Michael Emerson

Michael Emerson developed a loyal following with his Emmy Award-winning performance as the mysterious and nefarious genius Benjamin Linus on the critically acclaimed series Lost. He is now playing an equally brilliant somewhat mysterious and eccentric billionaire on Person of Interest as Mr. Finch, the mastermind behind the Machine, a computer that uses pattern recognition to help identify victims or perpetrators of future crimes. Mr. Finch has teamed up with Reese, a former CIA agent, played by Jim Caviezel, to stop these crimes before they occur. Person of Interest airs on CBS and has been sold very successfully around the world by Warner Bros. International Television Distribution.

WS: What first appealed to you about Person of Interest and how did you hear about it?
EMERSON: It was among a pile of scripts that were being batted around at Bad Robot [J.J. Abrams’ company that produced Lost and is also behind Person of Interest] in the fall of 2010. I was working on a different project that I hoped was going to take off, but it didn't work out. I still had a relationship with Bad Robot and I said, Surely you've got something else around here that's cool. They showed me this and said, This might interest you, it's kind of a noir setting, New York City-based, crime fighting, vigilante; it could be fun. I read it and I really liked it. I liked the mood of it and the atmosphere and the setting and it seemed like a good part, so I just went with it. Then you make a pilot and you think that's that, it may or may not get picked up. And it certainly may or may not ever have success. This one has done well.

WS: It certainly has. Was it a consideration for you, in looking at this project, that your next role after Ben Linus be a different kind of character?
EMERSON: Well, I was thinking about that and it was nice I thought that this character was an all together good guy, even though he was brainy and articulate, I thought that was a nice change.

WS: There are a lot of shows that feature flawed characters, or characters whose moral compass is not pointing true north. Is it more difficult to portray somebody who is basically a decent person or can that be just as satisfying a character to play?
EMERSON: It's a little harder to make good guys interesting, especially as you say, the general feeling right now is the chase for anti heroes or worse. Villainy or darkness have a few more layers or might be a little more complex. Whether you are playing a good guy or a bad guy, it's fun if the character is complicated.

WS: Finch has a limp and some previous injuries. Did you add that in and is that a way of bringing complexity to the character?
EMERSON: There was mention in the pilot script about him having been injured and it was up to me to figure out the specifics of that. That was always part of it. It justified him needing a helper; it was why he could not do it alone. It sets everything up. But we explained where those injuries came from at the end of season two.

WS: A prototype of the Machine really did exist, right?
EMERSON: Yes, several different ones in reality, programs that were funded by the American government at one time or another.

WS: Is the Machine starting to have its own intelligence or is it just a computer tracking patterns?
EMERSON: It's on the cusp of those two things and that is where there is tension. The Machine has been clearly programmed in a sufficiently sophisticated way that it can look out for itself. It can analyze threats to itself or to its team members. It's smart enough to move around the country. It's an interesting problem, is Mr. Finch still in control of it? It doesn't really seem that way in season three. The Machine still does what it was programmed to do but Mr. Finch programmed it more cleverly than he thought.

WS: But The Machine is still on the side of Mr. Finch and Reese?
EMERSON: Yes, but The Machine has new friends like the character Root that it talks to more freely and more regularly. The purview of its activities has expanded. It may be looking at both relevant and irrelevant numbers in a way. The Machine is trying to wrestle with a dilemma and that is: it's now in situations where its makers and allies are in trouble and are in situations where good and bad are not clear.

WS: That must keep it interesting!
EMERSON: It surely does!

WS: Tell me about the relationship between Mr. Finch and Reese and how it has been evolving.
EMERSON: It's one of the central relationships of the series. We were fortunate to have good screen chemistry together and that's not a thing that you can plan for or make happen. It just worked out. Jim and I are completely different actors and have completely different off-screen personalities and yet we work well together. It makes for an interesting and smooth odd couple arrangement. And that relationship has grown. What was very defensive and paranoid and prickly to begin with has settled somewhat and they have become more collegial with one another. And because they are easier with one another, the show can be a little funnier than it may have been when it started.

WS: It’s great to see Bear, the scenes with the dog!
EMERSON: Yes, everyone loves the dog and I think it has partly to do with the fact that it’s both a relief and a release. We know that the dog can be trusted, and the dog is purely good and it takes a little of the tension out of their fairly desperate affairs.

