When preparing to talk to acclaimed actorMichael Emerson, some apprehension is to be expected. After all, this is someone whoRolling Stone once proclaimedas their #1 greatest TV villain of all time for his seminal performance as Benjamin Linus inLost, to say nothing of the great characters he’s gone on to portray since. But when I sit down for a lengthy Zoom call with Emerson, each of us speaking from our respective homes, it becomes increasingly clear over the course of our conversation that what you see is largely what you get. Every response he gives in that trademark tremulous voice is considered and thought out; every anecdote he recounts for me is spellbinding — to the point where I almost forget I’m supposed to be asking him questions. Emerson refers to himself as a “character actor” at the top of our chat, but, as he later divulges, he doesn’t need to know where his characters are going to enjoy the ride.
Michael Emerson Reflects on the Enduring Legacy of ‘Lost’
By the time Emerson was offered a role on the hit ABC seriesLost, he’d already earned recognition for another show on the same network. In the fifth season ofDavid E. Kelley’s legal dramaThe Practice, Emerson plays serial killer William Hinks, a man initially accused of murder who then goes on to stalk lawyer Lindsay Dole (Kelli Williams). The role won Emerson his first Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2001; five years later, he made his first appearance onLostin Season 2, Episode 14, “One of Them.”
“I was originally engaged to do a three-episode arc,” Emerson tells me, “and somewhere along the line, even before I got to Hawaii, it seemed like it grew a little.” While he points out that any questions about a grander plan for his character, and how that evolved, should rightly be directed toLostco-creatorDamon Lindelof, he reveals that the role of Ben Linus initially felt like “a kind of working audition.”
“They were ready to graduate to put a face and a voice on the threat of the island, and they were going to try this so-called ‘balloonist’ and see what they could get out of that,” Emerson muses. “If it didn’t feel right, I think they could have easily spun me out of there somehow. But I passed the audition, it worked, and then they never let me go home.”
Ben Linus is first introduced onLostunder the alias of Henry Gale, and while initial seasons painted him as more of an all-out villain,the character ultimately evolvedinto someone whose morals weren’t so cut-and-dry. From Emerson’s perspective, playing someone “with more shades or layers” was a welcome shift, highlighted through Linus' more philosophical debates with characters like John Locke (Terry O’Quinn). “This chess game between the two of us, it’s existential,” says Emerson. “It’s the writers airing out some serious thinking they’ve been doing and have found a pair of actors that can put it on the table meaningfully.” In terms of major turning points, however, he cites the death of Linus' daughter, Alex (Tania Raymonde) as the “worst possible hit” the character sustained, which also seemed to coincide with a series shift from straight-up villain to something much more sympathetic. “After that,” Emerson adds, “he was no longer such a mystery to the viewers.”
I can’t help but jump in then with a question I always try to ask actors who tend to inhabit more antagonistic characters: does Ben Linus, at any point, ever think that he’sthe bad guy ofLost? If anyone would have insight into what makes a good villain, it’s Emerson. “Bad guys never think they’re the bad guys,” he asserts. “People do all sorts of terrible things in this life, and no one considers themselves to be the villain of their narrative. Their vision is clouded by all these other issues — their goals, their agenda, their revenge, what they need, what they deserve, their mistreatment or not.” It should come as little surprise that Emerson’s particular aptitude for nailing that level of evil stretches back even further than the screen: “I learned [it] early on playing Shakespeare, playing Iago inOthello.” However wicked Ben Linus may have been over the four years of the actor’s time onLost, which included another Emmy win and three more nominations, he might actually pale in comparison to Emerson’s most recent role.
‘Evil’ Offered a Lot of Firsts for Michael Emerson
For Emerson, no early chats withRobertandMichelle Kingwere even necessary before stepping into the shoes ofEvil’s forensic psychologist and secret occult devotee, Dr. Leland Townsend, who goes toe-to-toe with the show’s main investigative trio ofKristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers), David Acosta (Mike Colter) and Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi). In fact, Emerson tells me that everything he really needs to inhabit the show’s most persistent antagonistic force “is on the page on the day.” The same goes for my inquiry about whether he created any backstory or small details for himself over the series' four seasons. “I do it a little more abstractly than the process you’re describing, which is novelistic,” he says, to which I admit that the question’s framing can definitely be attributed to the writer in me.
