ANATOMY OF A CHARACTER

Vanity Fair's HWD team speaks with the Emmy-nominated stars behind four of this season's most memorable characters: a recovering addict, a grieving mother, a fashion legend, and a suspiciously human robotparticular,

In 2013, a fan asked Benedict Cumberbatch which literary character he'd most like to play. His answer was definitive: Patrick Melrose, the brilliant, damaged vortex at the center of Edward St. Aubyn's devastating quintet of autobiographical novels.

The books—and now Patrick Melrose, the gorgeously harrowing Showtime limited series based on them—trace the life of this charismatic upper-class Englishman as he tries to wrestle free from the damage imposed on him in childhood and learn how to lead a meaningful adult life. "They are very, very funny novels," Cumberbatch says, "and there are very funny bits which turn on a knife's edge, 180 degrees, into tragedy."

The process of translating St. Aubyn's words to another medium took screenwriter and novelist David Nicholls half a decade, but he says he always had Cumberbatch in mind for the lead role, even before the actor independently expressed interest. "Benedict was clearly something special, but everyone had the sense that he is one of those clowns who could also play Hamlet," Nicholls says.

For inspiration, Cumberbatch looked no further than "Teddy" St. Aubyn himself. "I asked him about things of a very personal nature," Cumberbatch says, as well as more specific questions about drug addiction. "For example, injecting cocaine: What the fuck is that life? I mean, why would you do that? And how would you do that? What would happen when you did that? How long would it happen?"

Making sure Cumberbatch looked the part was also crucial. According to costume designer Keith Madden, Patrick comes from a British upper class that doesn't follow fashion, instead favoring traditional dress that might be embellished with a twist of eccentricity; colored socks, for example, are "the seal of the aristocratic upper classes." Patrick may look imperturbable, but Madden hoped to suggest a juxtaposition between his fancy dress and his sordid reality—meetings with drug dealers, descents into a speedballinduced state of madness.

Beyond that, Madden looked to St. Aubyn for guidance. "I was privy to some photographs that Benedict showed me of Edward St. Aubyn as a young boy, and then as a young man in the 1980s. So, that's where a lot of the inspiration came from—even the shape of the sunglasses, and the striped shirts," he says. Sometimes the author himself would visit the set, "and it would be funny, because he would be wearing something very similar to what Benedict would be wearing in the scene," Madden says. "I would say, 'Yeah, we've got it right!' " After all that effort, it's a great relief to Cumberbatch to have done justice to St. Aubyn's creation.

He felt, he says, dual responsibilities, both as an actor bringing a character to life and as a reader of the novels: "I do think he's written some of the best prose of the 21st century, if not the best—and one of my desires is to bring these works to the widest audience."

JOY PRESS

"After the first take, I did go off to the side and just cry like a hard cry."

In Netflix's Seven Seconds, Regina King commands the screen as Latrice, a mother whose son has been critically injured by a white police officer. King's most memorable scene finds Latrice, mad with worry and grief, returning to his hospital room after a hopeful day, only to meet the worst possible news.

atively reserved, a decision all three came to together. "There was that extra, added layer of teamwork," says King. "That scene in

King's inspiration was simple. "Just being a parent," she says. "In all honesty, there is nothing that I feel like you can do to prepare for playing like your child has passed away. It's terrifying to do, because the last thing you want to do is think about your actual child passing away. But you kind of have to."

Working with good people also helped. King cited the collaborative, intimate rapport she shared with the show's creator, Veena Sud, and the late Jonathan Demme, who directed the episode. When Latrice learns of her son's death, her reaction is relparticular, Veena [wrote] it as a quiet pain, a quiet release, and Jonathan agreed as well."

It was also important that King let her emotion exist as naturally as possible. "The worst thing to do is try to cry," she says. "We did maybe three or four takes of this scene. None of them were big and loud and screaming. One take had a quiet anger. One take was just silence. The one they used was crying, then controlling it, and then just sitting there. What would a mother do? She would never want to leave her son's vessel."

That vessel was played, crucially, by a photo double, "an amazing, giving young man," King says. "He lay so still. It was haunting. So I rode that emotion he helped set before me."

The scene took an expected toll on the actress. "It's pretty exhausting," King concedes with a laugh. But she had ways of coping on set. "After the first take, I did go off to the side and just cry—like a hard cry. You gotta release that. I've read about powerful actors who weren't able to shake roles and how that affected them. We've heard all of those stories. People would have to be kind of on standby and let me go through it before they would clean me up to do [the scene] again.

