, and its production company Sony sells it very well internationally.
“With both characters, it was and is fascinating to see how they evolve in terms of plot, but also the passage of time,” he says. “I’ve been lucky enough to work in film and theater, but one of the unique things about working on television is watching your character age and how that changes his point of view.” This persuasive fugitive, who has lived close to Rey and flirts with the Law, suffers in the new episodes for his health, but also his relationship with his unprotected, FBI agent Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone). «This year there is a real disagreement and a very deep chasm between the two. And that’s hilarious for me to explore, ”he advances.
Still, he wouldn’t trade the twenty-two episodes a year, the bastion of traditional American television, for nothing. ‘It is the right time we need. I haven’t found a season with filler episodes yet, “he defends. Perhaps it is because of a mysterious plot that constantly turns around with characters who still hide or are unaware of their past. The order has not changed: if you answer a question you have to ask a new one. “The other day I was talking to the creator, Jon Bokenkamp, and we had an episode that had twenty minutes to spare. And he thought he had cut as much as possible, “he says.
The coronavirus forced them to resort to animation to complete the abrupt outcome of the previous season, but, unlike other series, they have not incorporated it into the story. The most compelling reason – according to Spader – is that “The Blacklist” has always existed in a “parallel universe” and has never tried to be realistic; pure escapism above all and more in these times. “We do not make episodes based on real events and it is not a series of cases as such,” he adds. The “absurdity” of the thriller works in its favor, as it changes the tone from one episode to another: “Sometimes it is very dramatic; others, very funny or emotional or mysterious or irreverent.
James Spader is an owl. His nocturnal life made things easy for him when he began to work in theater and in cinema, he let himself be carried away by characters who were also night owls. But when he switched to television, he realized that he would have to get up early and has not gotten used to it almost twenty years later. “That struck me because with a movie you work for two or three months and you can put up with almost everything,” he recalls by phone. At sixty years old, the actor has trouble sleeping and is sometimes kept awake by the series he stars in and produces.