WS: You spent early years not just acting but, having been an illustrator, you were into set design and construction. Tell us about those years—you really did a lot on the stage.
EMERSON: Yes, I did my apprenticeship, I’ll call it, in the theater. I did it in Jacksonville, Florida, because that is where I was living when I got the bright idea that I was going to be an actor after all! So I did as many plays as I could but no one in that community would ever get paid to play a role, but there was a little money rattling around if you could design and build scenery or if you could direct or do the posters, all of those kinds of things. Since I had that background, I had been a magazine illustrator before I was an actor, I was able to piece together about a half of a sensible living by doing all the odds and ends of theater work. It was good experience and like in any other career, it’s good if you understand everybody’s job a little better.

WS: You did a whole lot of Shakespeare and classic theater; did you enjoy that?
EMERSON: In the south, that was my main diet theatrically. I went to graduate school at very advanced age at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and all we did there were many, many Shakespeare plays and other classical works. That is my background and is still what I gravitate towards.

WS: One of the very first plays I saw when I moved to New York was Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.
EMERSON: That was my break. I have been a working actor since that show. That was the beginning of my professional acting career.

WS: You had a part on The Practice, where you played a serial killer, right?
EMERSON: That was a good part.

WS: So bad guys are often more interesting to play?
EMERSON: Yes, or the troubled.

WS: I can’t not ask you about Lost. There is so much to say but I will only ask this, was the ending of the series satisfying to you and do you think that was a good resolution for your character?
EMERSON: Yes, I was especially pleased with the way they resolved, or should say did not resolve, Benjamin Linus. I thought it was a wonderful flourish out of Beckett to have him sitting on a bench outside the door of whatever you want to call it, heaven or the afterlife, waiting, not yet having sorted things out well enough to pass on through. That seemed to me perfect for my character, but above and beyond that, I thought that the ending to the series was handled as well as it could have been because Lost was a different kind of narrative than other shows. It wasn’t linear, it seemed like it was exploding in all directions, and how do you bring that to a conclusion? The only solution that I could think of and the one that the writers chose was to bring it back to the center. I am so happy that they chose a kind of spiritual ending rather than a device about time or dimension or perception. It was real life and real faith and real grace. I was very pleased but I know I am probably in the minority and I may be in the minority among the cast, I couldn’t say, but I was very pleased.

WS: There are so many series on cable, whether basic or premium, that get a lot of attention. The three big shows that you have done, The Practice, Lost and now Person of Interest, have been on broadcast networks. Do you feel in any way that your creative freedom has been limited because you have been working within the broadcast model?
EMERSON: Well it is a model, and the broadcast model is different from the cable model. It governs how the narrative is structured or how it is presented. There is a structure that is demanded by a broadcast network, it’s just the landscape in which you work. You may work brilliantly in that landscape or you may not, but it is the hand you are dealt.

Cable gets to be a little looser, a little freer, but that’s a way to get hung up as well. Yes, they can be more graphic; they can be profane. They don’t feel as much obligation to explain themselves to the audience. There is an assumption of its sophisticated viewership and all of that is probably good except it doesn’t always work out successfully.

WS: I agree, as a viewer sometimes I feel the violence or the language or the sex is used because they don’t know where to go with the plot.
EMERSON: Maybe this is just a sign of me getting older, but I’m feeling a little over-sexed on cable! I like it as much as the next red-blooded person, but there is an awful lot! I’m a little leery of the underlining of sex without feeling. I think we get a fair enough diet of that and I could do with a little less.

WS: Much has been said about the procedural. I think Person of Interest has taken it to another level and made it more interesting.
EMERSON: It’s the format you have to accept if you are going to work on CBS. There is no point in arguing against it, you just need to make a strength of it. And we do that fairly well. Our episodes will stand alone pretty nicely and that makes the show more accessible to a larger audience.

WS: Speaking of the larger audience, the show is doing very well in international sales. What is it about the show that can appeal to people in different countries?
EMERSON: I think it’s just the particularity of the New York setting, those backgrounds and environments that we work in. I think people around the world are interested in New York and they are also interested in these issues of cybernetics and surveillance. And I’ll say it, the acting is fairly strong on our show, they are characters that you want to know more about.