The Killing’s creepy pastor can keep a secret
As is often the case with serial crime dramas on TV, there is a veil of secrecy when it comes to the third season of AMC’s The Killing.
So Edmonton-born actor Ben Cotton, who plays the tortured Pastor Mike in the murky Vancouver-shot thriller, lets it be known right up front that he has no plans of revealing anything that might befall his character in future episodes of the show. In fact, he can’t even say if he appears in any future episodes of the show.
He insists he doesn’t know the answer to the series’ most pressing question, anyway.
“I still don’t know who the killer is,” says Cotton, on the phone from his home in Vancouver.
That, of course, is the central drive of the series, as it was in the first two twisty seasons of The Killing. This time around, however, detectives Sara Linden (Mireille Enos) and Stephen Holden (Joel Kinnaman) are chasing a serial killer who has murdered at least 17 people and is targeting the vulnerable girls who live on the fringes of Seattle.
This is where Pastor Mike also resided, helping the often drug-addled street kids by putting them up in his crowded shelter and not asking any questions.
In short order, he went from being a sympathetic periphery character, to creepy and suspicious, to downright dangerous and, finally, deeply tragic.
Much of this character arc occurred in the first half of last week’s episode. If you are holding back on watching this season in favour of future binge viewing, you may want to stop reading right now. But devoted viewers know that Pastor Mike, once the prime suspect, appears to have been one of creator Veena Sud’s famous red herrings. At least for now.
None of which could be easy to play for Cotton, a 37-year-old New Yorktrained theatre actor who has put together a impressively eclectic gallery of character roles in American and Canadian TV and film productions.
How do you maintain a character’s suspicious nature for the benefit of creeping out the audience when in reality he is misunderstood, tragic and maybe even noble?
“I just had to look at it in terms of deciding what I thought the pastor was thinking at the time,” says Cotton. “He knows, by that point, that he is in trouble because his past is about to come back to haunt him. But I think part of it is just the context of the show that makes it that much creepier.”
The character’s sad past came to light in last Sunday’s episode, which found a desperate Pastor Mike kidnapping Linden at knifepoint. She drives him around the city and he reveals his backstory and motivations, which prove much more sympathetic than originally thought.
Last week’s scenes between Cotton and Enos in a car may rank as the most intense in a show that is almost always bleak. In fact, The Killing has such an oppressive feel to it, one can’t help but wonder what the mood is like on set.
“I certainly thought it might be (tense) when I first got there,” Cotton said. “But what I found is that the people on the show — from the top down: Veena, the people at AMC and all the way down the line — everybody was coming from a place of compassion for what is happening with the story. They are telling a heartbreaking story, which means everybody was coming from the heart first. They are not coming from the ego side of it, that sensational side of it with ‘let’s make it gory, let’s make it disgusting, let’s make it violent and crazy.’
“There’s some violence and some heavy things, but I think it’s all coming from a place of compassion. And that shows on the set, in that grouping of people.”
This is not the first time Cotton has been part of show with a cult following. Born in Edmonton, he moved to Kelowna at a young age. In high school, his sister convinced him that taking drama was “cool.”
His teacher later convinced him to study theatre in New York. But while stage may be Cotton’s first love, he eventually moved to Vancouver to take advantage of its many TV and film productions. Up until now, he’s probably best known for his role of prickly scientist Dr. Kavanagh on the sci-fi series Stargate Atlantis. He will also return for a few more episodes of CBC’s Arctic Air this year, where he has a recurring role as the sleazy and criminally inclined rival to Adam Beach’s protagonist.
As for The Killing, Cotton is not allowed to say what his future will be on the show. But he does see the series as another example of TV’s new golden age.
The Killing, which was actually cancelled by AMC after tepid reviews and audience response to Season 2, is back to being a critic’s darling with this new story arc.
“Television seems to have evolved in the past 10 years,” Cotton says.
“With networks like AMC and television being made by HBO and Showtime, the bounds are a little looser. It’s not like it used to be, where TV was TV and had rules for everybody. Now you can do anything you want. I think it opens it up to audiences and gives them what they want to see. It treats audiences with a bit more of respect.”