“I’m a little more interested in thesoundof the lines,” Emerson adds, before expanding on how he dissects a script to look for supporting nuance in his performance. “What’s the coolest delivery I can think of for this line to have some impact on the audience, to make them groan or laugh?” There’s no question that he was given even naughtier things to say onceEvilmade the jump from its original home on CBS to Paramount+for the remaining three seasons. “Even after we wrapped on Season 2 and we knew we were going to Paramount, we re-recorded certain dialogue because we knew we could be saltier than we had been at CBS,” Emerson recounts. At the time, the Kings also seemed thrilled by the move, which led toa re-cut of the second seasonand a restoration of scenes that may have been cut for network standards and practices due to language or sexual references.
Yet Emerson reveals that, whileEvil’s new streaming home did give the show’s writers more leeway to be bold, there have been a handful of instances where he’s balked at a script: “Call it prudishness or something, but there are a couple of places where I feared to tread.” Throughout Season 1, for example, Leland engages in what Emerson describes as “seducing” a young man named Sebastian (Noah Robbins), encouraging him to become an incel, a manipulation that ends in tragedy by the ninth episode. “There were some little bits and pieces of the dialogue that I thought were too far, too horrible,” the actor tells me, citing the arc as a case of the show’s writers being willing to pull back where needed.
As someone once raised in Catholicism, Emerson makes time for a confession of his own: “I do once in a while feel like, ‘Wow, I am blaspheming my ass off in this scene. I am making a mockery of prayers and sacraments that were, at one time, a big deal to me.'” While he may have spent most of his time filming the series waiting for a bolt of lightning to come from the heavens and strike him down, as he jokes, Emerson says that any concerns he’s had felt more inconsequential, “peccadilloes of the actor’s personality,” in the Kings’ overall scheme of bringing this particular artwork to life. “If we are going to entertain the idea of someone who works for the devil, then they should be devilish. One of their tools is blasphemy, mockery, and mischief. So, this is where I’m at in the playing of Leland Townsend,” Emerson admits, with a quiet chuckle. He also confirms thatEvil’s co-creatorshave always had his full trust, even when he didn’t know where his character would be going. “Maybe once or twice in the course of four seasons have we had a talk about something.” The tenor of said conversations, Emerson says, has been more joking than not about what Leland will be put through in any given week’s episode, often along the lines of, “Wow, you really gave it to me this time.”
‘Evil’: Katja Herbers & Michael Emerson on Season 3 Highlights and the David/Kristen Dynamic
They also spoke about the fun of doing sex counseling with a nun in the room.
By and large,Evilhas been a show of many unexpected firsts for Emerson, who estimates that he’s been “blasted with or emitted a dozen different fluids over the years,” from devouring a demon’s still-beating heart (containing grape jelly) to vomiting during an exorcism (grits or oatmeal mixed with purple food coloring). The worst out of all of them, though? The projectile vomit of the Antichrist, a demon newborn who takes center stage inEvil’s fourth (and currently final) season. “That was pea soup, actually,” Emerson divulges. “I didn’t play my head position quite right, so a bunch of it went right down my ear canal, and it was days before I felt like I really had cleaned my ear out.” Various fake bodily fluids aside, the show has delivered other surprises for Emerson, including clashes of a more physical nature, which the actor was surprised to have written for him this stage in his career. “Recently, I had a ferocious fight with Christine Lahti,” he says, with another laugh, “and we looked at each other like, ‘When does this part stop?’ But it doesn’t, apparently.”
In looking back onEvil’s seasons, Emerson has many fond memories of working withChristine Lahti— who plays Kristen’s mother, Sheryl, as well as Leland’s ex-fiancee and eventual professional rival at DF Global Industries, a corporate front for the 60 demonic houses. While Leland and Sheryl’s back-and-forth over the seasonsultimately climaxes in tragic fashion, Emerson and Lahti’s chemistry on-screen makes up one ofEvil’s best dynamics, and the actor lists off more than one example off the top of his head where Lahti impressed him with her scene work. “Our first episode together was great, where they meet, and she’s game to go with this strange man and commit a robbery for the thrill of it, apparently. That really set the tone right there. Then, other great stuff, like when they were an item together sexually, but then when he so cruelly drops her, tells her off, and she has the right response: ‘I’ve dated worse demons than you.'”