"I did a lot of calling my son while shooting the show," she adds. "Just checking in. It was just to hear his voice and hear the joy in his voice. That was also very helpful in getting me through the role."

RICHARD LAWSON

There's a moment in Westworld's Season Two finale when Jeffrey Wright's Bernard—the audience's disoriented robotic proxy—has to step out of a boat and wordlessly process his surroundings. Though it was among the last scenes to air, it was shot, like much of the finale, out of order—and a perplexed Wright had to make absolutely sure he knew when in Westworld s multiple timelines this moment was happening.

After a 20-minute call with series coshow-runner Jonathan Nolan in the blazing Lake Powell heat, the actor finally had it sorted out. Co-executive producer Frederick Toye watched, stunned, as Wright delivered a completely different performance in Take Two—all without saying a word. In a show full of complicated mysteries, Wright's performance might be Westworld',s most impressive sleight of hand.

Confusion is nothing new for a Westworld. actor, but Wright has always had an extra layer of challenge. As viewers learned late in Season One, he's playing two roles: the human Arnold in one timeline, and his synthetic doppelganger, Bernard, in another. And Wright was asked to repeat his Season One acting subterfuge in Season Two with, if you can believe it, another complicating wrinkle: this time, the actor also played an earlier version of Bernard who was being taught by Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) to act like Arnold.

It's enough to make anyone's head leak cortical fluid. "That might have been the most delicate kind of physical math that I had to do," Wright says. "A character trying to evolve into another character, and at the same time he is the character, and then he's not because he's making missteps. And so it was, really... it took a little bit of puzzling through to get there."

The intent is not to toy with people; the intent is to take people along for a ride."

Wright had to pull this off while somehow remaining the most human and emotionally accessible character on the show—no mean feat for a part-time robot. For this, he says, he's learned to trust Nolan and Westworld co-show-runner Lisa Joy. "I try to mitigate my expectations with this show, because there's no getting ahead of Jonah and Lisa, and it's just an attempt at masochism and confusion to even try. I kind of surrender to my writers."

And while Wright gets that some viewers may remain disoriented, he also sees the value in that. "The frustrations are understandable—but I also think that we tend to want everything, you know? We want to be gratified, we want to be in control. The intent is not to toy with people; the intent is to take people along for a ride." Wright's performance is a large part of why audiences still tune in to Westworld, twisty as it gets. "One thing's for sure," Joy says. "Whatever magic Jeffrey was working, it worked."

JOANNA ROBINSON

For a woman whose name is synonymous with flashy prints and rock 'n' roll swagger, Donatella Versace seems remarkably reserved—at least in FX's depiction of her. Oscar winner Penelope Cruz, who has met the designer multiple times and worn her label to many events, feels so protective of her that, months after portraying Versace in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, the actress shies away from disclosing specific details of their conversations. Cruz will say, however, that when she was first offered the role, she knew she couldn't accept it without getting Versace's blessing.

"She was not really involved in the development of the series," Cruz says. "But she told me, 'If somebody's going to do this, I'm happy it's you.' I needed to hear those words before saying yes."

Cruz had a few months to prepare for the anthology, directed and executiveproduced by Ryan Murphy, during which she watched numerous videos of Versace, particularly clips of her and her beloved older brother Gianni. She also worked closely with dialect coach Tim Monich to nail Donatella's signature raspy voice: "It was not just the Italian accent, which I have done before. She speaks in a very unique way, in a very rock ⅛' roll way. And that was the key for me: to find that essence without trying to do an imitation."

Cruz says she is always open to physical, even prosthetic-aided, transformations for her characters. But thanks to the show's hair-and-makeup team, she managed to avoid any heavy prosthetics. "It was just a little bit of makeup in the right places," she explains—plus the perfect wig, so real that Cruz was asked if she had dyed her hair, and bleached-blond eyebrows. That subtle look helped Cruz ensure her portrayal wasn't a caricature. "It was important that they didn't overdo anything," she says.

With her look in place, Cruz could concentrate fully on her performance—particularly the relationship between Donatella and Edgar Ramirez's Gianni. Though Donatella has all the confidence in the world in her brother, she has little confidence in herself—an insecurity that takes center stage in the episode in which Gianni outfits Donatella in a black bondage-collared dress, which she wears to the Vogue 100th Anniversary Party as her brother watches proudly.

"She told me, 'If somebody's going to do this, I'm happy it's you.' I needed to hear those words."

Cruz was so emotionally invested in playing Versace that she almost couldn't come to grips with the project ending. "Part of me was completely refusing the idea," she says. "You know, like, How come? I don't get this. This doesn't make sense."

JULIE MILLER