Timothy V. Murphy Dishes on True Detective in New Interview

By Reuben Levine | Sep 3, 2015

Timothy V. Murphy didn’t have a huge role in True Detective season two, but as Frank’s antagonist, Osip, he consistently stole the scenes he was in. In this new interview with Den of Geek, Murphy speaks candidly of his time working on True Detective and his future roles. A common theme in True Detective related interviews is secrecy, and that’s certainly true of this one as well.

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Murphy says that there was pressure because of the success of the first season, but that he didn’t personally feel any. He was, however, mostly kept in the dark about his character:

"“We weren’t given much information about the characters. It was up to us to interpret the characters how we wanted to in any particular scene we were doing. The scenes were given to us a few days beforehand. I didn’t know the full story or the script. Very little was told to me about the character until I met Nic on the first day and we discussed the character very briefly.”"

This is a little odd considering that Nic Pizzolatto said that he wrote a mountain of backstory for the characters. Why keep it hidden? It’s difficult to say whether or not that tactic enhanced the performances. At least Murphy had a great time with Osip despite not knowing very much:

"“As an actor its great to have those kind of roles, you don’t have to get too much into the emotionality of things, you just play it with a lot of confidence and you can have a huge amount of fun with it because there are no consequences. I love playing the character.”"

Unfortunately True Detective season three doesn’t come up. Considering that Timothy V. Murphy said earlier that season three would be moving to Europe, it’s disappointing to not get more on that. Not that he could, or would, share more. The interview also talks about Murphy’s upcoming FX show, The Bastard Executioner and how his Russian friend is afraid he’ll be getting all the Russian gangster parts after Osip.

Next: Colin Farrell will attempt to not become a lobster in new movie.

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