Last week, I got on a conference call with other reporters to talk to actor Milo Ventimiglia (“Mob City,” “Heroes”) about his new multi-episode arc on the Fox drama “Gotham,” set in the DC Comics “Batman” universe, when Bruce Wayne is still a boy (David Mazouz) and Commissioner Gordon is still just Detective Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie). “Gotham” returns tonight, April 13, for its final run of episodes with “Beast of Prey,” in which Gordon and partner Harvey Bullock (a tortured Catholic, according to actor Donal Logue) investigate a cold case involving the Ogre (Ventimiglia), an overtly engaging, but inwardly twisted, serial killer targeting young women in Gotham City. Here’s how Ventimiglia described the TV version of the Ogre:
He is different than what’s in the DC universe. I took what was on the page, written by [executive producer] Bruno Heller’s team, and I pretty much went off that. So, Jason Lennon, a.k.a. the Ogre, is a serial killer. He is a guy who’s looking for love, but the love he’s looking for is unconditional. As nice as that sounds, and as romantic as that sounds, his expectations are probably a lot more fierce and a lot past the line of what usual love is. He targets women for love, and he also targets the loved ones of cops that will investigate him. So, it’s only natural that he’s going to run into a guy like Jim Gordon, who is the hero cop of Gotham. So, yes, it’s two strong forces — one for good, one for dark — going up against each other.
On getting into the character of Ogre:
Is it wrong if I said I was just being myself? Honestly, this guy, he’s relaxed, he’s sincere, he is much darker than me as a man, but I was just trying to be myself, because he is a man. He’s affected by things that happened to him when he was younger, and he’s approaching his life the way that he knows how, and he’s operating off what he has, which may not be very good to the majority of people, but to him, it’s what his life was. [I tried to be] honest with what he wants, like I said, even though what he wants is horrible and kind of odd, and how he gets it, the measures that he goes to. He’s a sociopath.
But he’s a charming sociopath:
There’s a lot to be liked about this guy. He’s looking for love, which is something we can all connect with in one way or another. We’re looking to be accepted. He’s a guy who is looking for that. He’s charming without being arrogant, but there is arrogance in his way of being, because he can’t see outside himself, and what he imposes on women that ultimately leads to him killing them. So I think there is something that is true in his search, but his means of doing it are completely wrong. What he’s asking for, to the degree that he’s asking for it, it’s skewed, it’s off, it’s not right, it’s not kind, it’s not good. But his way of being and talking to a girl — I didn’t think, as I was reading the scripts, and as I was playing it, it wasn’t an act to get the girl so he can just kill the girl. He doesn’t want to kill the girl. But he eventually will, because, well, they’re not quite who he thinks they are. He’s already pushed them past the point where he’d probably be in trouble. So, why not just discard this woman and find another one? So, I think that there are small redeeming qualities about him, but the majority of who he is shadows any other good that’s possibly in there.
So, when it was finally my turn, I asked Ventimiglia why, in all he said about the Ogre, he kept avoiding the word “evil”:
I think killing women is the byproduct of things not working out. Where a normal human being could just break up with the girl and say, ‘Listen, this isn’t working out. I think you’re lovely; you’re going to find the right guy; you’re going to be great for him. It’s me; it’s not you’ — Jason Lennon can’t handle the idea that this person, this woman, that things didn’t work out with, exists. He also knows, in his demented mind, that he goes too far with these women, and what he’s asking of them — it’s semantics in saying that he’s just a guy looking for love. He’s really looking for the most heinous of partners possible. He’s just off, but I didn’t want to paint the guy as not having any sense of humanity inside him, because, I guess that’s just me as an actor. I had to humanize the guy in some way. But he’s just mentally off in how he views the world, and so selfish. He’s so, so selfish in that he believes that he can do whatever he wants to whoever he wants, because of his charm or his nice Gucci suits or money. But ultimately, it’s power. It’s wielding power. In this unconditional love that Jason Lennon is looking for, he wants to possess. Not like a spell and be a witch, but he wants to actually own every thought and part of a person, of a woman, that he can, so that they are completely entrusted and enslaved, and he feels unconditionally loved.
But, I pointed out, “50 Shades of Grey” is telling men and women that this twisted kind of “unconditional love” is just fine:
Yes. I guess. I don’t know. For some people, sure. For some people, sure.
Here’s a promo clip for tonight’s episode: Image: Courtesy Warner Bros./Fox
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