NYCC 2016: Theo Rossi Talks About Playing Shades In Marvel’s Luke CagePosted by Wilson Morales
October 12, 2016
Currently streaming on Netflix and Marvel Entertainment is “Luke Cage,” the third series in Marvel’s four-series package at Netflix after “Jessica Jones” and “Marvel’s Daredevil.” The last series will be “Iron Fist,” with all four leading into a “Defenders” mini-series.
After a sabotaged experiment leaves him with super strength and unbreakable skin, Luke Cage becomes a fugitive trying to rebuild his life in modern day Harlem, New York City. But he is soon pulled out of the shadows and must fight a battle for the heart of his city–forcing him to confront a past he had tried to bury.
Mike Colter, who was first introduced in “Jessica Jones,“ plays Cage and leads a cast that also includes Simone Missick as Misty Knight, Frank Whaley as Rafael Scarfe, Mahershala Ali as Cottonmouth, Theo Rossi as Shades, Alfre Woodard as Mariah Dillard, and the return of Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple.
For Rossi, the Staten Island native not only get another plum role after playing Juan Carlos “Juice” Ortiz on the FX series Sons of Anarchy, but got the opportunity to come back home to New York to shoot the Luke Cage series.
While at the 2016 New York Comic Con, Rossi spoke with Blackfilm.com and a handful of journalists about playing Shades and the future for the character.
Shades is a character that has evolved from episode one to episode 13. You still don’t know who he is, because he’s a mystery. You don’t know what his true agenda is. How would you best describe him?
Theo Rossi: I think the coolest thing about the character is a few of us, many of us, had conversations before this when you guys had only seen episodes one to seven. There was literally nothing you could say, because Luke Cage is a show that, as much as it’s one album, it’s really like two shows. It’s episodes one to seven, and then seven to thirteen is another whole show.
For me, in the beginning, it was a lot of patience. Same with Erik (LaRay Harvey), where it was like everybody was led to believe this thing of the big bad was going to be Cornell, aka Cottonmouth. This was the way the show was going to go, and that everybody else was going to … How was this going to work? Mariah was just the politician, and Shades was just some dude who was weird, and whatever, and we didn’t know anything about, Diamondback.
What I love about it is you never saw this guy coming, and the way it ends is this guy’s in this for the long game. This is the long run for him. This is a long game. He’s playing a very long game, here. This is a marathon, and the way it ends is you had one guy who was on a quest for revenge, you had a reluctant villain in Cornell who didn’t want to be a villain, and then all of the sudden you have this guy who from Seagate days had one thing in his mind, which is power.
He always wanted power, and was going to get there, and I think that Alvarez Shades has been playing this game forever, and I think all the things that happen, every little thing that went on through basically episodes seven to thirteen, even the beginning, he planned. He had in his mind, and whether some things happened better than he planned, by maybe Diamondback being more revenge-thirsty than he thought. And then Mariah, finding someone that he can really take him to where he wants to be. I just think it makes for such an incredibly interesting character, and I’m super honored to play it.
We don’t know much about him before the Seagate days, which is I think rare. Most other villains in the show we’ve seen their childhood. Were you told any more background information about him? Did you make something up to give yourself something to play from?
Theo Rossi: Yeah. Cheo’s the most collaborative person I’ve ever worked with. Bar none. I also, you know, he’s so incredibly smart, like me. He’s a comic book geek. We have that in common. Then, also, the other executive producer and writer on the show is a guy named Charles Murray, who is back from my Sons of Anarchy days. He was on our show, there.
I was able to get as much information as I could possibly get in the world of Marvel. Shades was in the original comic. We know that he knew him before it. Now, in the comic, they used to run in a gang called the Rivals with Willis, and Luke, and Comanche, but that has never been brought up. This was just, he knew him from Seagate, so they had a prior relationship.
What I had to figure out in my head was he knew Cornell before. They grew up together. He knew Mariah. How? We don’t know yet. He looked up to Mama Mabel, and what was going on there. He was this street kid. The way we concocted him in my mind was that, and Cheo and I talked about, that he was just this street hustler who watched all these bigger people who were running Harlem, from Mama Mabel, to Pistol, to Cornell coming up. He watched them in awe, and he started plotting, I believe, from day one. Like I said, it was a long game for him, but I’m really interested because I think the way it ends, Luke’s in jail, Diamondback’s in the hospital, Cornell’s in the morgue, and him and Mariah are sipping on mimosas in the club. I don’t know who came out more successful in the whole thing. Misty’s in a lot of trouble with the police department, so I think he did all right for himself.
