ROBERT DOWNEY JR.. INTERVIEW WITH RAMI MALEK
Rami MALEK
If the recent golden age of prestige television has foisted the antihero upon us, the Golden Globe-winning, visually stylish
Mr. Robot, which premiered last summer to much acclaim on USA and is now back for its second season, delivers an unreliable, morphine-addicted, paranoid protagonist destined to join the canon of TV's most memorable rebels. But this time, he lives by Occupy ideals, dresses in a black hoodie, and is set on smashing the corporate power structure. Elliot Alderson, a cyber-security engineer by day, vigilante hacker by night, and leader of the Anonymous-like collective fsociety, is the eyes, ears, and sentience of the series. Played by Los Angeles native
Rami Malek with a nuanced intensity, it's the kind of role most up-and-comers would kill for—gritty, multi-layered, and a career definer.
Malek, 35, has been acting professionally for over a decade. He established himself as an edgy character actor in acclaimed indies like
Short Term 12 (2013) and
Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013), and has worked with the heavy-hitting directors
Paul Thomas Anderson (
The Master, 2012) and
Spike Lee (
Oldboy, 2013;
Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, 2015), but as he tells his friend and
Mr. Robot superfan
Robert Downey Jr., playing Alderson has opened up a whole new world of possibilities, including his first leading film role, in Sarah Adina Smith's mystery
Buster's Mal Heart, which he recently completed filming. Downey Jr. caught up with Malek by phone in early June, a few weeks after he visited the
Mr. Robot set in New York.
ROBERT DOWNEY JR.: Mr. Malek, how are you feeling? What's going on right now?
RAMI MALEK: Right now, I am home doing a bit of press. We have one of those hiatus weeks because, as you know [
Mr. Robot creator], Sam [Esmail] is directing everything. He gets a week of prep before we complete season two of
Mr. Robot.
DOWNEY JR.: Do you draw any comparisons between a director/creative partner and a brother, both essentially named Sami?
MALEK: Yeah. I actually do. They both have, in the time we've spent together, pretty much told me exactly what to do with my life. [
laughs] There are some striking similarities between the two of them: They're both Egyptian, they both vaguely resemble each other.
DOWNEY JR.: It's funny how that works. Now I'm not going to start asking you about relationships, in case you were wondering. I'm in this odd position of realizing that it's somewhat a daunting task to appropriately interview somebody. What the heck is
Buster's Mal Heart?
MALEK: I read this very experimental script on the first season we were shooting [
Mr. Robot]. It was really poetic and cool, and it left so much to the imagination. So much of it was just scene descriptions, and we would improv the meat of the dialogue. That was something I looked at and was like, "Well, I'll probably never get a chance to do something like
this again." I think it's done now. Sarah Adina Smith directed it and is editing it, and is probably submitting it to festivals right now.
DOWNEY JR.: Oh, I wanna see it!
MALEK: Maybe we'll screen it together. It won't be as elaborate as your
Star Wars screening, but ... Am I supposed to talk about that? Or maybe not?
DOWNEY JR.: [
laughs] Listen, it's a two-way street, pal. First of all, are you in town next Wednesday?
MALEK: I'm not. What kind of fun adventure do you have planned out?
DOWNEY JR.: I had some ideas, but whatever. I guess if I want to see you for the foreseeable future, I just have to come to set again.
MALEK: [
laughs] That was amazing. You turned me into a hero when you came to set. I'm not kidding. They were like, "You know him?" "How do you know him?" I knew it was very cool to know you, but the world started paying me more attention on that day on set. Maybe I elaborated on our relationship too much and started fantasizing it was more than it actually was. No, I just told them how close we were and that we hang out, we celebrate holidays together, we watch movies together, all of which is true!
DOWNEY JR.: [
laughs] I mean, it was great to see you, very nice to catch up with [Christian] Slater. And, without giving anything away, I was just happy that I was able to see a scene with you and Slater that left everything to the imagination.
MALEK: Usually I look behind the monitor and it's Sam and Joe Schmo behind there. "Okay, film icon Robert Downey Jr., one of the greatest actors to have graced this planet, is watching the monitor as I deliver a slew of experimental takes before I get to one that might have possibly worked."
DOWNEY JR.: Now, let me tell you something, that first take was
the take. It's probably not the one that's going to be in the episode, but it was perfect in that you were going to try what you were going to try, you were going to commit to it fully, and then you were going to not be ashamed if you were directed away from it. I thought it was brave, and vital, and awesome. Without getting into details, you made some sounds that I have never heard made on the set of filmed entertainment before. And they were appropriate to the situation.
MALEK: [
laughs] I felt that was the case. You know what's funny, I remember you said, "What was wrong with the first take?" And I was like, "Yeah, Sam, what was wrong with the first take?" We were doing a scene about three weeks later, and Sam comes up to me, and I don't know if it was the light—we were losing light that day—but he gave me a couple takes, and that was it, and we moved on. I wanted one more desperately. He goes, "I was talking to Downey when he was on set ..." He asked you, I think, how many takes usually work for you, and you said something like, "The first one's pretty good. The second one's about perfecting it." So he looks at me and he goes, "Well, you know, Downey only needs two takes."
DOWNEY JR.: [
laughs] Usually they're just warming up technically, too, and usually they're letting things happen that shouldn't be happening on the first take because no one really takes the first take all that seriously. But I bet that a movie comprised entirely of cleaned-up first takes would be extraordinary.
MALEK: That is not a bad idea. That's the film we do together!
IRONMAN IS A SUPERFAN
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There's two episodes on Wednesday?
. Dialog tends to stick with you more if you read it.