This week we had the opportunity to interview Pablo Schreiber from Orange Is the New Black in support of season 1 hitting DVD this Tuesday, May 13.
The actor shared some fantastic views about Pornstache’s personality and character growth. Fans of Orange Is the New Black know Pablo Schrieber as George “Pornstache” Mendez, but they might not know that Schrieber’s personality is the exact opposite of the guard’s.
Check out what he had to say about his character’s redeem-ability, and if we can expect more human moments from the guard in season 2.
Yeah, he definitely doesn’t know what the hell a pogonologist is, for one. He identifies himself with being called a cocky person by society, but the fact that you tell me that pogonologists identify mustaches with cockiness is pretty perfect.
He’s one of the favorite characters I’ve gotten to do just because of that fact. He thinks he’s God’s gift to women and thinks he’s the greatest thing ever, and he’s really more than a little repugnant.
You know him, probably, more than a lot of others do. So I’d like to know if you think he’s a redeemable person. Especially after all the things he’s done. Is he too far gone?
I think everyone’s redeemable, I guess that’s my fatal flaw. All behavior, to me, is relatively easily explainable. And particularly the most hideous behavior, the most awful behavior always comes out of our deepest feelings and insecurities.
So, yeah I think he’s just a very scared guy. He’s afraid of not being cool, of not being sexy, he’s afraid of not being all the thing he tries so hard to be. I think that’s quite redeemable. He’s just a scared man behaving the best he knows how.
I think there’s then an added element of redeem-ability with how we saw him behave at the end of season one, which is just head over heals in love. He fell for Daya in a big way and a lot of the bluster we saw at the early season melted and faded away. It was apparent all he really wanted was connection, and all he wanted were people to get to know him.
Has he gone too far? That’s up for the audience to decide. I think the possibility for redemption is there for every moment, and we can always turn around and make things better.
Do you think the women at the prison would ever be able to see past what he’s done and see his redeem-ability?
I think, probably, for the most part the majority of the women would definitely not be able to forgive him. I think there’s a possibility for redemption in the eyes of one very important woman, for him, but we’ll just have to wait and see in season 2 if that moment of redemption could happen.
Do you like to portray a likable version of him, then? Or do you prefer playing the role of the douchebag guard?
The reason I like this character is that gap between how the world perceives him and how he perceives himself, so you know. I don’t know what it would take to make me be interested in him being a nice guy, unless maybe you thought he was an asshole and he’s really a nice guy. Maybe if that perception gap flipped the other way, that would be interesting but yeah, he is cut from a very specific cloth and that’s the reason I was interested enough to play him and the reason I keep going.
But that said, I trust Jenji [Kohan, the creator]. She’s one of those people I trust implicitly, and I love her voice so whatever she decides… she has a very good ear for dialogue, for one, and also just a really keen sense of where to take a character and how to keep people on their toes; how to surprise people with the changes of a character at all times. I trust her with that stuff, and for me to say where the character should go would be mistrustful of her sensibility.
When you got the role, did you expect people to hate on you as much as they do?
No, I didn’t really think about it in those terms. I definitely didn’t expect the level of hatred towards the character to be as heavy as it was, but if I’m being honest I didn’t really think about it either. I think it was a lot of fun, and I think that’s maintained even though that people love to hate him. I think most people find him a lot of fun as well.
And yeah, I didn’t really think about whether or not he was going to be hated but when the season came out I was like “Oh, okay. Right. Got it.”
Did filming the second season feel distinctly different than the first season, or was it more a feeling of family getting back together and familiarity?
It was distinctly different, but it was both. It was wonderful to get back and get to play with everyone from season one, and parts of it were like “Oh yeah, we’ve done this before. This is similar.” But then there were things about it that were very different.
[With] the success like that show has had, there’s things that don’t get to stay the same. They change just by the nature of being told that the show was great by a bunch of people. There was a real sense, when I was back on set, that something important was being done whereas in the first season no one had any clue what the show was going to be or how it was going to be received, we were just throwing stuff out there. So yeah, there was a definite difference with how the set felt.
‘Orange Is the New Black’ hits DVD May 13
Earlier this week we launched a contest in which you can win a copy!
We’ll get to see more of Pablo Schreiber and his character, Pornstache on June 6 exclusively on Netflix!
Now that you know more about the actor that plays him, would you guys like to see Pornstache be redeemed at all during the show’s run, or would you prefer he stay as gritty as he is? Let us know in the comments below!