EVAN PETERS

Mare of Easttown

In the third episode of HBO’s limited series, Peters had to pull off a feat that might be difficult for most actors: playing drunk. “We talked early in rehearsal about the levels of drunkenness,” Peters says of preparing for the scene with showrunner Craig Zobel and co-star Kate Winslet. “You see this guy who’s put together, who seems like he’s doing OK. But then you see him at this bar, and he’s just absolutely shit-canned. Like, what’s going on with this guy?”

Peters dug deep into his character Colin Zabel’s past to find out how the detective got to his present. “You have to try to empathize with your character and understand why they are doing what they are doing,” he says. “The hardest thing for me to try to do, to get right in a scene, is [finding] that line of [a person] taking stock of their life — looking at where they thought they’d be.” At the bar, Colin bonds with Winslet’s Mare over their failed marriages and professional disappointments. “He is stuck and has failed to pull himself out of that feeling and ultimately feels like a total imposter.”

Many months after shooting (and earning an Emmy in September for the role), Peters now laughs about his own imposter syndrome while filming the bar scene. “I went crying to Craig, ‘I failed. I blew it! I’m going to have to shadow you now — I’m going to have to learn to direct.’ ”

Evan Peters on Mare of Easttown