00:03	When we did The Hulk,
00:05	which was hilarious,
00:06	I was doing scenes with stunt guys
00:09	who had poles on their shoulders
00:11	and two tennis balls up in it for the eyes and stuff.
00:14	I really enjoyed it.
00:16	I found it to be
00:17	quite liberating, really,
00:19	as opposed to,
00:20	a lot of actors don't like it, I like it.
00:22	I like that you have to use your imagination
00:24	to fill in the gaps a little bit,
00:26	which you should be able to do, I think.
00:27	I think you should have some imagination to be an actor.
00:30	You shouldn't bitch about it,
00:31	plus you get paid enough.
00:32	You know, if they do crap CG,
00:34	then you bitch at 'em.
00:36	If they do, if they blow your mind,
00:38	then it's kinda cool, you know?
00:40	I liked it.
00:41	When we were doing the,
00:44	I was playing this character, Abomination,
00:46	and they said pick a body that you want
00:48	for their transformation
00:49	so I could be all muscly
00:50	and I said, oh, well,
00:51	I'll have him and I'll have him.
00:53	And they kinda combined it and they gave me that.
00:55	So much easier than working out.
00:57	Working with CGI is awesome.
00:59	It brings out your inner child
01:01	and if you don't have an inner child,
01:02	it's gonna be the hardest thing you've ever done
01:04	because you have to let go of
01:07	all your insecurities,
01:09	all your ego,
01:11	and just put your trust on the director
01:12	and hope that he's not gonna make you look stupid.
01:15	So, on American Gods,
01:16	you know, I'm surrounded by, like,
01:18	green screen, blue screen,
01:20	the crew off to the side,
01:22	and the director's shouting at you,
01:23	kind of like,
01:24	It's a skull mountain
01:26	and you're climbing up it!
01:27	I'm like, okay, I'm climbing up it.
01:29	Oh, it's so tall, you're looking up to the top,
01:31	it's so high!
01:32	Oh, it's really high, is it?
01:33	Okay,
01:34	this sucks.
01:35	You're really tired!
01:36	Oh, I'm tired.
01:37	I'm more tired, I'm more tired.
01:39	You got to the top.
01:40	Okay, I'm at the top now.
01:40	Okay, we're good.
01:42	There's a big tree!
01:43	Where's the tree?
01:44	Oh, it's there, okay, fine, the tree is here.
01:46	No, it's bigger than that.
01:47	It's bigger than that, bigger tree.
01:49	It's wide!
01:50	Oh, wow!
01:50	It's such a wide tree.
01:52	And there's a buffalo!
01:54	Where's the buffalo?
01:55	It's behind the tree!
01:56	So, how can I see it?
01:58	It's coming round.
01:59	Okay, there it is.
02:00	No, at the other side.
02:01	Oh, it's on that side.
02:02	There's the buffalo, he's coming towards you.
02:04	No, you're looking at his balls,
02:06	it's bigger than that!
02:06	Okay, it's a big buffalo!
02:09	And it's talking to you, believe!
02:11	And then they cut.
02:13	And you feel really stupid.
02:15	Pretty much.
02:16	And then you have to pray that
02:18	the post team, the CGI special effects team
02:20	make you look really good
02:22	and fortunately, in American Gods,
02:24	our Emmy nominated team
02:27	did us proud and fortunately made me not look too stupid.
02:31	Yeah, working with CGI,
02:33	you know, the main job that I did that involved CGI
02:36	was of course The Hobbit trilogy.
02:37	Peter Jackson,
02:39	he played all the other roles
02:41	when he was directing, the CGI roles,
02:44	so he was the dragon, he would be trolls,
02:46	he would be wargs and orcs and everything
02:49	and he would get so into it.
02:51	So, we would be, you know,
02:52	one that pops to mind,
02:54	we were doing a scene with a dwarf chariot
02:57	where we're escaping one of these things,
02:59	you know, we're pretty much standing still.
03:00	There were people in gimp suits moving the thing around
03:03	pretending to be orcs.
