Michael Emerson has played quite a few villainous characters over the years, with his latest role as Leland Townsend on Paramount+‘s Evil—gone too soon, sadly, after four seasons. And if you ask him, that’s not even his most evil character!
“Leland would vote for himself to be the most evil, but then he’s really, he’s too much of a weenie to be truly the most evil,” he told TV Insider when he stopped by to discuss the final season of Evil and we asked him to pick his most villainous character.
Nor would he consider his Lost character for the top spot. “Ben Linus, he’s not hardly a villain at all, is he? That’s a case of good writing and good context,” he explained. “When we meet him, we have our band of lovable castaways, and then we have the dark, dangerous island that has all kinds of terrors. We begin to wonder what kind of people live out there. So it’s like we talked about them and imagined them for many, many episodes before someone steps into the world of the castaways, who we think gradually might be one of them, one of the Others. But then in another five seasons, we think we feel differently about him. He used to be the Other, now’s our Other, he’s had a long and difficult life of his own, and some of his enemies are our enemies too.”
Zep Hindle from Saw doesn’t make the cut, either, since “he’s more a victim of the plotting of the Saw movie,” according to Emerson. “We actually realized by the amazing end of the movie that he’s been an innocent victim and is just trying to keep himself alive really. Shooting Saw was one of the most chaotic, and I would say dangerous enterprises of my camera career. It was a hard, fast shoot, very violent. Not many safety measures were taken. There was just blazing guns and running and blood galore. It was a great script. It was a great script. I did it because it was the best ending that I had ever read at that point.”
So who does he consider to be his most evil character? Watch the full video with Emerson above, then let us know your pick in the comments section, below.