Cerveris’ role in locally filmed ‘ Mindhunter’ is finally revealed
“No, I don’t play a serial killer,” Michael Cerveris was saying a year ago, sitting in a Sewickley restaurant, talking about his role in “Mindhunter.”
His participation in the long- delayed second season of the Netflix series was top secret then — but now that it has been announced that season two will begin Aug. 16 and Cerveris appears in trailer for the show, it’s time.
The two- time Tony Award- winning stage and screen actor returned a call Monday to say his character has all but been laid out in the new trailer.
Cotter Smith departs as Chief Shepard this season, while Cerveris was brought in as the new unit chief. His character is an enthusiastic supporter of the mind- hunting work being done by Holden Ford ( Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench ( Holt McCallany), the FBI agents tasked with profiling serial killers.
On Monday, Cerveris noted that word had leaked about his appearance in the coming season of “Mindhunter,” with cases involving Charles Manson, “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz and the Atlanta child murders.
“People just assumed I would be playing one of the killers,” said Cerveris, whose roles have included Sweeney Todd — “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” — and the heinous Professor Pyg on TV’s “Gotham.” “Someone on the internet even put my face side by side with a picture of David Berkowitz, speculating I would play him.”
During the filming of season two of “Mindhunter,” Cerveris got an apartment in Sewickley and performed a benefit concert for barebones productions in Braddock and a gig with his countryAmericana band, Loose Cattle. He was finding it hard to explain why he had become a sometimes resident of the Pittsburgh suburb during an interview, and he finally spilled the “Mindhunter” news.
He had been told he needed to be in Pittsburgh for as long as director David Fincher needed him, and, he said, “Cotter was one of the people who helped me navigate this, because he was in a similar situation for a while. He was trying to go back and forth to New York where he was teaching, and it just became untenable.”
Smith, who has a role on the CBS series “The Code,” among other parts, became a full- time resident of Mt. Lebanon while filming “Mindhunter” here. Cerveris chose Sewickley because “it was ideally located between the studio in Cranberry, the offices down in the Strip, and my dad lives in Franklin Park,” the West Virginia native said.
Fans have been waiting impatiently for the return of “Mindhunter,” which debuted in 2017. Cerveris said the delay came when “they decided to build these stages in Cranberry in the old American Eagle Outfitters distribution center. The studios are great, which is fantastic because it’s another robust place here, but it took them a while to do that.”
He added that, going forward, “I think they want to be on a quicker schedule.”