“I didn’t like him,” actor James Badge Dale reveals about how his character of Detective Ray Abruzzo in the Massachusetts-set “Hightown” stands out from others in his career. He continues in an exclusive interview with Gold Derby about the new drama on Starz co-led by Monica Raymund (watch the video above), “It drew me in that way of sometimes, things you’re scared of — sometimes, things you have a fear of, it’s worth diving into and trying to explore these parts of yourself.” Dale admits about playing the role, “The hardest thing is sometimes to have fun with being unlikable; the hardest thing is to go out there and put your ego aside.” Adding that Ray has “a tornado of a personality,” he explains, “We all want to be likable in some way and Ray does care about being likable, but he’s a very abrasive personality.”
Having turned to feature films exclusively, “Hightown” represents Dale’s first television acting credit in a decade. “It was more of a lifestyle choice than anything,” he explains. “Maybe I should have looked at going back to television earlier. There’re so many great filmmakers who’ve moved into television and you look at what we did with ‘Hightown,’ doing eight episodes. That didn’t really exist back when I doing TV 10 years ago.” Dale will next be seen in “The Empty Man,” which he calls “a cool horror movie” that is “more psychological than a hacker-slasher film.”
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