Prison Break’s Robert Knepper

June 2007

A significant hit for
FOX in the key 18-to-49 demographic, Prison Break will return for its third season this September,
stacked with plenty of new plot twists and turns. Among the inmates, Robert
Knepper has generated a surprising fan base as the villainous Theodore “T-Bag”
Bagwell. He tells World Screen
about the ins and outs of playing a dangerous predator.

WS: You’re portraying a really bad character. Where do
you get your inspiration? Do you have to be a little twisted to pull it off?

KNEPPER: You’ve got to be a little twisted, yeah sure. But
as an actor, you always think those are the fun parts to play. You’re trying to
break out of prison and trying to figure out what deviant thing [you] can do to
somebody. I try not to play the fact that [my character] raped and killed
children. I never once thought, “Oh I’m going to get this little boy, you know,
have him hold my pocket.” I try to play the opposite, to come off as charming…I
figure the words will take care of themselves.

I never went to prison
and I never had any time to study or do research. I got the job and had two
days to get ready and fly to Chicago. I just used my imagination.

I always thought to be
charming and protect my family. I have a little boy in real life. The time when
I started shooting this, he was about two. If anybody hurt my little boy, I’d
kill [them]. That’s all I kept thinking about. Yes, T-Bag can have his way with
these kids. He can do anything he wants. But he also protects them. T-Bag says
to Michael [Scofield, the show’s protagonist, played by Wentworth Miller] in
the first episode, “You should come with me. I should protect you because it’s
us against the blacks. If you don’t go with me, no one is going to protect
you.” In my imagination, in prison there are these turfs, these domains. The
beautiful thing about where we shot, in Joliet Prison, is that it looks like a
castle. So it really felt like I was one of the princes in this castle. These
are my people, Abruzzi [a Mafia leader] has his people, Bellick [a security
guard] and the [other] guards have their people, and I’m going to protect my
people. I just tried to find the most positive actions instead of the negative.
You don’t want to go into a part saying, “I’m playing this despicable, vile
character.” You say, “I’m playing a guy who protects his family, who protects
his loved ones.”

WS: Are you afraid that people will confuse you with
your character?

KNEPPER: You know it’s so funny, 99.9 percent of the time
people have come up to me, [they say] “I love your work. I love your acting. I
love the show. You’re my favorite character. You’re all these different
things.” Around the world, they all say the same thing.

[But] one time, when I
first went to Dallas, I was on the sixth floor [in an elevator] and the doors
opened up and this girl sees me and literally went [huge gasp]. She inhaled a
scream. Then a split second later she turned beet red and was like, “I’m so
sorry.”

Another time I was in a
Chicago airport and it was the morning after the episode where I start the riot
against the guards—I take the guard Bob hostage, and I’m going through
his wallet and I see the picture of his daughter with the prom dress and I’m
licking [the picture of] his daughter, basically, then I kill Bob. This guy
walks by me and says, “I’m watching this episode last night where you’re
licking that picture and I’m sitting there with my 15-year-old boy and I’m
looking at the TV and I’m saying, ‘I hate that f**ker. I want to f**king kill
him right now.’” And he’s screaming at the television set. His son walked over
to him and said, “Dad, chill out. Chill out, he’s just acting.” And he said, “I
know, but I still want to kill him.”

WS: What did you think of the direction of season two,
after the escape?

KNEPPER: I think some people say it lost its focus. Other
people say it had to lose its focus because it had to explode. My character
wouldn’t be with Michael for instance. He wouldn’t be with Abruzzi. I think
you’ll find in the third season they’re going to try to bring it back to more
of its focus. For me, I loved it because I had a field day.

WS: What do you expect for the third season?

KNEPPER: I think obviously that this prison is going to be
a lot different than the prison in Chicago. It’s probably going to be more like
Midnight Express. That’s what
I’m anticipating, which for me and for all of us, I think, it’s not going to be
very cozy.

WS: Do you think T-Bag will adapt better than the
others to the situation?

KNEPPER: I trust these writers so much. If they throw at me
that he’s able to get back to his cocky self, that’s fine. If they throw at me,
“Whoa, no one is holding my pocket anymore”… as long as they continue the great
quality of the writing. I play whatever they write. I never once called these
guys up and said, “T-Bag wouldn’t do that.” Some actors do that. I’m not a
creator … I’m an interpreter. There was one time I called them up after an
episode—the one with the flashback in Mrs. Hollander’s house, when I take
her to my house and you see Teddy as a little boy. There was such incredible
empathy for the character after that. The episode for T-Bag ends, he’s dropped
the phone, he’s sobbing, he realizes he’ll never have this love of his life.
The very next episode, I’m killing somebody.

So you have the empathy,
you have the sympathy, but then you also have this ruthless behavior. For an
actor, that’s just gold.

WS: Audiences seem to love T-Bag. How do you explain
the draw of the character? How does he manage to garner both empathy and
hatred?

KNEPPER: Because I have a kid and because my father was a
veterinarian. I think I’ve always treated T-Bag like an animal. Growing up and
helping my dad with all these animals, I watched dogs a lot when they get mad.
Usually most animals let you know when they’re going to attack. They back up
and they show their teeth. They say, “Please, don’t make me bite you. I really
don’t want to bite you. But I will bite you if you come near me.” I think when
we see a character like [T-Bag], that is an animal, there is something primal
in us that says, “Oh, I wish I could be like that. Oh, I don’t really want to
be like that, but I wish I could be like that because I could just do anything
I want to do.” We all want to be bad and rebel. Most of us could never ever be
that kind of person because we’ve been brought up to be good. Then there are
some, that because of these terrible things that happen to them as children,
don’t have those same rules.

WS: Will there be redemption for your character in the
future?

KNEPPER: I don’t know. If the writers want to go in that
direction…I don’t think it’s realistic. Honestly, from what I’ve heard about
these kinds of guys, there is no absolute redemption. The only redemption is
that moment of meeting your maker at the door and saying, “Hey, you know, I did
my best.” But as far as being able to walk and breathe and change, from what I
understand now that I have a little more research on these kinds of guys, they
don’t change.

WS: How hard is it to turn the character off at the end
of the day?

KNEPPER: Second season it was sometimes hard. First of all,
it’s really hot in the South and you work all day, you work 14 to 16 hours in
122-degree temperature. You could literally fry an egg on the hood of a car.
[I’d] come home after [killing] somebody every episode and my little boy would
say, “Hey papa let’s play, let’s play.” You snap out of it.