I don't give a damn if you like Blackbeard. I don't care if you think he is an absolute despot. Do you believe me? If you do, I've done my work.

It really reminds me of the great movies of the 30's and 40's with huge sets and voluminous fireplaces you could walk around in. Glazed floors. I was expecting a Busby Berkley dance number. Big fanfare and all the girls coming out. I'd have joined in. It's got that scale, you know?

The way Shakespeare wrote Fallstaff is with a heightened language and everything.

You just have to open the newspapers in most Western news to see real violence.

I don't think you see a pirate with a parrot on his shoulder, for example. And even with the accents.

Hence the genius of having Ken steer this ship as well. You have to invest these characters with a Shakespearian quality and not in a way that might disengage the audience but in a way that actually lets you play to an audience.

As an actor, I relish and delight in doing things that I'm not necessarily the demographic for. This is a demographic that is touching the psyche of a certain age group, facing the real internal questions of people who are going through rites of passage into adulthood. It's earth-shaking stuff.