Gotham is about to get a lot more chilly with with the addition of Mr. Freeze during tonight’s episode of Gotham. With Bruce Wayne kidnapped, and Jim Gordon rounding up people to go save him, Victor Fries adds an unstable element. The well known tragic story of Mr. Freeze will have to wait until the winter break ends for Gotham. This happens to be the last episode before that break. Played by Nathan Darrow, he gave some insight into the character, what he liked, and what we could hope to see.
Victor has one central intimate human connection, and that’s with his wife. There’s something really, really interesting and vulnerable and difficult about that. Of course, that is threatened by her illness. In some of the research I did on the character as he has evolved in the comic book, he has a more tenuous connection with humanity and his own humanity, and she’s it. He is applying all his talents and skills and energies to maintaining that…He’s pretty focused on what he’s doing. He is on a very special, independent project. I feel like he does go to work each day, but I think he gets time to work from home and it feels like his bosses are OK with that because he’s specially talented and he’s working on something that could be potentially of great value for who he works for. So he’s pretty much involved in this pursuit and it’s rather solitary, as you might imagine.
In regards to Freeze’s crusade to save his wife, Nora, Darrow did specify a little bit about how he feels about the disease plaguing her in the various source material.
I really kind of love that it’s referred to as a “mysterious illness.” It’s not just comic books, though. Look to Shakespeare and you’re going to see things like that. You’re going to see where a person has something that’s mysterious and it’s threatening their life, and it’s never referred to but we just know it. It’s almost like it has greater weight because it’s not named as like, “Oh, she has this type of cancer.”
As for his approach to the role, he decided to go in… well… cold.
…The actor, however he gets to it, has to find their own place where they join. That can come sometimes from no knowledge of how something has been played before. Sometimes, though, it comes from a great knowledge of what’s been played before. I’ve worked with actors who I love and respect so much where if they’re going to do one of these great Shakespeare roles, they watch how every actor does it. Actually the better the role, the less likely that anyone is going to capture it all. So it’s always kind of like a group effort because there’s so many ways in and so much swirling around inside a person. It’s interesting to see what another artist does and expand on that or go in a completely different direction…When somebody has a great need, or let’s say they have all of their investment in one thing and that thing is threatened or even destroyed, how does one go on? Maybe somebody pulls back or finds something else to care about. Or maybe that person gives in to a chaotic response that then really widens the rules of their life. I would maybe propose that villainy, as we’re talking about it, is a way through extreme difficulty or is oddly a way to have things matter.
Get ready for the big chill tonight when he appears on Gotham.