The Killing - Season 2 - Brent Sexton Interview

Thanks to Sheldon for the heads up.

AMC’s clever and moody crime drama The Killing is midway through its second season, and according to the show’s developer/producer Veena Sud, we are just a handful of episodes away from knowing definitively who killed Rosie Larsen. Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Deadwood and Life alum Brent Sexton and explore his character Stan in deeper detail, as well as address some of the criticisms leveled at the show following its controversial season one finale.

As Brent points out during our interview, The Killing is a show in which everyone is hiding a secret, and we are only now coming to terms with the details of Stan’s past as an enforcer for the Polish Mob. Yet despite his past (or perhaps because of it) Stan elicits strong empathy from audiences as a grieving father torn between a violent past and the desire for redemption. I begin by asking Brent what it’s been like to be under the skin of this complex character for two seasons.

“The situation with these people is grief,’ explains Brent. “They’re trying to process grief and gain some resolution. I was told a long time ago by one of my great teachers that anger is an end result. It’s all the other colors underneath – fear, grief and so on – that’s what’s really going on with somebody when they’re angry, but they’re probably unconscious of it. So I thought it was more important to show that than to show the anger, because that’s what is really going on with Stan. As he said in the first season, Rosie really was his salvation. She got him out of the mafia. And of course, he still carries massive guilt and regret over the way he got out. I think in his own way, he thought the best way he could best deal with that was to save Belko from that life and to become a family man, and to own a respectable business.”

Source: Full Interview @ chevronone