Cult premieres on The CW tomorrow night (February 19) and we’re continuing our series of interviews with the cast from our late 2012 Vancouver set visit.
Today, the spotlight shines on Robert Knepper, who plays the increasingly creepy cult leader Billy Grimm on the show within a show that is Cult. The actions of Billy will have effects on what happens in the outside world, and the spooky messages from the character have been a major part of The CW’s Cult promotional campaigns. Audiences may recognize Knepper immediately for his roles on Prison Break as T-Bag and Heroes as carnival leader Samuel.
Billy Grimm may seem like an awful guy at first glance, but Knepper insists that there has to be a humanity to the character as well. “I think you have to find humanity because you have to understand, as a person watching the show, why so many people follow him. Otherwise they’re just idiots, they’re just lemmings falling off the edge of a cliff. People like that have to be charismatic that normal people would just go ‘wow, I could really use that in my life right now. I could follow that guy’,” Knepper explains. “He also serves a purpose of being the center of the conflict for Matt. They always say that every good guy has to have a good villain and every good villain has to have a good good guy. If you don’t have that conflict going, you don’t have a show.”
Knepper also believes that Billy Grimm does have a moral compass, somewhere. “Yeah. It’s a little askew though. In his mind, sure,” he says.
In addition to playing Billy, Knepper plays Roger Reeves, the actor who plays Billy Grimm on Cult. “[You will see] how the backstory of Roger actually helps feed the backstory of Billy even though they’re two totally different circumstances,” Knepper promises. “You will, I think, hopefully, say ‘oh my god, I empathize with both Roger and Billy’ even though there are aspects of Roger and Billy where you’ll go ‘man, no wonder why people think actors are crazy’.”
You can fall under the trance of Billy Grimm Tuesday night, February 19 on The CW. Come back tomorrow for our interview with Matt Davis! And until then, check out some of Billy Grimm in action:
