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Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop stars Alex Hassell and Elena Satine discuss bringing emotional tragedy and raw fury to their roles as Vicious and Julia.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Cowboy Bebop Season 1, streaming now on Netflix.
Spike Spiegel runs from his past for much of Cowboy Bebop Season 1. However, he soon finds his former best friend Vicious and ex-lover Julia catching up to him. Years before the series starts, Spike formed a relationship with Julia behind her boyfriend Vicious’ back. To make matters worse, he leaves them to start a new life. When Vicious learns Spike is still alive years later, after Vicious has married Julia and risen through the ranks of the Syndicate, he brings his full fury against the man that wronged him so long ago.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Cowboy Bebop‘s Alex Hassell and Elena Satine talked about layering more emotional complexity into their roles as Vicious and Julia. The duo reflected on how the familiar look for their characters informed their respective performances and described how they maintained the raw intensity needed for their roles.
Vicious and Julia are the most wounded characters in this version of Cowboy Bebop and the weapon that wounded both of them is Spike Spiegel, and yet, they react in different ways. How is it bringing that and maintaining that level of emotion?
Alex Hassell: It was really fun but also quite exhausting a lot of the time! I realized that my neck would be incredibly tense from having this kind of shaking intensity about Vicious but it’s always fun to play that level of emotional life, history, and pain because it’s rich material to mine but it is quite hard going sometimes.
Elena Satine: I remember getting home really late from some of the shoots, including the one in our penthouse where things don’t go so well. I remember it was such a long day and I should’ve been tired but my adrenaline was through the roof. I could not sleep. There would be so many days like that where you have to pace, unwind, have a glass of wine, and really calm yourself down.
Spike did do us both wrong in a way and I think, for Julia, that realization is so important in her really finding her own strength and realizing that it’s time to take her fate into her own hands. No one is coming for her and going to rescue her. If she doesn’t do it herself, she might die in this relationship. I thought that was a very powerful and grounded element. For a show that is so heightened, to have such an intense realization was really wonderful as an actor to get to play.
We spend a lot more time with Vicious and Julia in this than we did the Cowboy Bebop anime, humanizing them. What did you want to specifically add to your characters that maybe weren’t present in the anime?
Hassell: I think for both of us it was layering because, as you say, there’s such a short amount of screen time in the anime. They’re not quite symbolic but Vicious is definitely this specter of death. Julia is hopeful, at least in terms of the way the other characters see them. But for us, to have a vulnerability underneath all of that, and this very complicated, fraught emotional life that would create this vulnerability to Vicious and an unhinged quality. The Vicious of the anime is very controlled whereas I think this Vicious wants to be that controlled and often fails. [laughs]
Satine: What I really enjoyed unpacking was this relationship [between Julia and Vicious]. I think there are such great nuances in their life together. Yes, it is an abusive relationship and then you see these moments of Vicious really respecting Julia and her opinion and there’s a partnership. It’s very unhealthy but it is a complex and layered relationship. It’s not black-and-white. In the anime, we see cutaways of Vicious holding a gun to Julia’s head and that’s not all of it. It is bad but, like any relationship, there are complexities and there are a lot of complexities to this one.
How much does the costuming and art design on these sets help inform your performance?
Hassell: Massively!
Satine: Yeah, I think that anytime there’s a huge, physical change. I really love working with wigs — and the rest of the costume and everything — but especially wigs. When you step out of your trailer and you don’t look like yourself, it really makes the job so much easier. I really do appreciate every aspect of the visual help.
Hassell: You get a lot for free when you’re preparing. You might feel like you have to play all these certain qualities but if I stand very still, I look a very certain way so you don’t have to play that. You can, in fact, play the opposite of that underneath which I think is really interesting!
Developed for television by André Nemec, Cowboy Bebop is streaming now on Netflix.
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