Mark Strong, star of ‘ Temple,’ can’t decide if his character is a hero or villain
He’s used to playing villains, but even when Mark Strong plays a good guy, he ends up making bad choices.
The British actor’s new show, “Temple,” based on a Norwegian drama and airing on Spectrum, deals with how people react when standing at an ethical crossroads.
Strong stars as Daniel Milton, a British surgeon whose life is turned upside down when his wife ( Catherine McCormack) is diagnosed with an incurable, fatal disease. With few other options to research a cure, Daniel opens an illegal medical clinic alongside a friend/ doomsday prepper ( Daniel Mays).
After a career playing the heavy in movies like “KickAss,” “Green Lantern” and “Shazam!,” the 55- year- old actor has found a gray area.
“You have a character who was faced with that moral dilemma: Was he a hero or was he a villain?” he said. “He crossed a moral rubicon. He made some moral choices that he would have never made if he wasn’t forced into that situation.”
Daniel’s illegal clinic, tucked into the deserted tunnels underneath an operational London subway station, attracts all kinds: criminals with nowhere else to turn, patients who can’t afford hospital bills.
“He’s making morally dubious choices that are perhaps unacceptable, but because they’re for a good cause, perhaps you would forgive him,” Strong said of Daniel’s illegal practice.
“Temple,” in the basest sense, is about what you would do for the ones you love. Daniel, at times, excuses his bad actions by countering them with his good, with lives he’s saved as a doctor.
“Unlike Walter White, who enjoys that darkness, Daniel isn’t that character. He’s been presented with that extraordinary circumstance,” said Strong.