03:05	He was screaming into the microphone, you know,
03:08	pretending to be a dragon or an orc
03:10	and I really, you know,
03:12	(laughs)
03:13	I had to take a moment
03:14	and not just basically piss myself laughing because
03:18	when you're hearing that,
03:20	'cause he is the ultimate nerd, Peter,
03:23	and so, it's great for him to be able to do it,
03:26	but for him to be the voice of Smaug
03:30	when, really,
03:31	all you're seeing is a stick with a tennis ball,
03:34	that was a great leap of the imagination on that part.
03:37	He was roaring, roaring like a dragon
03:40	in a kiwi accent.
03:41	Well, believe it or not, like,
03:42	I think the majority of the magic that happens
03:46	is practical.
03:48	Our production team does a really terrific job of, like,
03:50	when we do a tut,
03:52	something in the room actually happens,
03:53	the environment changes and shifts
03:55	and any of the CGI they're doing is just,
03:58	they're, like, just juicing it up a little bit,
04:01	they're just, like, adding a little oomph.
04:03	But most of the magic that's,
04:05	we've only done one scene, I've only done one scene
04:08	and it was when we did the dragon scene
04:11	was the only time we've ever, like,
04:12	acting to a tennis ball.
04:14	I think every spell carries with it its own challenges
04:17	and each of our characters have
04:18	their own particular language
04:20	in terms of the spell casting
04:22	and we all have different hands
04:23	and different strengths and weaknesses
04:24	in terms of how that happens,
04:26	so luckily we have choreographers who really help
04:28	form fit the spells to what we are capable of doing.
04:32	I mean, the funny thing about acting in general is that
04:34	you are always connecting with imaginary circumstances,
04:37	so for me, it's not as difficult as you think,
04:39	like, even if I'm interacting with a human being,
04:41	I'm interacting with them as my wife, right?
04:43	They're not my wife, so,
04:46	the complexities of being able to create
04:48	an imaginative state
04:50	where you can believe that for yourself
04:53	is as sort of difficult to do with another human being
04:57	as it is with just a green screen
04:59	because you're still using internal personal things
05:02	where you're, you know,
05:03	using your own experience of life in a certain way
05:06	to connect with something imaginary and hopefully,
05:09	I mean, the ultimate goal of acting
05:10	is to have your actual blood and flesh response
05:13	respond to something imaginary,
05:15	to live truly in imaginative circumstance, right?
05:20	So, it's sort of a similar process
05:22	of whether or not it's a scene partner
05:24	or whether or not it's a Demagorgon.
05:26	Yeah, you know, acting on green screen,
05:29	I found it really difficult.
05:30	The first time I'd ever done it was on Heroes
05:32	and we did a lot of it and, you know,
05:35	it's just a stick with a tennis ball on top of it
05:37	and some guy with plumber's crack is holding it,
05:40	drinking a Coke, you know?
05:42	And so,
05:44	it takes a minute to get used to it
05:46	but also what's changed now,
05:49	like, I've just finished doing a series
05:50	called Stan Lee's Lucky Man
05:52	and it's based on a short story that Stan Lee did
05:55	and we did a lot of CGI on that show too
05:57	and green screen and blue screen,
06:00	they're able to kind of,
06:03	they do, like, mock-ups and they show it to us beforehand,
06:06	we never got that on Heroes.
06:08	Like, they didn't have that technology then.
06:10	Even the, when I look at what we did on Heroes
06:13	and then I look at what we do
06:15	even in the pilot of Reverie
06:17	and what we did on Lucky Man,
06:20	what's happened in 10 years is unbelievable,
06:23	like, it's really, really cool
06:24	and I think our show will benefit from that.
06:27	But as a whole,
06:29	I don't like acting on it,
06:31	I'd rather be talking to somebody one-on-one.
06:33	[Interviewer] What's been a challenge for you guys
06:35	in terms of working with CGI?
06:36	100% it was the pilot
06:40	when we were on the Hindenburg
06:42	and had to look outside
06:44	and see that we had left the ground,
06:46	that was one of the biggest ones,
06:48	I think it was me, Shantal was guest starring,
06:51	Abby,
06:52	were you in that one with Todd?
06:54	I felt like you were in a different part of the...
06:55	I think I was holding the bomb.
06:57	Yeah,
06:57	you were dismantling the bomb or something like that.
