{"id":37559,"date":"2021-10-12T15:05:45","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T15:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=37559"},"modified":"2021-10-12T15:05:45","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T15:05:45","slug":"nick-robinson-maid-netflix-interview","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/nick-robinson-maid-netflix-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Robinson on Channeling the Anger of an Abusive Partner in Netflix\u2019s ‘Maid’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nick
Nick Robinson in Maid<\/i> (Photo: Ricardo Hubbs\/Netflix)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nick Robinson describes his character as the biggest villain in Maid<\/em><\/a>. Sean is an alcoholic. He\u2019s emotionally abusive and vindictive toward his ex, Alex (Margaret Qualley<\/a>). In so many ways, he\u2019s the reason Alex finds herself scrubbing toilets and navigating a byzantine welfare system to provide for herself and their two-year-old daughter Maddy.<\/p>\n

But Maid<\/em>, which is based on Stephanie Land\u2019s 2019 memoir, isn\u2019t a simplistic Lifetime-esque<\/a> tale of a wronged woman. The series is a nuanced, at times grueling examination of what it takes for poor people to get by in America. The real villain here is income inequality, and while the show never lets Sean off the hook or excuses his reprehensible behavior, it does make room for him to be a complex, multidimensional character: an addict trying his best to clean up his act; a father who loves his daughter; a working-class guy who can\u2019t seem to break the cycle of poverty and abuse that shaped him.<\/p>\n

With Maid<\/em> holding steady at No. 2 in Netflix\u2019s list of its top 10 shows, Robinson chatted with GRAZIA<\/em> about the reaction to his difficult character and why he thinks the show is a piece of visceral political art.<\/p>\n

\"Nick
Nick Robinson (right) with Margaret Qualley and Rylea Nevaeh Whittet in Maid<\/i> (Photo: courtesy of Netflix)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What has the reaction to the show and to your character been like? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been mixed — for Sean especially. He\u2019s the biggest villain in Alex\u2019s life. So, the reactions that I\u2019ve been hearing from people have been very mixed. It\u2019s been a lot of \u201cI love Sean. I hate Sean. I love Sean. I hate Sean.\u201d It\u2019s great for me to hear, because I was worried people weren\u2019t gonna love him at all. I was worried it was gonna be just all hate. So, the fact that people are still kind of rooting for him on some level was great to hear. I\u2019m not on Twitter — I only have Instagram. But I\u2019ve had people sending me screenshots of tweets and people\u2019s reactions and they\u2019ve been all across the board — some funny, some really heartfelt and poignant. I\u2019ve had a couple people reach out that were deeply moved by the show, one of whom is a mother. And I feel like it just kinda hits home a little bit differently if you have kids. But by and large the reaction has been incredibly positive, and in some cases kind of profound, just hearing people\u2019s personal stories. They feel comfortable sharing their stories because of this show. It\u2019s really exceeded my expectations.<\/p>\n

When you read the description of the show, Sean is the abusive partner that Alex leaves. That\u2019s the inciting event of the series, and it kind of makes you expect Sean to be a villain. But it\u2019s more complicated than that. How would you describe the role Sean plays in Alex\u2019s story? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Sean is sort of the biggest obstacle — at least at first — for Alex. He kind of blocks her, time and time again, in her quest to make a better life for Maddy and to change her circumstance. But I think Sean very much loves his daughter, and his family means a lot to him. And I think a lot of his anger and drinking issues are misplaced. He\u2019s just out of control.<\/p>\n

One of the things that [director and executive producer] John Wells said to me when we were talking about Sean as a character was that he has been taking care of other people his entire life. The show doesn\u2019t go into it so much because it\u2019s a show about Alex. But his mother was a drug addict, had substance abuse issues. He was caring for his little brother all the way up through school, dropped out of high school to care for him. And just as he was starting to be able to live life on his<\/em> terms, he gets Alex pregnant. And so, there\u2019s just all this resentment and anger. And it\u2019s not right at all. But that was something that made me have some compassion for him. He just can\u2019t seem to escape his circumstances, this vicious cycle of poverty and trauma from his parents and his upbringing, and not being able to ask for help and having no coping mechanisms other than alcohol; having that behavior as what was modeled to him as a kid. He\u2019s a complicated character and there\u2019s no easy answers.<\/p>\n

What does Sean want from Alex? How does that relate to the way he treats her? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, it is a weird thing. It\u2019s like, if he wanted her in his life, he would change his behaviors. And I think he does try. But he falls back into these old habits and patterns. I felt like I had grown up sort of knowing people like this, and loyalty to family is a huge thing — even when that loyalty is kind of maybe not the best for the person. You stick it out. Family is family. I think that that\u2019s one thing: even if he\u2019s unhappy in the relationship, they made a family, and his parents probably broke up, and he\u2019s not gonna do that.<\/p>\n

I also think that it\u2019s about control as well. For Sean a lot of it is about being the man of the house and being in control of what goes on in Alex\u2019s circumstance so that she can\u2019t abandon him. I think a lot of it has to do with control.<\/p>\n

