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James Marsden might be the world’s best secret keeper.
As Theodore “Teddy” Flood on Westworld, Marsden played a critical role in the first two seasons of the HBO series as the closest thing to an outright good guy a show this morally complex is capable of having. That is until, amid a robot revolution, his girlfriend Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) reprogrammed his robot mind to strip him of his moral compass in service of the larger revolt. As a result, Teddy eventually reached a point in the series’ second season where he realized what Dolores had done to him and, as a result, committed suicide in front of Dolores out of grief. As such, Marsden exited Westworld accordingly—except he didn’t.
Instead, Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonathon Nolan told Marsden he’d return to the show later as a critical part of a new story arc they planned to tell. As such, Marsden had to lie to everyone around him for the better part of four years to keep his return under wraps. “With this show, you kind of have to put it under lock and key and forget about it and act as if you really are gone. Otherwise, you’ll trip up,” Marsden tells Complex. “I lied to my mother, brother, and sister that I wasn’t coming back. Mainly because—not that I don’t trust people that I’m close to—but I know how rapid these things can spread.” But it worked; a few weeks ahead of season four, Marsden’s involvement was officially announced by Joy and Nolan, much to the surprise of the Westworld faithful.
The nature of Teddy’s return is one of season four’s biggest arcs—and for good reason. Turns out the charming cowboy is playing a critical role in the story of Wood’s new character named Christina. In this season’s fifth episode, viewers finally got more context around how and why Teddy was back, as he’s functioning as a way to help Christina discover some truths about the world in which she lives. But how and why Teddy knows what he knows remains to be seen.
As we inch closer to Westworld’s season finale, Complex spoke to Marsden over Zoom to talk about a wide range of topics, including how he found out about his return, working with Wood again, the challenges of working on such a mysterious show, and much more. Needless to say, spoilers for Westworld Season 4 are below.
When did Lisa [Joy] and Jonah [Nolan] tell you that you were going to come back for Season 4? How was it presented to you?
James Marsden: I can’t say enough nice things about the two of them. They’re the most respectful and wonderful human beings, on top of being just incredible creative artists. With something like one of the main characters stepping away for a bit, obviously, they want to treat it with delicacy and respect. They were excited to share with me the idea [that] there need to be stakes—and sometimes loss. They pulled me in at the beginning of Season 2, just to kind of talk me through the overall arc of the character—at least until I return. [laughs] So they walked me through all of Season 2—the shift midway through the season when I get reprogrammed—and then they said, “We want to do something where [since] you are such a beloved character, that we want the audience to feel the stakes.”
They loved the idea of Teddy’s good portion that still was deep down in there somewhere under the reprogramming surface, was at odds with what Dolores was doing—he decided that rather than go on with her, [that] he’d take his life [instead]. They said, basically, “You’re dying! [laughs] But also, you’re coming back.” And that’s about as much as I got. But what they did say is, “We wanna do it in a really great way where you don’t just go away for two episodes and come back. You’re gonna be away for Season 3, and we’re gonna find the most coolest, greatest way to bring you back in Season 4.” And that’s kind of all I got.
So it was like, “Okay, cool. Well, I’m gonna have to lie to everybody for a good year and a half that I’m gone because now I kind of wish I didn’t even know that.” [laughs] I think they were like, “Well, but we can’t let you go do other [things]. We need to still keep your schedule free for Season 4.” [laughs] So they had to tell me. But it was cool. They said, “We think [if] we do this right, people are gonna be cheering and jumping outta their seats when they see you return at the end of the first episode of Season 4.”
In a time when there are whole Reddit boards devoted to spoilers, how difficult was it for you to keep this a secret? Did you have an outlet to talk about it? I know Evan Rachel Wood mentioned she knew, so were the two of you in contact during that time?
We were, but with this show, you kind of have to put it under lock and key and forget about it and act as if you really are gone. Otherwise, you’ll trip up. Like you said, there’s gonna be plenty of people who are gonna be pressing [you] for any information, nuggets, or tidbits that they can get. I mean, I lied to my mother, brother, and sister that I wasn’t coming back. Mainly because—not that I don’t trust people that I’m close to—but I know how, like you said, how rapid these things can spread.
Within the narrative of Westworld and the story we’re trying to tell, it could have a great impact if it’s not spoiled. I feel like it has! It being a secret for so long, it has carried a cool surprise factor [and] a power along with it. I think the fans were excited to see Teddy reemerge. So really, it was in my best interest to keep it a secret cause the more people [that] think I’m really gone, the more—hopefully—excited they’re gonna be when they get to see me come back.
Do you think of Teddy as a different character this season or just the next step in a long series of evolutions of his overall arc?
