Vanity Fair Interview with Jimmi Simpson 

Left, courtesy of HBO; right, by Angela Weiss/Getty Images

This interview contains frank discussion of Season 1, Episode 10 of

, titled “The Bicameral Mind.” If you’re not caught up through the finale, the following article

spoil you. So now is your cue to hop on the first train out of Sweetwater and get yourself back on your scheduled loop. For the rest of you, enjoy!

fans who never suspected that something was awry with Dolores’s Season 1 suitor—the gentle, white-hatted William—might have been curious about the actor cast in the part. For most of his career, Jimmi Simpson has been playing hyper-intelligent, often, creepy characters; whether it’s the inbred Liam McPoyle of

, or David Letterman’s greasy intern “Lyle,” Simpson’s best-known roles are hardly heroic leading men. But as the season progressed, and—just as the nimble minds of Reddit predicted he would—Simpson’s sweet and timid William started to resemble the more emotionally stunted, violent Man in Black character, played by Ed Harris, the casting decision made more sense. Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy—the husband and wife team behind HBO’s twisty prestige hit—got themselves an actor who could do both.

And while Redditors may have figured out early on that William was, in fact, a younger version of the Man in Black, the entire cast and most of the crew of

were kept in the dark for most of the Season 1 shoot. Even Ed Harris didn’t know the truth until right before the end. But Simpson—who is every bit as sharp and observant as some of his savant characters—figured out the twist months before his cast mates, thanks to one tiny detail very early on.

Even though Simpson is every inch the detective those Redditors are, he cheerfully admits that he wishes

fans could have all arrived at the twist together. Still, he says, figuring out the twists doesn’t diminish William’s emotional transformation, which Simpson partially based on his own divorce from actress Melanie Lynskey. He discusses all that, as well as the whether he’ll return for Season 2, below.

A lot of your fellow cast members and even some of the show’s directors have talked about being in the dark about the narrative twists of

for much of the season. What aspects of your story were withheld from you when you first started filming?

The entire arc of William that you’ve seen was withheld. I had no idea. What I’m used to doing in my career is popping in and showing up for a minute, but it's often a distraction from the story. I assumed I would be popping in for a little bit. I had no idea I would be running for the arc of the season. When I first picked up the can for Dolores, I thought to myself, “Well, that’s weird. Why am I picking up a can from the lead actress of this show that I just got on, this HBO show?” That‘s basically what I thought, and then as it started to unfold, I actually noticed something, just a little detail, and I said something to Lisa [Joy] and she looked kind of surprised I‘d worked it out.

Well, I was with an amazing makeup artist, Christian, and he was looking at my face too much. He had me in his chair, and he was just looking at my face, and then he said something about my eyebrows. “Would you be cool if we just took a couple hairs out of your eyebrows, made them not quite as arched?” It was simply that, Joanna. It was that.

I was like, “Why would they change my eyebrows? Why in the world?” I started thinking the one reason was to make me look like someone else, and then I cycled through the Rolodex of the main players. There’s only one that really fit my look and dialect. They didn’t reveal any of that to any of us until about [episode] eight, nine, or ten officially. This was probably seven months before I was supposed to know this, but I just said to Lisa, “Am I supposed to be Ed Harris?” She just froze and said, “I can‘t say anything, but I will say you have a hell of an arc this season.”

Ed Harris has said he was kept in the dark until much later in the season. How do you feel knowing before he did?

Well, I feel embarrassed, and I want to apologize. He should have everything first. He’s such a genius. I’ve looked up to that man since

. He chooses things that move the dial forward, and you don’t see him splashing around magazines. He just seems like a really great actor, and he turned out to be a great guy.

Were you tempted to talk to any of your co-stars about it, about your idea of what was going on? Did Evan know?

I was so close with everyone that I didn’t want anyone to start treating me differently on the show. Not that the actors would fall prey to that, but I didn’t want them thinking, or considering the fact, or weighing the fact out. I didn’t discuss it with a single person. Not a single person. Also, Lisa and Jonah, when they say, “don’t say anything,” you don’t feel like they’re trying to box you in. You feel like, “This is probably best for everyone.”

What was the reaction like when everyone else found out? Did you then confer with Ed Harris about how your two different characterizations would converge?

I basically thought it was my task to learn from him. We didn’t work that much together—we were almost never on the set together. We had a little meal together with Jonah and Lisa and Evan on our last night. We were the last ones sticking around, and he gave me a wink and we talked briefly about our lives, and he gave me a pat on the back and he said, “I hear you do a good job.” That was beyond what I could ask for.

Jonah would give me clips towards the end of the season, when the audience would be able to see the two men together in William. He gave me some advance footage. But there’s 30 years in between, so I wanted to be truthful and still have there be a separation because we all change so much. But William starts leaning in, and Jonah helped me with that.

Were you surprised that some viewers figured the twist out after your very first appearance? From Episode 2?