Yet no relationship inEvilremains as twisted, nor as juicy, as the one between Leland andHerbers’ Kristen, to the degree where even Emerson isn’t sure what outcome his character is really hoping for at the end of the day when it comes to trying to get under his main adversary’s skin. “I’m not so sure that [Leland] isn’t kind of the same as he was when we started, but there is an arc in the relationships, and certainly there has been one in that very important relationship between those two.” Meanwhile, when it comes to facing off on-screen, the longtime co-stars have more of a shorthand for approaching their scenes together, rather than needing to hash out every beat before the camera starts rolling. “I don’t remember ever talking about a scene before we do it,” Emerson muses. “She’s terrific to play off of, and always surprising and powerful.”
Michael Emerson Teases the End of ‘Evil’
Unfortunately, February brought the news thatEvilwould be ending with its fourth seasonon Paramount+, a blow that was only somewhat softened by the confirmation thatfour more episodes would be addedto the end, operating as a mini-Season 5 of sorts. Yet, despite the series building popularity viaother streaming avenues like Netflix, it hasn’t been snatched up for a continuation elsewhere, as diehardEvilfans andeven some cast membershave hoped. (Even this week,King posted on Xthat there’s still interest from the creators about making more of the show.) Emerson, by contrast, is a little more pragmatic when reflecting on the last scene he shot for Season 4 — which, in the tradition of most television productions, wasn’t technically in chronological order.
“It was a sad day, but in every show I’ve ever been on, the quote-unquote last day is an anti-climax because it’s never the final scene,” the actor discloses. “You’ve shot the final scene days earlier. The one that should give you a sense of artistic closure, or put the cherry on top, drop the mic and walk away — that’s never your last day. Your last day is a day you come in and do something so mundane and slow-going, a day that’s already overloaded schedule-wise.”
As a television veteran, with more than one series in his rearview mirror now, Emerson is more than accustomed to shows reaching an end; typically, he waits for the off-set opportunity to say his farewells. “There’s always a wrap party later, so then you can take proper leave of people,” he says. “Your great and final scene, no matter where it occurs in the schedule, you feel it on that day. You know that you’ve put it to rest.” Does that mean thatEvil’s series finale, slated to air later this week on Paramount+, has a similarly definitive ending? Naturally, Emerson can’t spoil anything major, but it turns out that fans may have a reason to keep hoping. “I really am a fan of the way they wrap things up in the finale, which is that they do not completely wrap it up. It’s just open-ended enough for my taste,” Emerson teases. “There are winners and losers, but everyone still has agency.”
What’s Next for Michael Emerson?
With the book seemingly closed onEvilfor now, what does that mean for Emerson’s next role? I ask him if he’d ever be interested in popping over to his wifeCarrie Preston’s series,Elsbeth, which is gearing up topremiere its second season this October. (“I’ve been working on this one actor who I’ve known for about 30 years,” Preston joked, when asked a similar question back in July during the TCA Summer Press Tour. “He happens to live in my house.") But as long as Emerson and Preston have known each other — they first met in 1994, when she was a Juilliard grad and he was earning his Master’s from the University of Alabama, and married four years later — they’ve only sporadically acted together on-screen. “It’s always fun and a little weird to work with Carrie in front of the camera,” Emerson admits. “We both have the same reaction. It makes us a bit shy. This is the person I woke up with in bed this morning, and now we have to play some other set of dynamics or relationships. It kind of makes me want to giggle.”
While no specific part has been set aside for Emerson onElsbeth, there is a fun detail that links the series he just wrapped and the show he could potentially guest on: they’re both created by Robert and Michelle King. Emerson likens it to him and Preston being “members of the same repertory company” now. Yet when our conversation turns to the type of character he could playinElsbeth’s world, Emerson has one condition: “Obviously, I can’t play the villain — it’s too on the nose.”
Evil’s series finale premieres Thursday, August 22 on Paramount+.
“Evil,” the 2019 TV series from creators Robert and Michelle King, is a gripping exploration of the intersection between science and the supernatural. The series stars Katja Herbers as Dr. Kristen Bouchard, a forensic psychologist drawn into a world of dark mysteries and unexplained phenomena. Alongside priest-in-training David Acosta (Mike Colter) and tech expert Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi), Kristen is tasked with investigating a series of bizarre cases for the Catholic Church, including demonic possessions, hauntings, and miracles.
