Dead set on role in show
James Marsden was killed off at the end of the first season of Dead to Me. In season 2, he steals the show, writes
THE first season of Dead to Me ended with James Marsden's character dead in the water — face down, eyes open, blood coming out of his head.
The lying, cheating, moneylaundering Steve Wood was a floating corpse in a pool, and Jen Harding and Judy Hale — played by Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, respectively — were trading panicked glances when the finale cut to black.
What really happened that night is revealed throughout the second season. While the 10 episodes are sprinkled with flashbacks of a cold, harsh Steve, they also include scenes with his warm, semiidentical twin brother Ben, also played by Marsden.
We spoke to Marsden (46) and Dead to
Me creator/showrunner Liz Feldman about transcending a tired soap opera trope.
There's no question: Steve is dead. How did Ben come to be?
James Marsden: Season 1 was a massive hit. That's great! But then I was like, ‘‘Oh . . . I'm dead. I'm floating in a pool, fully, fully dead, with blood coming out of my head.’’ I emailed Liz to congratulate her on the extreme success of the show, and I added, ‘‘P.S. Is there any way to survive a head wound/drowning? Even if it's in a funny way? Like I can only move my left hand and the right side of my face? Because it'd be so great to keep working together.’’
Liz Feldman: I couldn't resist the opportunity to work with James Marsden again. Sometimes you get the right combination of writer and actor, and I loved writing for him. After I got his email, I thought, what if there was a way to keep him on? I definitely didn't want to make it that somehow Steve had survived — that just seemed like a bridge too far.
I was pacing around my house and thought, ‘‘Is it crazy to make him a twin?’’ Once I allowed myself to think that, I started laughing out loud by myself and I just couldn't stop laughing. It was so ridiculous! But once I started to really delve into who this character could be — what kind of person would be the twin brother of a person like Steve — Ben started to form. And it started to seem really compelling that Jen would have to repeatedly look at the face of the man she killed.
Were you nervous
about making Ben distinct from Steve in the audience's eyes?
Feldman: We knew that in order to pull this off, we had to make it grounded and real for the people who were experiencing this, and we had to threedimensionalise Ben. It is certainly a risky choice, but I'm glad we did it.
Marsden: I've never played a character who was a twin, and I'm fully aware that stepping into this kind of thing could be very tricky. You don't want it to come off like a gimmick. I'll be honest, I was nervous.
The whole season kind of hinges on this. I remember going into my first day of work, and the first words out of Christina's mouth were, ‘‘Wow, so, twin? OK, well, no pressure!’’ And in a separate conversation, Linda was like, ‘‘Twin, huh? Don't sink our ship!’’
Feldman: We did all this research and found that it's fairly common that one twin is more dominant. I thought, what if Ben had a health issue he was born with that maybe made his life more challenging, that things didn't come as easily to him? How would that inform what kind of man he becomes? It was important to create a believable inverse of Steve — not just a polar opposite but a nuanced, textured character who is believable in his own trauma and pain, because that's one of the threads that all our characters share.
Marsden: Ben couldn't be more different from Steve. It's that natureversusnurture thing: these guys had the exact same start and they look similar physically, but they're completely different people inside — meaning, in their hearts and minds and souls. He was always the one who was maybe not as charming or smart or cutthroat or good at sports. He doesn't always get the girl, he's never been a top dog or a hot shot; he was always living in Steve's shadow, his whole life. But I think that created a better human being, a character who was more sympathetic, more honest, a better man. And even though his heart was complicated physically, he has a much more pure heart.
Let's talk about those dance moves. The worm! That Magic Mike moment!
Marsden: Oh, God [laughs]. I remember reading the script and it said ‘‘Ben does a little tap step’’, and I don't know how to tap. But I can joke dance, you know? I don't usually get to play characters with this quality of unabashed goofiness —
Enchanted was probably the closest — but I honestly think I'm better at playing those guys that are more goofy than I am playing somebody who's super cool.
Feldman: It's very hard to tap dance and I have a lot of respect for people who do it, but there's something about this middleaged guy saying he could tap dance that seemed like ‘‘peak dorkiness’’. — TCA