‘Evil’ Star Michael Emerson on Series Finale: ‘The Door Is Cracked a Little Bit’ for a Continuation

The cast of “Evil” was kind of expecting this to be their final season, actor Michael Emerson, who plays the diabolically delightful Leland Thompson on the series, told TheWrap ahead of the series finale.

“They were slow to suggest that we would keep going. What with the strike and all and some changes happening at Paramount+, I didn’t think [a renewal] was a given by any means,” he said of the show’s cancellation after four seasons.

However, he’s grateful that the show’s writers and creators Robert and Michelle King were able to “wrap up the series” as best they could in the final four episodes.

“It was a little fast. It’s hard to wrap up a bunch of narratives like our show has in four episodes. But I think the writers did a pretty good job of it,” he said.

He also told TheWrap that he thinks the “hardcore fans” will appreciate the ending, which, he said, “hasn’t got a super final quality to it.”

Added Emerson, “The finale has winners and losers, but most everybody is left still standing. At least everybody still has agency, I might say, so the door is cracked a little bit to suggest that if someone wanted to run with it, that would be possible.”

Read on for TheWrap’s interview with Emerson about the “Evil” finale and his time on the show.

It is a shame the show is being canceled, because you were getting more viewers.

Yeah, it’s a success, I would say an unqualified success at this point. But, the industry is in a weird place. They were so prolific for a long time and they couldn’t make enough content, and now all of a sudden, everybody’s scared, and no one wants to spend any money, and everyone wants to do something that’s more reduced and less costly. So be it. Our show is  expensive because we have some amazing effects and illusions in it. I don’t know how we could make it on a shoestring.

When you are talking to demons, what does that look like for you on set? Are they in full makeup, or is that all being done later in the computer?

They are fully prosthetized As you see them on TV, depending on how elaborate the demon is, they have eyes that blink and mouths that open and close, and ears that wiggle and all of that, and there’s someone inside that’s talking. But after a while, if you’re playing Leland Townsend, the sort of fresh terror of it fades away. 

It’s just like another day at the office, you just clock in, “Oh, here I am with goat-headed God, let’s go.” When I noticed that I thought, yes, that’s exactly what it is for Leland. He is unimpressed. These are just his workmates, right? In some cases, they’re his supervisors, and he’s tired of them. They’re boring, they’re clueless. He just wants to get out of the meeting. That and the banality of that energy is what I think makes them seems kind of magical.

Do you have a favorite episode of “Evil” or favorite scene?

I would say my favorite episode is one that I’m not in. It’s the [Season 2] silent monastery one. It was thrilling, I thought, to raise the stakes as an acting and production challenge. I thought that was very clever. 

My favorite scenes are the scenes with demons, those are kind of unforgettable. And scenes with Sister Andrea (Andrea Martin), that scene in the kitchen where I have a bottle of ammonia and she has a butcher knife, that standoff? It’s like a gunslinger scene in a way that was most enjoyable. She’s a good scene partner, and she never blinked, and I never blinked. It had high stakes. I love that. 

And then I had great standoffs with Kristen (Katja Herbers). I’m always trying to provoke her, but she always seems to get the better of me. Still those scenes, they’re important and they are fraught too. There’s a lot going on there. 

Right, like when she cuts Leland’s neck, and he might be bleeding to death, and he says, “I’ve never been more turned on.”

Right? That kind of stuff. It’s delicious.

Does it bother you in a way that you get cast as these creepy characters, or are you having fun?

It’s fun. I won’t say I always want to be the villain, but I want to be a complicated character, and I want to be mysterious, and if it ends up being sinister in some way, that’s all right. But I do like the ambiguity and the mystery in the playing, and it’s harder to get those qualities if you’re the hero,

So villains do have more fun, or at least, the actors playing them?

I’m here to testify that, yeah, that’s where you want to be if you’re an actor.

Are you holding out hope that “Evil” will get picked up somewhere else?

I’m not overly worried about it. I feel a sense of completion with the way we’ve done it.

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