You mentioned that you and Charles Murray were big comic fans.How much did you know about Luke Cage? People always say they’ve read it, but how much did you really know about Luke Cage compared to the other comic books that we’ve now seen in the movies now, and so forth. Why couldn’t Luke Cage be in the theaters, as opposed to a series?
Theo Rossi: Okay. First of all, I was a big Punisher reader, was a big Wolverine reader, was a big X-Men reader, and you’re obviously going to run into the Defenders at one point. When you’re reading Wolverine and he’s crossing over with Captain America, so then eventually you’re going to lead somewhere down to Iron Fist and Luke Cage, and they were never nearly as written as much as other characters.
What stood out so much was one, New York City. You have any character from New York City, I immediately gravitated towards, because I grew up here, grew up in Staten Island reading comics. You could ask anybody from the Wu-Tang Clan as well, because they’re all comic book heads, too. We immediately saw characters that were not just based from New York City, but that were real people. They weren’t aliens from another planet. They weren’t whatever. That’s what you usually put most of your stock into.
For Luke Cage, why doesn’t he end up in the theaters? Why doesn’t someone like, well, Punisher they tried to go in the theaters, and it didn’t work. You know what I mean? I believe that the game has changed tremendously. I’ll say this not just cause of the last show I was on, coming to this show. I think the best stories, the best drama, is being written on television. I think that films have become bigger, and larger. It’s not so much about the story, as much as it’s about the spectacle. Especially in the superhero world, so what I feel is that I couldn’t be happier that Luke’s story is being told on television, because we get to tell an important story with many issues, with many things about a place that nobody’s ever telling a story about. Why isn’t it a movie? We should be thankful that it’s not in a movie, because it probably wouldn’t have done the justice that was done in just one season of Luke Cage, here.
Just why does Punisher work, now? Why does Daredevil work, now? Why does Jessica Jones, Alias work? I never read Alias. I knew the comic book. I never read it. I knew about it. Why does she become one of the most compelling women, if not the most compelling woman on television? Arguably one of the greatest series on television, that’s winning all the awards. It’s because you get to tell the story over a thirteen hour movie. If you do a two and a half hour movie about Luke Cage, and it’s not done right, and it’s a big spectacle, and it bombs, and we don’t see him again, we lost our opportunity. I couldn’t be happier that it’s on Netflix.
Can you walk outside the house in shades without being talked about differently?
Theo Rossi: My sunglass days are over. This is it. I’m in trouble. My eyes are going to be tortured for the rest of my life, and I’ll tell you why. When we first got on this, when we first did our first photo shoot, they were bringing me this box of sunglasses. They were like, “So, you’re wearing sunglasses on the show.” I was like, “Oh, I just thought that was his name.” I knew from the comic book he had on the big visor, but I thought he was just like some shady dude. I didn’t know it was going to be like cyclops or anything.
They started bringing me all these sunglesses, and some of them were like wrap around Oakleys, some of them are this. I wear black Ray Bans in my personal life, and we all know with glasses, it takes a long time to get the ones that fit your face, that kind of work, that you know you can roll with every day and feel comfortable with. It took me a long time to get to those black Ray Bans. I went through a lot of phases before I got to those. I’ve been rocking those for a couple years, so I finally convinced them these are what I’ll wear to be the coolest on the show. Not knowing that they would take away them in my personal life.
Are the shades you’re wearing Ray Bans?
Theo Rossi: Yes. They’re black Ray Bans, yeah. it’s those forward front wayfarers. Those, and the tortoise shell, so I’m going to have to start sticking to the brown tortoise shell ones. I don’t even know, because I’ll tell you this. We aired on a Friday night, 3am Eastern time in New York City. I had an event in Coney Island for a friend at 2pm, and when I got there on Saturday, not many hours later, like six people came right up to me and were like, “Yo, Shades. That show was amazing.” They were like, “I can’t believe the end with Mariah,” and this and that. I’m like, “How did you watch the whole thing? Did you not sleep? Are you on drugs? Who stays up that long? How did you do that?”
Are they on vibran, or something? How do you stay up? Drinking a lot of Joe Cola, or something, and watch all 13. That showed me that I was in a different world, with Marvel, and with whatever. Yeah, I think if I wear sunglasses, I’d be in trouble.
Is there a possibility we may see Shades on the other series?
