“Reprisal” star Rodrigo Santoro says he traveled back to his native Brazil to research his role for the new Hulu series.
“What attracted me to this [part] was the fact that it’s far from who I am — I’ve never gotten in a fight,” says Santoro, 44, best known for playing gunslinging bandit Hector in HBO’s “Westworld.”
“So I went in the field to do research about gangs,” he says.
Premiering Friday (Dec. 6) — with all ten episodes dropping concurrently — “Reprisal” is a noir thriller following Doris Quinn (Abigail Spencer, “Suits”), a femme fatale exacting revenge against her brother’s gang after they leave her for dead. Santoro’s character, Joel Kelly, is the gang leader. Filmed in North Carolina (Wilmington), the show’s setting is deliberately vague; it’s a cocktail of 1950s and 1980s aesthetics, filled with classic cars and neon lights, modern kitchen appliances and retro glasses. It’s as glossy and technicolored as a Ryan Murphy show — but due to the heightened backdrop, Santoro says he wanted to make Joel feel as grounded and real as possible.
“I wouldn’t classify Joel as a villain,” says Santoro (also known for playing Laura Linney’s office crush Karl in “Love Actually” and King Xerxes in “300”). “He’s torn between two opposite worlds: raising a 7-year-old daughter and being a leader of this gang, which is very violent.”
That dichotomy of gangster and family man was also appealing, he says.
“I don’t choose my characters when they are villains or heroes — I chose them when I find them compelling and complex and I see that I can bring humanity,” he says. “When I first read [‘Reprisal’] I was like ‘Okay he’s the leader, a tough guy, let’s see where this goes.’ Then we see that he lives with his young daughter and we go into a very interesting place, which is ‘How can this man raise a child in this environment?’”
That question led Santoro to his aforementioned “field work” in Brazil.
“Research is my favorite part [of this job], because you learn about people and worlds instead of judging,” he says. “Prejudice comes from distance, from exclusion. As an actor, when you do research you try to be neutral — to absorb and understand what’s that world, how do people think, how do they live? With that, you expand the way you see things. It expands your humanity.”
Santoro found friends in his native Rio de Janeiro who were involved in MMA fighting — which is part of Joel’s background — and immersed himself in that world. “I was never in a fight before. I started with that because that was missing in terms of understanding approaching that world,” he says. He learned street fighting, Muy Thai, boxing, Jiu Jitzu and talked to former gang members.
“[Joel] comes from that world,” he says. “So I went all over not only learning how to fight, but learning about people that fight. What I learned was there’s a big sense of family — a big sense of, ‘I got your back.'”
Although Season 3 of “Westworld” is expected in the first half of 2020, Santoro says his lips are sealed regarding plot developments.
“I wish I could [say anything],” he says. “They did reveal in the trailer that there’s a new world I’m part of. That’s as far as I can go.”