Spader sports new look for promising fall thriller ‘The Blacklist’

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – In real life, James Spader doesn’t seem all that menacing.

He’s downright cheerful as he arrives for an interview, playfully doffing his summer-ish fedora and placing it on a table on top of a reporter’s digital recorder.

Hatless, however, the newly shorn Spader has a decidedly different look.

The “Pretty in Pink” actor wanted to mix it up for his role as a criminal mastermind who cuts a shocking deal with the FBI in the fall’s most promising new network thriller, “The Blacklist.”

The three-time Emmy-winner plays the notorious Raymond (Red) Reddington who, for decades, has given the FBI fits as one of their most wanted fugitives. In Monday’s pilot (10 p.m. E.T. on NBC and Global), he takes off a darker wide-brimmed fedora, gets down on his knees in the foyer of FBI headquarters in Washington and surrenders.

He does so, however, on his own terms: he will help the agency catch a long-thought-dead terrorist provided he speaks only to a rookie agent, Elizabeth (Liz) Keen (Megan Boone of “Law & Order: Los Angeles”).

As they work through Reddington’s long “blacklist” of enemies, the two are forced together into a cat-and-mouse relationship reminiscent of the main players in “Silence of the Lambs.”

Except this series is not like that movie at all, insists executive producer John Eisendrath.

“It’s a great movie, and we would be lucky in some ways be compared to it, but I think there’s a big difference between the characters on our show and the characters of Hannibal and Clarice,” says Eisendrath. “Red is not a psychopath. He is someone who is much more of an enigma.”

Spader agrees, saying the “Silence of the Lambs” impression disappears after the pilot. When Keen first meets Reddington, he’s in custody, shackled to a chair. In future episodes, he’ll be out in public, moving freely throughout the world. The “Lambs” imagery will end fairly soon, says Spader.

It’s not the first time the Boston-born actor has played creepy or sinister. In his early films, such as “Pretty in Pink,” he had the bored swagger of an Ivy League lout. In “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and “Crash,” danger and perversity lurked right below an icy calm exterior.

Now 53, Spader has worked hard to broaden his persona through a diverse series of film, TV and stage roles, including his recent stint on “The Office.”

Showing up for “The Blacklist” with closely cropped hair was all Spader’s idea. Part of it was his eagerness to cut any past impressions with the audience.

“Actors are burdened with everything else they’ve done before in any role they’re playing,” he told a room full of critics at this summer’s press tour, “and I thought it would be nice to take off my hat and it’s an entirely different person.”

Later that same day, in a more one-on-one setting, Spader elaborated on the whole hair question. He’d just come off Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” where his head was covered with long hair and “big, bushy sideburns and moustache and everything.”

After shooting the pilot for “The Blacklist,” he went back to the 1860s to star opposite Tommy Lee Jones in “The Homesman.” For that role, he wore a red wig.

When he read the script for “The Blacklist,” his gut reaction was that Reddington was the kind of guy who “moves around a lot and moves swiftly,” he reasoned, “and I just thought he seemed like someone who would be streamlined.”

Spader says he “made the mistake” of discussing the idea with the producers, who were probably hoping to market the suave Spader fans loved on “The Practice,” not some bald-looking baddie. Eventually, Spader’s vision of the character’s look prevailed.

Besides embracing the part, Spader makes no secret as to his other motivation to get back on television — money. The kind of quirky, independent movies he likes to make simply do not pay what the father of three has become accustomed to. Neither does Broadway, where Spader spent the year prior to “The Office” in David Mamet’s “Race.” Even “Lincoln” he describes as a film “everybody was doing for very little money.”

“The Office” was just supposed to be a one-off experience but when the producers asked him back to help ease the departure of Steve Carell, Spader said yes to the cash. His deal allowed him time off to do “Lincoln” and other projects. It helped that he also “had a ball” working on the NBC comedy. “It worked out just perfectly for me,” he says.

He’s already lined up his next well-paying gig: he’ll play the villainous robot Ultron in Marvel’s next instalment of “The Avengers,” scheduled for a 2015 release.

Together with “The Blacklist,” Spader should be able to afford all the haircuts he wants for many years to come.

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Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.