We all stay very vague about speaking in real absolutes [laughs]. I’m very careful about what I reveal and what I don’t about this season, and what the audience hasn’t seen yet. I can speak to what it feels like to me so far, which is [that] there is a feeling that now Christina is in the fog and not knowing what’s going on and needing to be awakened. Whereas, in the first season, she was having the awakening and trying her best to awaken Teddy at the beginning of Season 2. It’s switched now, and she’s Christina. She’s no longer Dolores. Here comes Teddy—and he’s called Teddy—and he seems to remember quite a bit about her, even if he’s relatively vague in the way he speaks to her. There’s a familiarity. I think she clocks something on a deep level—a connection on a deep level—with this new suitor. I say new because she doesn’t really remember—of course, she doesn’t remember him—but there’s some, there’s some reason why she feels like there’s a deja vu there.
I think there are parts of him that feel like the old Teddy. But we don’t know [laughs] if that’s really, truly him or not just yet. We’ll just have to kind of see and watch the whole season unfold. But it was fun to get dressed up in sort of modern-day clothes, lose the hat and the cowboy boots, put on a leather jacket, slick your hair, and then speak very contemporary. There’s the scene where we’re going on a date and just having a charming, little sweet date. It was nice to see them look lovingly into each other’s eyes again. They’d just been through such hell together. There was a nice sort of calmness to seeing them connect again. It felt like [the] early days of Westworld. So, there’s feelings—there’s little bits of Teddy there where you don’t know for sure if it’s fully him or not just yet.
We’re in a position, through episode five, where Teddy knows more of what’s happening than Dolores does. How do you approach that dynamic from an acting perspective?
The script is always my guide. It’s Westworld, so everything’s a puzzle box [laugh], right? Even for us actors at times. We’re reading it and thinking, “Well, what does this necessarily mean? How should I play this?” But like I said, Lisa and Jonah’s presence is always there to answer any questions to the best of their ability to let us know what we need to know for our scenes that we have together. So I usually let them be the guide—the scripts, I mean. I guess the approach for the beginning of the season was, “How does he present himself to her in a way [so] that she feels safe?”
She does discover that he’s been the one looking—like the stalker that was going after her, Peter—[Teddy] was the one who was protecting her from him. I think he’s very careful at how he gets her to start unraveling herself. Like you said, the tables have turned, and this time he’s trying to initiate her awakening, to make her question the nature of her reality for a specific purpose. It’s all there on the page; it’s all there in the script. I just let that be the guide. You realize, “Oh, this is exactly what we did in the first season, except the roles have, have reversed [laugh].” It’s great. It’s great to play essentially the same character but something completely different.
Evan does have this kind of emotional journey that she has to go on during the fifth episode. Is that something the two of you rehearsed beforehand, or did you just find it on the day?
We kind of found it on the day. Evan and I would talk a few times before any big scene—a day or two before—just to kind of go over it. We never really go, “Hey, here’s what I’m going to do. This is what you should do.” There’s an inherent understanding between the two of us that we both sort of get where our characters are headed and what the purpose of the scene is. Even scenes where a whole lot is answered without answering anything. And Evan’s eyes—she’s just got all 88 keys of the piano. It’s incredible all the different layers and levels of self-reflection and realization. She can switch in a heartbeat and go, “Oh, this is just another crazy stalker. Go away from me. I get it, I look like an ex of yours. Right, moving on.”
There’s a vulnerability to her character this season that wasn’t really there in the second half of season two and season three. I loved seeing, in early season one, she just had that like sweet, innocent vulnerability. You got to see that fall to the ground and shatter, right? She just becomes this other person with her awakening. So here she is—it’s happening for her again. I just love to see her play those moments.
I’m basically, very gently, ushering her into this state of consciousness, right? Where she’s realizing what this world is, why she is who she is, who did it, and big, big existential questions that you can’t just come right out and hit her over the head with. She just so beautifully, delicately unfolds them. Like I said, she’s like a concert violinist [laughs]. It’s just remarkable to see her work—her eyes and her face—it’s just beautiful to watch. It makes my job so much easier, getting to do all that with her and watch her find moments to have her realizations or her conflict and her self-questioning. All of these things she just does so beautifully.
So much of Westworld is about momentum and how things are constantly changing and evolving. With that much kind of forward progress, is it difficult for you to ground yourself in that sometimes? Or do you enjoy the challenge of feeling like things are always different?
I mean, it is challenging. It’s a challenging show. You don’t always have the answers. You don’t get all eight episode scripts when you start shooting episode one. This is a work of art that evolves along the way. You do have to stay nimble—open, I guess, is a better word—to anything that might come your way or any sort of new change in dialogue, action, or anything.
Trust is a big word that I keep coming back to as well. You just trust the filmmakers; you trust the writing—the writers, the creators—and what story they’re trying to tell. So yes, you do have to stay somewhat on your toes and not get locked into any sort of ideas that you think are going to be cemented cause [laughs] everything is pretty malleable, right? We change things sometimes days before, sometimes minutes before. They have a good way of keeping us not intentionally off balance, but they keep us questioning as actors as much as the audience, at times. It’s a fun thing. It’s a challenging thing. But it’s also really rewarding when it all comes together.
Watch James Marsden’s big Westworld return on HBO on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET and stream it on HBO Max.