Theo Rossi: I would love to. I say that not just as a fan, but I think obviously the dream collaboration is with Wilson Fisk. Seeing them two together, and fitting in the world of the Punisher, and all that. You know, you never know. I mean, the way these things work, and you guys know this, man. You don’t know anything. For good reason. As a fan myself, with social media, with they have websites that spoil TV.
With Misty Knight’s background, you have an idea that you may appear on the other series.
Theo Rossi: For sure. Yeah. Look at that character. I just thought the way Simone (Missick) played that character was so outrageous. She beat my ass, too, on the show at one point. Have to, which maybe not be too believable, but they did hit me with a monkey wrench. I just think that where these people could wind up, that’s what’s the beauty of this. For me, as a fan, when I see Turk Barrett show up, I’m like, ah, that’s so cool, right? You know, like how cool is that, that Turk is from the first episode of Daredevil to here with us?
It just shows how small the world is. I’m the guy who geeks out when they talk about the guy with the hammer, or the big green guy. I geek out with that, because you don’t realize that we’re in the same world as Tony Stark. We’re all in this world, we’re just on this street level hero, which makes it so interesting. Who knows what’s going to happen in the future.
As a new yorker, how cool was it for the show to be filming in New York?
Theo Rossi: I just moved back. I was gone because of Sons. I was splitting most of my time. For 15 years I was in LA, because I had done a bunch of shows before Sons that were all LA based, and I basically was spending the majority of my months out there. I was out there sometimes 10 months a year, so when I came back it was four years ago. No, not even. Three years ago, and I came back, and I hadn’t fully been back, because Sons wasn’t over, but I had bought my place, and first thing I realized how cold it was here. I was like, my god. It’s freezing here.
When I came back, literally it had to be a couple months later, not even, Luke Cage came up. Being a fan of Daredevil, Jessica Jones had just come out, working in New York City as an actor? It’s everything, because if you’re a fan in the history of Hollywood like I am, New York is the tableau of the greatest films, the greatest stories. It’s the capital of the world, so to film here, and more importantly to film in Harlem? If you’re my age, you grew up here, you went to Harlem, you knew you were in a different place in New York.
It almost makes me like nostalgic because, especially for a Staten Island kid, growing up, Staten Island is its own unique world. Brooklyn was its own unique world. Manhattan was its own unique world, and even though Harlem wasn’t a burrough, it felt like one, because it was its own unique world that felt so different, and it looks different. The streets are wider. The buildings are lower. Everything was different, so for us, the studio’s in Brooklyn, we do most of our exteriors, if not all of them, in Harlem. For me? I’m a kid in a candy store right now. I literally can’t ask for a better situation.
What is the one thing, or the one life lesson you want people to take away from your character, when watching the show?
Theo Rossi: Don’t sleep on people. Don’t sleep on characters in the Marvel world. When you see somebody come in, you just never know how long they’re going to be there, what their importance is, what their role is. I think what we showed different from every other show. I think the closest I saw to this was in Jessica Jones, was the neighbor (Malcolm Ducasse). The character who started off, you know, with the drug problem, and all that, and how prominent he became. That was kind of like that, where you’re like, oh, man, look, and he almost becomes basically a hero at the end, and what he’s doing. I think with these characters, especially we’re the first to do with the villains, where you just had no idea what was going on, and I think that that’s so intriguing about this world, and these characters, and how rich they are, how diverse they are, and how you just never see people. They’re so three-dimensional, and with Shades there’s just so much that we don’t know, but there is so much that we can piece together of what he’s coming from, and what he’s doing.
What do you have after this?
Theo Rossi: I have my film Low Riders coming out for Universal, my first huge, big studio film that I’m the lead in. Cinco de Mayo? No. May 12th, 2017. We’re about to move on some other things right now, and then we’ve got to hope we get greenlit for season two of Luke Cage.
What would you like to see for your character, if season two happens?
Theo Rossi: My only job as a character right now, and I have a film out right now called When the Bough Breaks, and it’s the same thing. My character’s, and he’s one of the most repulsive characters I’ve played on film in that film, but it’s like I have to make people somehow like him. What I love, that I’ve been getting hit on social media with, is that people are like, “Man, I really want to hate Shades, but I kind of like him.”
My thing with that is, for the next season and what we can be with the future of this, is to keep that see-saw going, where he seems like sometimes that he’s not such an awful human being, because he just has this quest for power, but then he takes Candace out at point blank range and doesn’t even think about it. You know, I don’t know. I’d just like to keep that ambiguity of what people feel for the character. I like that.
The Judas Bullet
Zip Tries To Kill Shades
“Lawyer” Interrogation Scene
