Tom Bateman talks Based on a True Story and Magpie

Tom Bateman shared his experience in playing a complicated serial killer in the Peacock tv series Based on a True Story as well as writing the screenplay for the movie Magpie.

When he first auditioned for the role of Matt in Based on a True Story he found that being given the space to play every emotion and tone within the same scene from anger and rage to charm or sadness that it opened up how to play the volatile character. In his research for the role he found that psychopaths tend to be chameleons skilled at adapting themselves into who people want them to be, Through this he worked to capture different versions of Matt always shifting depending on who he is in a scene with. He credits his scene partners, Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina highly with a lot of what they’re able to accomplish together in the show.

Stepping into season 2 we meet Matt trying to silence his murderous urges. He found the experience of playing this to be a lot of fun because even if Matt isn’t killing people, the energy he had for this still had to be channeled elsewhere.

Tom also spoke about writing the screenplay for the movie Magpie following Daisy Ridley having an initial idea that it would be interesting to explore dynamics of a young child actor on a movie set alongside the actor who plays her mother. Tom started asking himself what the story would look like to tell it from the perspective of the childs mother who is at home by herself while her husband is on set every day and this created the idea for a whip smart neo noir character driven piece. In writing the character of Annette played by Daisy Ridley, he found himself able to unlock a lot of the characters internal world because of Ridley’s skillset. He took a lot of joy in writing the story and thinking about how audiences would respond to the twist at the end, as well as what the experience would be to watch the film again once they knew the truth.

Watch the full conversation below: