Ben Barnes recently wrapped up playing the manipulative character of General Kirigan on Netflix's Shadow and Bone. And before that, he played villainous roles in Westworld and The Punisher in a streak.
So how did Ben Barnes go from playing the shining Prince Caspian in The Chronicles of Narnia to only picking “more evil” roles?
According to the actor, he keeps asking his agents for rom-coms but ends up with psychopath roles instead.
Does Ben Barnes Like Playing Villains Over Heroes?
It's not like Ben Barnes has not played any hero/good character roles after starring in The Chronicles of Narnia. He was in the rom-coms Easy Virtue, The Big Wedding, and Jackie and Ryan, to name a few.
But one look at Barnes' IMDB page reveals that his career hasn't been a one-genre rodeo with a sudden change to villainy.
It looks like Barnes didn't want to get typecast as a rom-com pretty boy and so kept his acting credits a mix of genre-bending roles since the beginning. And considering how many actors never land any serious roles after they get typecast in romantic comedies, that was probably a smart decision on his part.
In an interview with Polygon, Ben Barnes revealed that he tries to find depth in every character he plays, and said that the villains he has played share a lot of similarities.
"Who you are as a person will always seep through in the tiniest ways. [The villains he played] are all very broken in their own ways,” Barnes said.
“None of the characters I've played have very good relationships with their parents. Even though it's a fantastical universe with magic and nonsense, you can really kind of dig down and try to believe in the broken truth of any character, even if they're the antagonist. Even if they're not the one you're rooting for."
In another interview with People about playing General Kirigan in Shadow and Bone, Ben Barnes said:
"We're not pretending this man is the hero; we're not pretending that his abuses of power are forgivable or condonable. But you're presenting a character that, hopefully, you want to see more of on the screen and want to see his conflicts, and also want to give room for there to be a kernel of hope for redemption. I think we have to believe there's a kernel of hope for redemption for everybody."
And considering Barnes' acting credits, it looks like he prefers playing these tortured, manipulative characters more than simple all-smiles nice guys in a cardigan.
Nevertheless, after finishing Westworld and The Punisher, Barnes did not want to take on another villain role. But he changed his mind after he read Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone, which the series is based on.
Why Did Ben Barnes Choose To Be In Netflix's Shadow And Bone?
"I sort of thought I'd had enough of playing sort of manipulative, problematic, antagonist characters over the last four or five years,” Ben Barnes told People.
“But I just found this world so appealing when I was reading the book, and I haven't played a character that was sort of so high in status in terms of the hierarchy of the world."
But now that General Kirigan is dead and his time in Shadow and Bone is over, he wants to change things up again and take on roles that “people are rooting for”.
Barnes had previously acted in BBC One's six-part miniseries Gold Digger which weirdly married both worlds.
Nevertheless, fans were upset that despite positioning Barnes' character as a nefarious gold digger throughout the first five episodes, the creators of the show turned it into an anti-climactic happy-ever-after ending of a “misunderstood good boy who takes the fall to save his older brother.”
“I think everyone wants to think of themselves as that non-judgmental person,” Barnes said.
“And playing [Benjamin Greene in Gold Digger] was interesting for me because you have to play everything as if you're someone with an ulterior motive, somebody who has an agenda and is after a family's money, but you also have to play every scene as if — because the only other explanation for how he behaves is that — he's actually that guy. He's actually just that little bit less judgmental than the rest of us. And he's just open-hearted and open-minded and just wants to love and be loved in return. We're almost so cynical a society that we can't believe somebody like that would exist."
Ben Barnes Wants To Do A Rom-Com Badly
On the matter of Ben Barnes' continuous streak of playing villainous characters, he told Polygon that he keeps asking his agents for rom-com roles but gets psychopaths instead.
“I keep asking my agents, I just want to do a rom-com. And then they’re like, 'Haven’t got a rom-com, but found this psychopath who’s killing a lot of young people!'”
So he's determined not to get typecast as a villain now.
Or as Barnes puts it: he just wants “a nice rom-com in a nice cardie!”
Maybe fans will see him in one in the near future.
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