Kevin Zegers – Dirty John

By: Jamie Steinberg

Q) What are the recent projects that you are working on?

A) We just finished three and a half weeks ago so I think I’m going to take the rest of the year off. I think I’m going to do a movie at the beginning of next year, but we’ll see. I have young kids at home, so I have to be a little bit more thoughtful about up and moving some place to go work now. I’m trying to see if I can find a good gig here in LA, which is not as easy to find as you might think.

Q) Please tell us the premise for the series “Dirty John.”

A) It’s obviously based on a podcast. I think the details of what happened is sort of a slimy guy (Eric Bana) who manipulates his way into this woman’s life (Connie Britton) after meeting her though an online dating service. Through a series of events, you sort of end up finding out this guy is as horrible a human being as you could possibly uncover. It effects her and her family in horrible ways. That’s obviously the logistics of what the show is, but to me what makes it most interesting is how does a thing like this and a guy like that exist and how is he able to sort of navigate the world in a way where he is able to do this over and over again. I think the show gets into that as much as sort of the what happens aspect of it. It is sort of how a thing like this happens and I think the show does a really good job of figuring that out and why these people are susceptible to a guy like this.

Q) How was your character Toby originally described to you?

A) Toby (in real life his name is Shad) is Debbie’s nephew. Debbie, for all intents and purposes, raised this kid. His mother was murdered by his father when he was a boy – maybe eight or nine years old. So, obviously, his mother was dead, and his father was in prison. So, Debbie sort of took over helping to raise this boy. When you meet him, he’s mellow. He has kids of his own. He is treated as one of Debbie’s children.

Q) What kind of research did you do into portraying Shad?

A) I listened to the podcast, which is pretty in-depth. You kind of get to know the story. If you were just to do a podcast of what happened – it’s a “Dateline” episode. It’s a forty-five minute narrative thing. I think the podcast goes into what was helpful for me, and us as actors, is that they do kind of get into the backstories of all these people and why they are the way they are and the relationships they have with each other. The podcast was super helpful. I spoke to Shad while we were filming also, which was super helpful. I tried to gain as much as I can from any piece of material that I can get my hands on. It just so happens that recently I was able to find good stuff.

Q) Were you familiar with any of your costars before working with them on the series?

A) I am obviously familiar with all of them. Eric is probably one of my favorite actors since he did a small movie called Chopper when he was living in Australia. So, I’ve always been a huge fan of his. I’ve known Connie’s work and Jane’s work for years. I knew Juno [Temple] just sort of socially since we are about the same age. I think we kind of ran in the same circles when were teens in LA. So, I’ve known her, but never worked with Juno before. And Julia [Garner] is obviously lightning in a bottle. I’ve never worked with her before. She’s special.

Q) What were some of your most memorable moments from filming “Dirty John?”

A) It’s going to sound boring, but so rarely as actors do we get to control variables. You kind of go from thing to thing. This is one of the first times in a long time that everyone that I worked with I was such a big fan of just in terms of as an actor and as an observer. So, kind of on a daily basis it was making little menial scenes that are kind of like whatever story filler things. When you’re working with people like we had on this thing and Jeffrey [Reiner] is such a fantastic director and the writing…Being able to show up on set and being in an environment where we are finding scenes on our feet, as opposed to being super married to the source material in some way…It was a very loose set in a way where if something wasn’t feeling right we would find it. We had the time and the people that we could. We didn’t just have to move on because we were short on a day. It’s not as common as you would think. It enabled us to really find the essence of who these people are because if it seems like performances then it doesn’t feel authentic and therefore it isn’t particularly frightening. It needs to look and resemble people you know, and I think having the ability to be loose with the words, every once in a while, made for exciting days of work. It never felt tedious, monotonous or like we were just shouting lines out and getting through our days. It did feel very much like doing a play. That would be the best thing I could parallel the most to.

Q) Talk a little more about working with director Jeffrey Reiner.

A) Yeah. I think they so much as said this, that once they found the actors that they wanted to be these people that there is then this sort of trust factor of like, “Okay, let’s make it all work,” and feeling like there is some latitude in terms of like being able to find something. That was definitely the best part of this, as opposed to squeezing into some window that felt like it had to be that way. There was a looseness where we would like block a scene…I’m trying to remember exactly what it was, but Connie and I were blocking and rehearsing a scene and it felt super exposed where we were rehearing. We were in the lobby of a hotel and we had the ability to say, “I think we should be up in a room.” So, just the ability to be to do that stuff makes things feel…There is a vibrancy to the work that is not always the case because it is very much sort of like, “Does this feel right? Is it working? Do I feel like this dynamic between the two of us is correct right now?” If it wasn’t, we’d just fix it. We had the time, thankfully. There are obviously talented people out the wazoo on this thing that there is this trust factor of “we’re going to figure it out.” In a lot of cases what we ended up with was so far from as was initially conceived. Obviously, all of this was in the same tone and the end result is the same, but we were able to get there in a sort of much more interesting way, which I found to be really exciting.

Q) What did you personally take away from your experience working on the series?

A) I find this character I play to be so sympathetic. He has been dealt such a shitty hand of cards. He still is one of the kindest…His disposition about life is so admirable to me that if anything stuck with me from this experience it was that this guy has absolutely been put through the ringer in life. If there is any bad break that could come it sort of comes this guy’s way. He seems to just sort of power through and he seems to have a good attitude about things. He’s a good father and a good nephew. I like to play a guy who I really admired. Often times you find characters that you need to sort of understand them and be empathetic, but you don’t have to particularly love them. But this was one of the few guys I’ve played… I tend to play the “Dirty John” types more often than not. This is the first time I’ve left and went, “This is a really good man,” and I felt it was a privilege to play a good human being who does the right thing more often than not.

Q) What makes the Bravo network such a perfect fit for “Dirty John?”

A) My wife is a Bravo addict so when our TV is on our TIVO is sort of permanently set to Bravo. What I my wife finds interesting about “Real Housewives” is different than what I find interesting. To me, I’m sort of going, “What’s actually going on?!” [laughs] When the cameras turn off, I’m interested in how they put on all of this. It’s like a big performance. But I think the reason this guy was able to operate was because it was in a world that Bravo has lots of shows about. You know what I mean? This woman could have very easily ben on “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” She lives in that world and a world where appearances are important. It’s a world where they are like, “Oh, I got a divorce, but I’m going to move on to the next one.” Her world looks very perfect and yet underneath is all this drama and doubt and shame and all this stuff that makes it sort of the perfect place for a guy like this to pop up and operate. Bravo knows their demographic and I think a lot of the shows are about the sort of ridiculousness of what privileged people think it looks like and then the underbelly of how whacky, gnarly and kind of dirty it is underneath. I think our show has a lot of that – that sort of external prettiness with the underbelly with the kind of filthy that our show kind of lives in.

Q) You are a part of social media. Are you looking forward to the instant fan feedback you’ll receive to the series?

A) Once I finish a project, I kind of go back home and forget about it. My job is sort of done at this point. I’m glad people seem to be really liking it and everything that I’ve seen so far I’ve really loved. I certainly think it’s a show that people will really like. I think it’s a sort of timely piece of material and I think I’m excited to be a small part of it. Like I said, often times we’re working actors, so we try to just do the best thing that’s in front of us. I felt very fortunate on this one that I kind of got to be there and participate.

Q) What else do you want to be sure our readers know about “Dirty John?”

A) I think if it weren’t true people would not want to believe that it was something that could happen. I think it will blow people’s hair back.