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HBO presents

Lance Reddick
Chat with "Oz's" Mobay

July 13, 2000

Actor Lance Reddick, who plays the role of Mobay in the television series "Oz", discusses in an online interview, his career and experiences as an actor.

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HBO: Welcome to Oz Chat! Tonight's guest is Lance Reddick who plays Mobay in "Oz" this season. He's also featured in three "Oz" webisodes produced by Tom Fontana (Oz's creator) exclusively for HBO's "Oz" web site. . Lance will answer questions about his career and his unique experience portraying Mobay on TV and on the web! This is Lance's first "Oz" season, but not his first acting gig as he's appeared in feature films, and other TV shows. Welcome, Lance

Lance: Hi. I'm happy to be here, and I welcome your questions.

Bugsy: Which medium do you prefer, theater, TV or films?

Lance: I like them all. Each one presents a different challenge, so it's hard for me to pick one. The thing I love about stage is the immediate feedback you get from the audience, the amount of preparation time that you have, and how much you have to use your body to communicate. I also love the immediacy of it. It's scary, and at the same time thrilling every night, because you never know quite what's going to happen. So if there are any mistakes, you have to improvise. There are no retakes. The thing I love about television and film is how much subtlety and nuance you can bring to a performance

Show: Did you see a lot of "Oz" before you got involved in the show?

Lance: To be honest, I had never seen the show before. I knew it by reputation, because it has a reputation of being one of the best shows on television.

Brig: Have you ever had any moments from the show that have shocked you?

Lance: Yes, there have. There have been at least a couple of times when I've read the script when I've thought, "Oh my God. That happens to my character?" or "I have to do that?" I'll let you see what that is.

Ozrules: I notice that you had guest roles on SVU ( Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). Did you actively seek out the role on "Oz," or was it offered to you because of your SVU connections?

Lance: Not at all. They happened completely independently of each other. I auditioned for SVU and started doing that role a few months before I started on "Oz."

Aquarelle: Do you get any coaching for the accent, like how to say certain words? Do you ever accidentally slip into the wrong accent?

Lance: No. I was fortunate in that before I had auditioned for the role, I had worked extensively on the Jamaican accent. I have a good ear for accents, and I was trained well on how to work on an accent at school. I worked from tapes, and I worked on my accent every single day, so that I think it actually got better as the show went on.

HolyMoly7: Has anything funny happened on the set?

Lance: Wow! All the time. Yes. Funny things happen on the set all the time. I think the funniest thing for me was listening to a scene between Zero O'Reily and his brother. Having never seen the show before and knowing Scott Winters as a person who is extremely intelligent and very intellectual, I was shocked to hear him play Zero. His brother made a comment about someone being ruthless, and he asked who Ruth was.

Sister: What excited you about Mobay when you first heard about the character?

Lance: Well, the first thing that excited me about Mobay, just as an actor, was that he's undercover. And because he's Jamaican as his undercover self and not as his real self, it was like having an opportunity to play two characters at once, which is something that you rarely find in television or film. The other thing that excited me about it was that because of the nature of the situation, there was an incredible opportunity for character development and drama.

SmileyFace: How do you think being on HBO makes a difference?

Lance: It allows for more realism, because there aren't nearly as many constraints around language, violence, and sexuality, which I think is crucial for a prison drama.

Aquarelle: How often and how long has the shooting been? Like how many hours in a day or week?

Lance: I never added up my hours, but each episode shoots for seven work days, and I usually worked five of those days in each episode, and sometimes six. Occasionally, there were two days in each episode that I worked ten to twelve hours, because of all the group scenes in Emerald City.

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