I was stunned by the Episode 2 call-out. I was so surprised that after maybe the third episode, I wrote Jonah and Lisa and I said, “I know I overthink things, but HBO would like us to be a little bit active here on social media, and I’m responding to everything except the Man in Black tweets. Now, I‘m thinking, ‘Is that proving their case?’ Someone can easily collect that data and say, ‘Well, look, he’s not responding to these tweets.’ What do you think I should say?” And then Lisa wrote me back and said, “You don’t overthink things. That’s why we hired you, because you think like us. We were just planning our attack.” They sent us all an e-mail saying, ”You don’t have to avoid, but don’t lie.”

Thandie [Newton]’s reaction was probably the best on set. I’m walking through set and I hear, “Yoooooooou!” She’s pointing at me smiling and she’s so tickled, because she had no idea.

You don’t get any scenes with Thandie, right, because of the timeline stuff?

No, but we both had a lot of time in Sweetwater, so we worked on a lot of the same days. There were often two units filming at once. She thought, “Oh, Jimmi Simpson is playing a sweetheart and he is one.” She just had no idea it was coming.

I was so delighted to see you cast as a sweetheart, because you’re often cast a little creepier. Were you dismayed at all to see that your character would go darker as the season progressed?

I wasn’t, because even before I was aware of the truth, there was a nod towards something in the audition. I read for Logan and for William. Logan was there on the page—funny, kind of sexy, sarcastic—and William was like his intro in Episode 2. But then there was also this scene of the same man, but turned cold. I can’t remember how they articulated it, but it was just the same man, and now they wanted to see him completely flipped around. It wasn’t violent and it wasn’t angry, but it was the same man with a completely different perspective. Of course, it was inevitable, but I was really just enjoying each day as it happened of not playing the Man in Black.

There’s been a lot of discussion—around this show specifically—about how the culture of fan theorizing is “spoiling” popular TV shows. Do you feel like some people catching on to you being Ed Harris as early as Episode 2 ruined the viewer experience in any way?

No. It’s just like anything else. As humans, we want something new, so we keep digging deeper. There are these Reddit avenues of, “Okay, we’re going to unpack every single readable subtextual element of this and discuss it hyperbolically.” You really don’t have to participate in it, and I don’t think it really does penetrate. They’re Sherlock Holmesing. That’s what their aim is. It’s like, little subsets. But the majority of people have just fallen in love with the story.

But for the small subset of people who are Sherlock Holmesing—do you view that as damaging?

I guess I don’t, just because that’s not a possibility. There’s no way to stop it. I’m very much a glass is half full guy. I don’t think it’s ruining anything. I think it would maybe be slightly cooler if everybody was in the dark and getting the new information together. That would be rad. I personally am not crazy about the amount of social media, and the way we’re all connected to everybody’s superficial thoughts. I don’t like that, but whatever. They’re going to do it.

Do you think it’s possible to tell this kind of twist-filled story in the TV format? Obviously, Jonah Nolan has done it very successfully in films like

, but it’s much harder to pull it off over 10 hours.

I think what puts Jonah and Lisa above the rest is it’s not one man alone convinced he knows everything. Here are a man and a woman who spent their adult life together, and have started a family together, writing a very, very complicated story with some mesmerizing puzzles. But they filled everything in with their humanity, and what it means to have this human experience. While people go, “well, this is going to happen and this is going to happen,” no one is calling out

. I think that’s what lands with everyone, and will even more in the finale. Lisa and Jonah aren’t just working out a puzzle you figure out—they’re telling a story. And they have a huge emotional well. You can maybe figure out how to get down the ladder, but you’re not going to have the experience until they give it to you.

How do you relate to William’s emotional progression from the man you’re playing to the one Ed Harris presents?

I feel like William is a man who has seen the rules very clearly. That’s a lot of people’s mode of getting through life. When you have nothing, you have to abide by other people’s rules, and play their game, and play it well. And then they give you a cookie. I think what he saw [during his Westworld experience] was that playing by the rules to get the cookie actually hadn’t gotten him anywhere.

He goes from following the rules to making the rules, and I think that happens when your heart breaks. You realize, “Holy shit, I have nothing to lose. That didn't kill me.” Then you start calling the shots. I really related to that, being a person who was in a very long-term relationship and was married and then divorced. There comes a clarity of what’s important. For the narrative, the Man in Black’s realization is pretty dramatic and exciting. But, like mine, it's very much “Oh, that kind of stuff won’t kill me. I can try a little harder. I can go after what I want more, and I can be myself, and fuck it.”

I’m worried, given the convergence of characters, that there isn’t room for you in Season 2. Are you coming back?

My William has served his purpose. As of now, I’ll be done at the end of Season 1.

So do you think the Westworld experience delivered on its promise? Did it reveal William’s true nature?

It’s very dark. The heartbreak is a sad turn for William, whereas in my personal life, it was positive. I think for a lot of people, a huge change like that, as you shift, you lose something. Maybe a little bit of soul or something. It’s a damaging turn.

Joanna RobinsonJoanna Robinson is a Hollywood writer covering TV and film for VanityFair.com.

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