07:00	But we had to stare outside at orange cones
07:03	and it was one of those scenes where, like,
07:05	when you're looking at it,
07:06	it's like, a wide shot, it comes back out,
07:08	it's this magnificent thing,
07:09	you see the Hindenburg
07:10	and you see the space and you see everything,
07:12	but for us, it's just staring at cones for 10 seconds
07:15	and it's literally us just going,
07:17	Look outside!
07:19	I don't, should we still,
07:21	still hold it, don't cut? Okay.
07:22	(laughs)
07:23	And like, and we just stare at it
07:24	until somebody yells cut and they're like,
07:25	they're like, okay, so keep staring until we yell cut
07:27	and we're like, no, we're trying to,
07:29	it's just ridiculous.
07:30	And it's usually, to kind of, like, add on to that,
07:32	it usually is the shots where we go to commercial that,
07:35	our CGI revealing the town shot.
07:38	So, it is usually holding,
07:40	I think one for me was
07:41	when we went to 1865, Civil War had just ended,
07:45	and we had to look out of our time machine,
07:48	we're all like, Scooby-Doo gang, like looking out.
07:51	(laughs)
07:52	And we're supposed to see the capital
07:53	with fireworks going off and it's just like,
07:55	it's a, you know, a push-in shot going to commercial.
07:58	And so, that one was, like,
08:00	just the screen is literally right in front of our faces,
08:03	it's just big, blue, and like...
08:04	And it's just dudes.
08:06	Just guys are on cameras. With, like, boom poles.
08:08	Yeah, they're like, Things look amazing.
08:10	Go.
08:11	(laughs)
08:11	You're like, alright.
08:13	It's 1865.
08:15	I would say probably episode one
08:17	when we went to see the Hindenburg
08:20	and kind of avert or recreate the crash of the Hindenburg.
08:23	That was pretty epic because
08:25	we literally are, like,
08:26	staring up at this thing in the sky
08:29	that we can't even imagine
08:31	and it's just, like, Look over there.
08:33	And you're like, oh.
08:34	Look over here!
08:35	Oh.
08:36	And then when I saw it all cut together
08:37	and how, like, kind of vast and monstrous it was,
08:41	I was like, oh, I wish I had known that at the time,
08:44	maybe it would have imbued it with a bit more awe.
08:47	(laughs) You know?
08:48	But in the same time,
08:50	what they did with the Hindenburg is like,
08:52	what I was pleasantly surprised with,
08:53	they'd built a whole gondola
08:55	where the crew is and the captain of the ship
08:57	and a huge Good Year tire
09:00	and that was hanging on a big crane.
09:04	So, they would drop it too,
09:05	so when we're falling and all the,
09:07	that was all real,
09:08	we weren't having to act to a,
09:10	I mean, which was such a gift.
09:11	The fact that there is nothing there
09:13	or the fact that you're doing your close up to a tennis ball
09:16	it does not negate the fact that
09:19	you still have to be as honest and truthful as possible
09:22	and if your character is honest and truthful,
09:26	maybe your character is not honest and truthful.
09:28	So, but, you use your imagination no matter what
09:31	and that's where you start, and so,
09:36	it doesn't really matter,
09:39	at least for me.
09:43	I found it
09:45	as challenging
09:47	as any other films that I do.
09:50	It's amazing what we're able to do with The Expanse
09:53	because we are blessed,
09:55	they've built out the sets,
09:56	we've got 80,000 square feet of sets,
09:58	the Rossi,
09:59	my ship that I pilot is literally three stories of ship
10:04	and if we wanted to,
10:05	we could literally start a scene down in the crew quarters
10:08	or the galley or the armory
10:11	and travel up the stairs
10:13	and the ladders up to the ops deck
10:14	to all the way up to the flight deck
10:15	all in one take
10:16	'cause it's all there, it's all attached,
10:17	it's all geographically related accurately.
10:22	So, we don't have as much
10:25	special effects to create that environment for us.
10:27	We need some help with the zero gravity.
10:30	A lot of the illusion of zero gravity
10:31	comes from our incredible special effects wizard,
10:36	Rob Munroe.
10:37	But the zero gravity is a big part of
10:40	what we have to align ourselves because
10:43	we're always saying, okay, this scene,
10:44	is this scene zero G?
