The latest episode of Westworld, “Decoherence” was a trippy affair that featured the once-mighty Man in Black (Ed Harris) stuck in a mental institution and having a long argument with his past selves about who was to blame for his current predicament. It was a weird watch, even for Westworld.
The Man in Black (real name William) has definitely taken a turn this year. The first two seasons saw him cutting a bloody swath across the titular futuristic theme park, brutalizing the robotic hosts until he had a mental breakdown. Honestly, I wasn’t sure they would bring the character back at all for season 3, but given that he killed his own daughter thinking she was a host, a mental institution wasn’t the craziest place for him to end up.
It definitely took some adjusting, though. And if I was having trouble, it was nothing compared to what Harris was going through. “I just was kind of curious as to what was going to happen and what was going on,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter. “And I really didn’t get much input. It was pretty much revealed episode by episode what was going on with him, and I certainly didn’t know how the season ended. I wish I had a better answer.”
"First of all, I really enjoyed playing the Man in Black, right? Then all of the sudden, he’s the Man in White. So I wasn’t the happiest camper to tell you the truth, because I really enjoyed the part I was playing, and I was hoping that he, the Man in Black, would continue to somehow be prevalent in the story. And when I realized that was no longer the case, I had to just readjust my whole head and get into what was going on with William in this place that he has found himself, trapped in this facility, being tested, and whatever is going on with him."
You know, I’m always surprised whenever I hear an actor say they don’t learn what’s going to happen with their characters until the new scripts come on. Like, if you’re a showrunner, wouldn’t you want to tell your actors where their characters are going well ahead of time so they can tweak their performance to make it all fit?
It might have also helped Ed Harris be more comfortable with the change in story direction, because it sounds like he really didn’t like the shift. “It was jarring. To tell you the truth, it was hard to enjoy,” he said. “I didn’t like it. I still don’t. But that’s my problem.”
"I definitely allowed my own feelings about it to influence what I was doing. (Laughs.) I mean, I still enjoyed working on it! I still enjoyed working on the show. It was just a whole different way of enjoying it, you know? I got to say, it was a little bit aggravating."
I’m loving the back-and-forth in Harris’ head here. At the least, playing the new William posed some new challenges for him. “The costume ,” he said. “Once you put the tuxedo on, you’re that guy. Once you have your Man in Black suit, you’re that guy. When you’re the guy in the white, then you’re in a whole other situation. You’re shooting one of these guys at a time, and you’re just focused on that particular aspect of his character. So I mean, it took a little while and a lot of costume changes…but it was pretty interesting, I got to say.”
At the end of “Decoherence,” William said something that felt pretty out of character for him: he now thinks of himself as “the good guy.” Now, he said that after brutally murdering all the past versions of himself, and he’s already pretty cracked in the head, so maybe we’re not supposed to take it entirely seriously. Still, it has us intrigued to see what Williams gets up to in the next episode, “Passed Pawn” — remember that Bernard and Stubbs have now sprung him from the institution. You can see a quick glimpse of William in action in the trailer:
“I think what he means and what he’s feeling is, if he ever gets out of here, if he ever can assume control of his own destiny on some level, then what he’s after is to rectify this whole situation. In other words, he understands what has happened, and he faults himself for most of it,” Harris said of William’s epiphany. “I mean, it’s his fault, this whole world that he helped create is now blown up, and who knows where it’s going? He’s not sure quite what’s happening outside in the world, but I think he feels determined and has set his mind on trying to do some justice here. In that sense, I think he feels he’s the good guy.”
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