Lili Taylor has been making movies for 25 years, from romantic classics like Say Anything and High Fidelity to indie dramas like I Shot Andy Warhol and Starting Out in the Evening. This summer she starred in the hit horror movie The Conjuring, as a mother possessed by an evil spirit.
Now Taylor goes into the future on Fox’s new series “Almost Human.” She plays Captain Maldonado, the boss of our heroes John Kennex (Karl Urban) and his partner, the android Dorian (Michael Ealy). During a break in shooting, Taylor called me direct from the set in Vancouver to discuss the new show.
CraveOnline: How different is doing television now, for a network like Fox, versus when you did “Six Feet Under?”
Lili Taylor: It’s J.J. Abrams and Joel Wyman, and Bad Robot’s their company, so they have a lot of freedom. I think Fox leaves them alone to a certain extent. So it feels pretty free. Obviously it’s not cable. It’s on network, with advertisers and all that stuff, but if you’re going to do it, you would want to do it with somebody like them. That’s why I did it.
How did you approach playing this authority figure, Captain Maldonado?
I loved “Prime Suspect” with Helen Mirren. I love cops. I love the whole archetype of the cops and I’ve always wanted to play one so I’m having fun with it. I like imagining the pressure and having to make decisions. I mean, I wish I got out of the precinct more. I wish I didn’t get bogged down in paperwork and the politics of it, the character, but that’s the only drag. I just wish I was out in the field more.
Well, you got to have a gunfight in the first episode, but will Maldonado get to be involved in more of the action?
No. I’ve asked, can she get out more? I know the nature of the captain is they can’t. That’s just the reality. Most every captain on a TV show [is in the office]. I’ll get out a little bit and when I do, I’ll just enjoy it. Live it up.
So you really wanted to play a cop for a while, but with all the police shows out there, you didn’t get any of those, but you got the science fiction one?
Yeah, yeah, but you know something? The sci-fi is a component in this, but what I’m seeing more is it’s really about the relationships in this. That’s becoming more important in a way than the context that they’re in. I think there’s plenty of action and there’s plenty of cool drones flying in the air and weird things, but for me there could be such cool sci-fi stuff, but if that relationship isn’t there than it really doesn’t matter.
How much do you butt heads with Kennex?
His character’s changed a little bit since the pilot. He’s not quite as heavy as he was in the pilot. He’s a renegade, but he’s not carrying around all this baggage, so him and Dorian are butting heads more. My relationship with him has changed a little bit because now he sort of has this new friend, Dorian.
When you did get to do the gunfight, did you have special training for the guns and were they different because they’re future guns?
They weren’t. They weren’t that different and I like that. Any time I get to use a pencil or something in the show, I try to use things that are still of today because I just think even in the future there’s going to be stuff that’s still like now. The gun, my gun is a pretty similar gun. Some of the criminals have wild guns or bullets that do wild things or other things, but my gun was pretty simple.
Does Maldonado have a lot of secrets?
No, she doesn’t. People kind of thought that, but she doesn’t.
I think we think that on a J.J. Abrams show, but you’re saying she’s very straightforward and what we see is what we get?
So far. Joel Wyman said he’s not into big surprises. He’ll let us know if something’s coming down the pike. He’s not going to just throw us for a loop. I’ve asked him, “Do I turn out to be a killer? Is there anything I should know about?” He said, “Nope.”
Is there a lot of technical futuristic jargon and is that difficult for you?
A little bit. Sometimes you’ve got to watch it that it’s not too jargony. I know I shut off when it’s jargony. As an actor, I’m not even listening to what I’m saying. If I’m not, how is anybody else? I’ll say, “Hey, maybe we can just take away that, just so we can make sure people are still tuned in and it’s not all going over our heads.”
What are some of the topics of episodes that have been interesting to you, the cases Maldonado sends Kennex and Dorian out on?
The second episode got into sexbot stuff. It’s deeper than just sexy robot girls. It got into human DNA and taking live girls in their skin and trying to meet the demand for a sexbot that was as human as possible, so they had to go to real women. I thought that was playing with some interesting stuff. There was an episode about cloning of course. This guy cloned a lot of himself and we just did not know it, and he did it really well. Of course cloning is interesting.
I think we started to realize early on in the episodes that the relationship had to really get stronger between Dorian and Kennex, so in a way I feel like the plot started to take a backseat to focusing on that relationship. What they realized was the relationship didn’t have enough lightness in it. It was just getting too heavy between them.
Are you in a position of trying to help them get along?
A little bit, and just as a cast member, everybody sort of changed the focus, just realizing that relationship is changing a lot. I don’t know, I just felt like everything started to change a little bit. I think now that relationship has found itself and it’s really working. Now I think just as a cast we’ll get to focus more on what’s happening in the episodes.
I’m excited to hear that because I already like the relationship in the pilot.
Oh, well it gets really good. It really does. It doesn’t just get funny. I was a little worried, like I thought, “Uh-oh, this is just going to get too funny.” What it does is it gets complex. It’s really good. They push each other’s buttons and funny things come out of that. They also get each other thinking in interesting ways and sort of quiet each other. It’s a really cool relationship.
Has this been a really big year for you with The Conjuring being such a big hit and having a new series on?
It’s been abstract because the series hasn’t been on. The Conjuring opened and then I came right to Vancouver. It felt like Canadians hadn’t seen it like the Americans. Now they’re starting to see it because it just came out on pay-per-view but no one’s known what I’d done when I got here. I was like, “Are you kidding? See that scary movie? Are you crazy?” They’re like, “No, we didn’t see it.” Now I’m getting word, now it just came out on pay-per-view so everyone’s now saying, “You scared the hell out of me.” Maybe when this airs it’ll start to get more real, but it’s felt a little abstract.
I’ve of course known your work for a long time because I see lots of indie movies, but to be in a big Warner Brothers movie that lots of people see, have you experienced things on a different level?
No, but I hope so. I should. That was a big hit. I’d love to do another of them and I loved the experience, but why I loved that was because it really felt like an independent film with a $20 million budget that blasted out of the ballpark. There’s no CGI in it. That’s why it was so great and that made it all very creative for everybody.
How do you look back on “Six Feet Under,” which was such a landmark on television and I imagine in your career as well?
Yeah, it’s a great thing to be a part of because it was “Sopranos” and “Six Feet” when it started to change. Those were the two shows, the pioneers. It’s a really nice feeling to have been a part of that and to know when it works really well. Now when I’m on something or if I hear about something, the bar was so high and I know what you need to make one of those shows work. You need a really great show runner, you need a really strong vision and you really need two people. With Alan Ball and Alan Poul, there were two of them. It was Alan Ball’s vision but if Alan wasn’t there, Alan Poul is right there to make sure the tone stayed the tone. That’s really important.
