Megan Boone as Elizabeth Keen with James Spader’s Raymond Reddington in The Blacklist

It’s been called everything from “a pleasurable cheeky drama” to “a fast-paced mystery that’s just plain entertaining”. The Blacklist, that’s just wrapped up Season I on STAR World Premiere HD, is one of the most exciting TV shows of recent times. The central plot of most-wanted fugitive Raymond “Red” Reddington (played by James Spader) agreeing to cooperate with the FBI only if rookie profiler Elizabeth Keen (played by Megan Boone) acts as conduit has been compared to the Hannibal-Clarice dynamic from the Hannibal films. A t2 chat with Megan Boone on what makes Elizabeth Keen and The Blacklist click.

What drew you to the role of Elizabeth Keen in The Blacklist?

She’s strong and she’s got elements of mystery that I wanted to uncover and I knew that the audience would be compelled to want to know more about her as well, and I think that’s a really good foundation for a character that has longevity and can stay interesting to people. I also like the story as a whole. I was just as much drawn to The Blacklist as I was to Liz Keen. I felt The Blacklist was just such a solid show in that it had a great premise. And when everything started to fall into place and James (Spader) was cast and then some of our guest stars came on that were so incredible throughout Season One, I became even more and more enamoured with the show and with my character because it became a whole experience, you know, rather than just a woman on a page... that it was my job to bring her to life. That life came out of working in collaboration with all of these incredible people.

Liz is a very strong, independent woman in a men’s world. Was it difficult to play that kind of a character?

You know, I think that any time you commit yourself 100 per cent to something there is some level of difficulty, but I think it’s a healthy challenge that I’ve had this year and the greatest thing that came out of it was that I became very strong, which is interesting because Liz is also much stronger towards the end of the season and in that way our lives are sort of running parallel to one another.

Liz Keen seems so much like Clarice Sterling of The Silence of the Lambs...

I actually didn’t make the comparison. I didn’t watch Jodie Foster’s performance (in The Silence of the Lambs). I created this role completely independently and on my own. I think the parallels that people find are in the imagery of the pilot, the psychopath in the box talking to the young agent. It’s very similar imagery, but I really wasn’t working with that imagery when I was working on this character. Elizabeth Keen is a woman who has a life of her own and there were relationships that I had to build and those kinds of things take work and it took an investment on my part that there wasn’t even time to make that comparison. I never really felt myself linked to that or trapped by that.

What was most challenging about your role — the mental aspect of it or the physical part?

Yes. They’re both very incomparable challenges. Both are extraordinarily challenging and because I have both challenges, it makes each one more difficult because I will have a very physical scene in the same day when I’ll have multiple scenes where either the dialogue is very complicated.... she goes through a lot of tumult and difficult life situations. Maybe just the challenge of doing this level of production... this production is extremely ambitious. We’re delivering basically a movie every week, a one-hour movie. It’s very, very elaborate.

How do you assess the first season and the evolution of your character?

I think that Liz has evolved to be a much stronger, more aware woman... realistic about the realities of the world and the dark underbelly of human beings.

How has working on The Blacklist helped you grow as an actress?

I have a really easy emotional access now. I was always a very emotional person and coming into this show, I knew that I could do a lot of the scenes that require emotion. But now, I can do them just as easily as I could snap my fingers. I also think I’ve gained a skill at the sort of communion of the process of creating a scene together with other people. I think that sometimes when you’re young, actors can have some rigidity and you want to stay in your own head and create it on your own and there’s ego there. But I don’t have that at all, not even a moment of it. I appreciate everyone’s input and am able to assimilate that into my own ideas and it becomes a real team effort. So that’s been another advantage of having worked this intensely on something.

QUIZZICAL!

Been a follower of The Blacklist? Take this quiz and the first three all-correct entries at t2contest@abp.in will win The Blacklist passport holders, courtesy t2 and STAR World Premiere HD.

1 In The Blacklist, the character of Raymond Reddington is termed as?

(a) The Caretaker of Crime

(b) The Concierge of Crime

(c) The Partner in Crime

2Which actor of Indian origin plays an important role in the series?

(a) Parminder Nagra

(b) Sendhil Ramamurthy

(c) Kal Penn

3Which popular film and TV actor was initially considered for Reddington’s part?

(a) Bryan Cranston

(b) Kiefer Sutherland

(c) Steve Buscemi

Priyanka Roy

Why are you a fan of The Blacklist? Tell t2@abp.in