10:46	'Cause if it's not in zero G,
10:49	if it's in zero G, I can't lean
10:51	'cause there's no reason to lean,
10:52	or if it's in zero G,
10:53	my hands have to be up here
10:54	or if it's in zero G,
10:57	you know, I'm gonna have to hold this
10:58	or my hair can't be this or whatever,
10:59	it's like, there's a lot of technicalities that
11:01	we have to account for in zero G.
11:04	One of the most fun scenes I had was
11:06	the beer drinking scene in season two
11:09	where I'm singing Hank Williams and having a few beers
11:12	and bored on the ship alone and in zero gravity
11:15	and I decide to try and challenge myself
11:17	and I throw a little blob of beer
11:21	and then I do a flip
11:24	and land with my mag boots
11:26	and then try and catch it
11:27	before it splatters all over the ground
11:28	and that was a symphony,
11:30	it's like a choreography of
11:33	real wire work that I had to do
11:36	with real drinking, and then CGI
11:41	beer bubbles
11:42	and doing that all, kind of like, miming it
11:44	and hoping that, you know, I didn't make a fool of myself.
11:48	We do use a decent amount of CGI on Preacher.
11:52	We have a very large visual effects team
11:55	and for example, a hair star's office will be coming up
11:58	and we've seen glimpses of that in the trailers,
12:01	like, what's behind the windows is CGI,
12:04	that's all green screen,
12:05	and then we do some green screen traveling on Preacher
12:08	from time to time
12:10	and sometimes we'll shoot something where we have to,
12:12	the V effects person will be on set
12:14	and you have to physically match,
12:16	they're like, if you're picking something up,
12:18	they're like, No, move your hand like half an inch.
12:21	Like, so there's a very,
12:23	there's a technical specificity to that,
12:25	that can be challenging
12:26	but it's so cool at the end of the day.
12:28	Usually they have some kind of art to show you
12:30	about what they think it's going to look like
12:31	and then sometimes that changes and you're like,
12:33	whoa, that is not what I thought was happening!
12:37	But it's,
12:39	I like it, but I have a rampant imagination,
12:41	but it can be challenging, like,
12:42	just technically, physically, it can be challenging
12:44	but it's super cool at the end of the day
12:46	because there's a transformation that happens in post
12:48	that is really, really cool.
12:51	CG's such an incredible tool
12:52	but people also forget
12:53	we live in an age of casual magic now.
12:57	The first time we blew up the White House in '94,
13:00	it's like, oh, my god!
13:01	Now we're blowing up whole planets and whole cities
13:04	and it's lost its value.
13:06	You know, you can't just get bigger with this stuff,
13:07	we have to use special effects in a way
13:10	that becomes meaningful again.
13:12	Like, occasionally you see an effect,
13:14	whether it's subtle stuff,
13:15	like what they were doing in Fury Road
13:17	where they're just creating the world,
13:19	or like, really, truly having an effect that, like,
13:22	impacts you.
13:24	And thinking about how you use special effects,
13:26	not just as, like, oh, well, we can do this,
13:28	so we should,
13:29	but really what it means to do that,
13:31	how you create a character with it.
13:33	And the only other piece that I'll say on this
13:34	'cause I think it's really important
13:36	is we now live in a world in which
13:39	we're having these conversations about
13:42	actors being nominated
13:45	for their facial cap and mocap performances,
13:49	which is incredible that we've gotten to that point,
13:51	however,
13:53	no disrespect to any actor ever who has done that
13:55	because they are doing incredible work,
13:59	but from someone being deep in it
14:01	and knowing the amount of work that
14:03	the V effects team and the V effects soups do
14:06	is they take that facial performance
14:09	and they take it to another level.
14:11	I think that conversation is very myopic and misguided
14:16	to even consider nominating an actor for a performance
14:19	unless you're also gonna nominate
14:21	the part of the V effects team behind it
14:23	and the V effects supervisor
14:24	because that is a joint effort,
14:26	that is not a one-to-one translation of someone saying,
14:29	You do this performance and it's gonna end up on screen,
14:31	there's so much more that goes into that
14:33	and so, I am all for that conversation
14:35	and those actors should be celebrated
14:37	but there's a lot of people behind them that
14:39	need to be celebrated too.