\"Nick
Nick Robinson in Maid<\/i> (Photo: Ricardo Hubbs\/Netflix)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We see a lot of flashbacks to Sean being violent. Talk to me about filming those scenes. What was that like? How do you get yourself to that state? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t my favorite stuff. We would make sure that Rylea wasn\u2019t around. We would try to minimize her exposure to any of the yelling and screaming as much as possible. I was listening to a lot of Eminem and I would just do push-ups, and I had an elastic resistance band that I would just pull. I\u2019m not naturally an angry person. It\u2019s not something that comes easily to me. That\u2019s definitely not my first instinct when I\u2019m upset. So, just trying to find ways to really get my blood flowing, so to speak. I probably looked like a crazy person, but I was just trying to channel some of that anger. It was a challenge, but kind of a welcome one. In this perverse way it was kinda cathartic to be yelling. Not so much when I was yelling at<\/em> [Margaret], but there were scenes from her POV where I\u2019m just screaming into a camera lens, and that stuff — I felt weird afterwards, but that release was kind of perversely cathartic.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s it like watching those scenes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It depends on the scene. I don\u2019t love<\/em> watching myself. I don\u2019t run away from it, but it\u2019s not something that I really seek out. So, watching some stuff, I\u2019m like, That doesn\u2019t look like me, doesn\u2019t sound like me<\/em>. That\u2019s good! Other times, I\u2019m watching it like, Oh, god!<\/em> But that\u2019s always how it goes.<\/p>\n

Your scenes are mostly focused on Alex\u2019s struggle first to get out of this relationship and then to deal with Sean\u2019s instability. What did you take away from seeing the rest of the series — all the scenes of Alex working and struggling against all these other odds that are stacked against her? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, that was one of the best parts, for me, of watching the show. There was so much of it that I wasn\u2019t involved in, so I got to see a lot of the show for the first time really as a viewer. A lot of the stuff between Margaret and Andi [MacDowell] really hit for me. Especially towards the end, I just feel like there was something special happening there between the two of them. So, that was fun for me because I had not seen any of that.<\/p>\n

And the series as a whole, I mean, I knew what it was about going into it. I\u2019d read all the scripts and I knew what to expect, but it still was much more affecting than I\u2019d even anticipated. To see, in all the detail, Alex\u2019s journey and all the obstacles set in her way, and her being able to overcome each one and eventually break the cycle — it just felt like a huge victory.<\/p>\n

All the scenes of Alex dealing with the welfare system, the hoops she has to jump through, really do provoke an emotional response. I found myself getting anxious and overwhelmed just watching. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s asking a lot of people. It\u2019s asking something from the audience. It\u2019s visceral.<\/p>\n

\"Nick
Nick Robinson and Rylea Nevaeh Whittet in Maid<\/i> (Photo: Ricardo Hubbs \/ Netflix)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Obviously, the show is all about the sort of things working people have to do to survive in America. I\u2019m curious what kind of conversations you had on set about income inequality. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I mean, there is an irony in a bunch of actors getting together to make a story about working class people. That was not lost on me. But we did try to make it as realistic as possible and show the situations that Stephanie really lived through. It\u2019s all spelled out in the book, the insane bureaucracy that she had to deal with, all of the forms and the sub-forms. It\u2019s a shame how incredibly difficult — and it\u2019s intentional\u2014how difficult the welfare system is to navigate. It\u2019s intentionally making you work really, really, really hard for not a lot of assistance. And I hope that the show can dispel some of the myths around poverty, like welfare queens, for example; people just living off of a government check. It doesn\u2019t really exist, because as soon as you hit a certain threshold of income, your benefits disappear. It\u2019s this weird catch-22 and this balancing act that Alex has to do and that Stephanie wrote about in even greater detail in her book, about just the real cruelty of these systems that are designed to be difficult and be cruel in some instances. If one<\/em> thing had gone differently for Alex — a missed ferry or having even fewer resources available than she already had — she might not have been able to get out at all. It could have been a very different story. That\u2019s definitely stuff that we talked about.<\/p>\n

Do you think of this show as political art? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I mean, I think that everything is political these days. Everything. So, in that sense yes. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s trying to be political in the sense of Right\/Left, red\/blue, Democrat\/Republican. I just think it\u2019s only political in the sense that it\u2019s a show that stands firmly on the side of working class people, and trying to show what it is that they\u2019re going through. It\u2019s dealing with these issues that inevitably lead back to politics and why these circumstances exist in the first place, and a lot of it is Republican dismantling of social safety net programs that, again, have been designed to be difficult and confusing and cruel and not provide a whole lot of help because of this very American idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and self-reliance. Which are all great qualities to have, but in reality, when you\u2019re in these situations, a lot of times it\u2019s just not feasible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29097,"featured_media":37570,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,16],"yoast_head":"\nNick Robinson on Channeling the Anger of an Abusive Partner in 'Maid' - Grazia USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Maid's Nick Robinson chatted with 'GRAZIA' about the reaction to his difficult character and why he thinks the show is a piece of visceral political art.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/nick-robinson-maid-netflix-interview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nick Robinson on Channeling the Anger of an Abusive Partner in Netflix\u2019s 'Maid'\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Maid's Nick Robinson chatted with 'GRAZIA' about the reaction to his difficult character and why he thinks the show is a piece of visceral political art.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/nick-robinson-maid-netflix-interview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Grazia USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2021\/10\/MAID_110_Unit_00580R.jpg?resize=1024,683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"10 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/nick-robinson-maid-netflix-interview\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/nick-robinson-maid-netflix-interview\/\",\"name\":\"Nick Robinson on Channeling the Anger of an Abusive Partner in 'Maid' - 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