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When you agree to meet James Spader in person for the first time, his reputation for playing dark characters precedes him.
Yes, I was meeting him to chat about his rather brilliant new Disney Plus show VisionQuest, and yes, we were surrounded by PR types, camera operators, and influencers.
Still, the 66-year-old has played serial killers, sexpots, and whatever the hell Robert California was – can you blame me for being intimidated?
And it didn’t help my general unease that I was there to talk to him about him reprising arguably his most nefarious role ever, the murderous mechanical monster Ultron who forced the Avengers to ‘assemble’ back in 2015.
Still, soon after entering the lion’s den (a hotel room I couldn’t afford), I quickly realised my mistake…because James told me I’d made a mistake, which isn’t the best way to kick off an interview.
Specifically, I asked him about a quote I’d found which I attributed to him, calling him ‘Hollywood’s go-to guy for playing dark and dysfunctional men’, and whether he thought that was still a fair description.
‘I don’t think I would have used those words,’ he replied. ‘It probably wasn’t a quote of mine (Spoilers: it was not), unless it was attributed to me incorrectly (Spoilers: it was…by me), but I’ve had such a strange career.’
‘I just know whenever I’ve been looking for a job, I’ve always been looking for something that was different from what I’ve just finished doing. I really like the good with the bad; I really like the irreverent and the emotional and moving together.
‘Probably the greatest consistency that I’ve had in my career is that I love the eccentric, and the strange, and the curious’.
Why then has a man who seeks the novel decided to step back into Ultron’s size nine metal boots?
‘I was just so taken by surprise by [VisionQuest] that it was intriguing to me,’ he explained. ‘It seemed like a wonderful bookend to this other series that I was doing in New York at the time that I did 10 years ago, Blacklist.
‘I had done Avengers: Age of Ultron right at the end of the first season of Blacklist, and then I went away back to New York and did 10 years on the show, and then came back to London for VisionQuest as soon as I’d wrapped that show.
‘It made such great sense. In that last scene in Age of Ultron between Vision and Ultron, so much was touched on, and it was just a great opportunity to then really expand on what was just touched on.’
A lot of James’s enthusiasm came from working with Terry Matalas, the VisionQuest showrunner.
Terry approached James before a single page of the script had been written, but his vision (pun unintended) impressed the Pretty in Pink star.
‘The meeting started as a sort of get-together to have some coffee or tea or whatever, and then it grew,’ James mused. ‘Terry told me the entire trajectory of the show and the entire trajectory of my character within that show.
‘He then immediately started working with me before I’d agreed to do the show; he just started in that first meeting, engaging me, asking questions, asking for my contribution to the ideas that he had just presented; it never stopped.’
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then James had a lot of input into the character, including the character’s new look. That’s right, if you were wondering why the nine-foot-tall Ultron would choose a human avatar with a great big bushy beard, well, James has an answer for you.
‘[The beard] was my idea,’ he grinned. ‘Terry thought at first that it should be a rather well-groomed beard, and I said, “No, it was not going to be that.”
‘It was going to be unruly, Zeus or Poseidon-like, and I realised I really did need to address this idea that he was transitioning from a 9-foot robot into a 5′ 10 man in his sixties. The robot is this clean, metal, smooth, and formidable, massive and powerful. The human avatar of that had to be the same.
‘He needed to be the opposite in terms of his appearance, rather scruffy and unruly, but have the same bearing and be just as formidable, carrying that same weight when he walked into a room, and thus his appearance.’
Beyond the beard, though, James thinks the Ultron we meet in VisionQuest has changed since we saw him try to wipe out all of humanity in Sokovia.
‘He’s been forced to stop,’ James explained. ‘In Age of Ultron, he was like a teenager; he’s just consuming and absorbing knowledge, but he’s always moving, evolving, changing. Now it’s very different.
‘Now he’s able to actually digest all that food that he’s devoured, and his perspectives have changed. I think what he’s been left with is this appreciation for the chaos that is humanity, or how he perceives humanity. I think he has a real appreciation for that, because if anyone is chaotic, it’s Ultron; he is the arbiter of chaos, really.’
James also believes that this wiser, less sophomoric version of Ultron understands love.
‘I think he’s in touch with love; I don’t think he’s really experienced it. I’m not so sure how many humans really have a great understanding of that.’
‘I think he probably really longs for that feeling of connection with somebody else that humans have, and I think that is what he’s searching for.
It’s that, James explains, which has led Ultron to decide it’s important for Vision and Tommy to find each other.
And if you think that sounds a little altruistic for this rogue AI, well, there’s a sting in the tail.
‘But most importantly,’ he finished. ‘From a selfish point of view, because he’s a selfish man, it’s also very, very important for Ultron.’
VisionQuest is available to stream now exclusively on Disney Plus.