As we all know, when an actor embodies a character, they try their best to justify the role. Whatever they have to do for it, they do it. They use different methods to understand the character and also compare it to their own personality. Imagine, the character is opposite to their personality or they have to construct a character in a way that their personality doesn’t appear on the surface of the character. It becomes a little difficult for them to suppress the real them. Jason Bateman shares a similar situation with his Ozark character.

Jason Bateman is hilarious but…

Contradictory natures of a character and an actor make it difficult for an actor to play the part. In this regard, Jason Bateman shares his experience of playing Marty Byrde in the Emmy-winner crime drama, Ozark. Recently, in a panel discussion of the actors and creative team, Jimmy Kimmel talks to Julia about some dialogues. Jason, being Jason, adds a harmless, funny comment. Jimmy asks him if that is the secret of the Mindless podcast and they have a good laugh.

“Jason, do you wanna say you were not funny at all, not even once during the whole run of the show, which is weird,” asks Jimmy. He also adds to the question that Jason is the funnier man Jimmy knows and did he decide not to make Marty funny? “…that Marty’s gonna be real straight?” Jason admits Chris had some funny stuff in the first and second season for the character, but he “was so self-conscious about my [his] comedy baggage”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2TpqLOFARo

Jason explained how he wanted to do something different with this character. So, naturally, anything that might seem funny or out of his line of thinking for the character, he would remove it to keep the character serious.

He also added that Chris was cool and supportive of the changes that Jason was suggesting. Jason says the more confident he grew about making the character serious, the more everybody would understand that “people are dying. This is the drama. It is not a comedy.” 

Towards the 3rd season, the drama got darker, and it is understandable not to make Marty a funny character. So, it is quite easy to understand why Jason is not visible on the surface of Marty’s character. And why Marty is so beautifully effective while we watch the show.

What do you think of this revelation? Catch more of Marty by streaming Ozark on Netflix.