LOS ANGELES _ Michael Sheen has played a lot of wild and interesting roles over the years, from his vampire days in the "Twilight" series to Dr. William Masters in "The Masters of Sex" and the White Rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland."
But in his quarter of a century of working in front of cameras, Sheen has never taken on a role as liberating as Roland Blum in the third season of "The Good Fight." The legal drama starring Christine Baranski, which is available through the CBS All Access streaming service, begins its third season Thursday with Sheen joining the cast as a lawyer who has completely blurred the lines between right and wrong.
"It's nice to play a character where I don't have to go through hair and makeup in the morning. I just turn up, and that's what I look like. I feel a bit like I'm expressing the id of the show, in a way. And there's something incredibly kind of freeing and liberating about that," Sheen says. "He's disruptive. He is kind of like a trickster figure.
"There is another phrase that I've been thinking about recently as well, which I think is a big Silicon Valley phrase, which is, 'Move fast and break things.' And that's kind of what Roland does as well. So he just doesn't play by the same rules (as) everyone else. He upsets norms. He seems like he is part of the enemy but may be the key to understanding and moving things along."
Sheen goes on to describe Blum as devilish and like the god Pan. The picture he paints gets colorful when Sheen discusses the character's appetite for food and sexual fun. What he expects is viewers will be both drawn to and repelled by Blum.
The character will become part of the continuing tale of Diane Lockhart (Baranski), whose story is a spinoff of the CBS series "The Good Wife." Lockhart was forced out of Lockhart, Deckler, Gussman, Lee, Lyman, Gilbert, Lurie, Kagan, Tannebaum, & Associates after an enormous financial scam destroyed the reputation of her goddaughter and her savings. She landed at one of Chicago's preeminent law firms.
The general practice when an actor takes on a role playing a lawyer is to observe real attorneys as part of the preparation. Sheen felt no such necessity because he's less interested in playing the legal elements of Blum and more in focusing on the human traits that make him interesting.
"I am trying to look more like a forest creature and that he has an appetite. Rather than putting a moral or ethical judgment on him, he is someone who goes a bit deeper. This character goes very deep and is very primal. That's why I am loving playing him so much," Sheen says. "I get to touch on things we all deal with.
"People often tell actors who are playing the bad guy in a show that they must be having so much fun because everyone loves a good bad guy. It's slightly lazy thinking about it that way but there is something truthful in that. We go around living a slightly repressed life just to get along with each other and then you have these characters who come along who decide that because everyone is keeping civilization going, they can just wreck things."
Blum makes an immediate impact on the other lawyers. In the first scene in which Blum and Lockhart talk, Blum offers her some information that becomes a key element through the entire season. Audra McDonald, who plays Liz Reddick-Lawrence, saw a ripple effect with the addition of Sheen's character. He's no longer playing by the rules, which makes those in the law firm begin to examine how their own ethics are either helping or hurting them.
Sheen comes to the outlandish role in the streaming service series with a long list of credits including "The Queen," "Frost/Nixon," "Midnight in Paris," "Underworld," "The Damned United," "Tron: Legacy" and "Far from the Madding Crowd. On television, Sheen has earned multiple awards and nominations for his performances in "Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!," "Dirty Filthy Love" and "The Special Relationship."
The cast of "The Good Fight" also includes Cush Jumbo, Rose Leslie, Sarah Steele, Michael Boatman, Nyambi Nyambi and Delroy Lindo. There will be 10 episodes in the third season of "The Good Fight" with new offerings available on Thursdays exclusively through CBS All Access. The online service offers several original series along with "The Good Fight" including "No Activity," "Strange Angel," "Star Trek: Discovery" and the upcoming reboot of "The Twilight Zone."
