LEVERAGE: Michael Gladis Previews His Guest Spot

TNT’s LEVERAGE is bringing out a strong roster of guest stars this season, and tonight’s brand new episode features former MAD MEN star Michael Gladis as Lee Rockwell.

But how does Rockwell fit into the LEVERAGE world? To get some answers, Give Me My Remote spoke with Gladis about his time on the show.

“Lee Rockwell is a PR expert who goes to great lengths to protect his clients,” Gladis teased. “And sometimes those lengths include destroying the lives of his client’s enemies or character assassination. He’s certainly someone who operates behind the scenes, so he doesn’t like it and he doesn’t trust it when someone who isn’t a client tries to figure out what it is exactly that he does. He doesn’t really welcome anybody coming in to his world who isn’t going to work with him.”

Which means his character’s encounters with our LEVERAGE guys won’t always be the friendliest — which, thankfully, wasn’t the case when the cameras stopped.

“The most pleasant surprise was how wonderful everybody was in front of and behind the camera,” Gladis said. “I really fell in love with that production. They’re just great people up there doing very wonderful work. And of course, getting to spend the whole day acting with Timothy Hutton (Nate) was just an honor. It was great. I did act with everyone. They were all just wonderful.”

“I had to do a scene with Aldis [Hodge (Hardison)]and Christian [Kane (Eliot)] where — and you can hardly even call it combat — but Christian shoves me and Aldis to the ground in sort of awkward semi-tackle,” he continued. “It was actually minimal, but it was a lot of fun because, you know, [with] different actors, some actors are very fragile people -– stunt performers exist for a reason — but I think it was my first day of filming, when Christian has to give me a shove into Aldis and we have to go down to the ground together, and they [didn’t] know who I am, they don’t know what my character is like and I think they were really relieved when I was like, ‘Guys, I’m 6’2, 220 [pounds]. I used to play sports. You can shove me and we can brawl and it’s fine. We’ll all be fine.’ And those guys are both in great shape so, yeah, it was a non-issue. But they were a little bit tentative at first. They didn’t know if they could actually shove me, or if I would actually be willing to fall to the ground, because some actors are such prisses that they have to kind of suss it out.”

But Rockwell’s presence isn’t only causing the team the physically lash out — because of the parallels between Rockwell’s skills and what Nate does, viewers will learn a little bit more about Ford’s (potential) weaknesses.

“The fact of the matter is, my character kind of bears a lot of similarities with Timothy Hutton’s character Nathan, in that they both bring people down from the shadows,” Gladis said. “So the challenge for the team and for Nate in particular, he sort of has to say to himself, ‘How would I bring myself down?’ And the weapon that they end up using is fame to bring him out the shadows, into the spotlight and then they hook him with that taste of success and recognition and they use that as the bait to bring him down and it’s kind of fascinating in that way because it’s insight — as least from what Nate said — into what the chinks are in his armor.”

As of now, Gladis is only scheduled for the one episode of LEVERAGE, but he told us he’d love to come back if given the chance.

“I did beg the creators of the show to bring me back because I had such a great time filming with them,” he admitted. “But I haven’t heard anything yet. I think personally they should make him part of the team because he’s really good at what he does and he’d fit right in. They actually admire his work.  One of the guys — I think it was Aldis’ character — actually has a line at one point that he’s like, ‘If we didn’t have to take this guy down, I’d consider asking him to be part of the team!'”
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Related:

LEVERAGE: Dean Devlin Teases Season 4
LEVERAGE’s Dean Devlin: ‘The Theme of This Season is Consequences’

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