Westworld's Jeffrey Wright Worried That He'd Get Bored With Playing Bernard
This post contains spoilers for "Westworld" season 4, including the series finale.
HBO's "Westworld" had the misfortune to end just as ChatGPT was making itself known and the world was becoming aware of how far real-life AI has come. It's tempting to read into that, not to mention co-showrunner Jonathan Nolan's parting comments about "our AI overlords." Like, maybe the AI canceled "Westworld" for getting too close to the truth.
What's clear is that actor Jeffrey Wright's journey as AI programmer Bernard Lowe has reached its end on "Westworld." Wright no longer has to worry about getting bored with his character, since some all-powerful AI HBO has officially canceled the show after four seasons, giving him and other main cast members a nice severance package in the form of millions. However, there was a time when Wright doubted whether Bernard would be able to sustain his interest as an actor.
This seems like a misplaced fear now, since Bernard's story was never less than interesting even when the show around him sometimes struggled to remain lucid. In an August 2022 interview with Complex, Wright indicated that he developed more of a gradual appreciation for Bernard:
"I've come to understand Bernard's emotional core over time. That's been wonderful, actually, to have worked on a show for as long as we've worked on this, to kind of really sink down into the skin of the character in a way that's very familiar — that comes with time. It was something that was a bit unexpected for me, but looking back, in hindsight, makes sense. I thought, prior to working on a series like this, that it might be uninteresting after a while to return to the same character continually, year after year, but what I've found with our show is the opposite."
Into the Sublime with Bernard
The twists and turns of Bernard's story began in "Westworld" season 1 with the revelation that he was, in fact, a robotic host, made to look and seem convincingly human in every way. In season 2, Bernard went the way of Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse-Five," becoming unstuck in time, so that he/we never knew if he was in the present or flashing back or forward.
Season 4 brought Bernard into the quasi-eternal realm of the Sublime, where he was able to see how every possible scenario would play out. All of them ended in his death, which finally came in the penultimate episode of "Westworld." At least Bernard saw it coming and was able to walk into the light with dignity, right?
Though "Westworld" was sometimes criticized for its overcomplicated plot and lack of clarity on certain points, Jeffrey Wright cited the show's writing as the thing that had helped him come away with a better understanding of Bernard:
"It has to do with the quality of our writing and our writers, but also with this opportunity to know the emotional and intellectual life of a character in a way that only comes from spending so many days with it. It's pretty gratifying. I've got, by now, a pretty strong understanding of how Bernard would handle his emotional life or how he responds emotionally [or] internally to any given circumstance; it's come with the territory."
Alas, HBO (or Skynet, or whoever) has even exiled "Westworld" from its in-house streaming service, much like it will soon exile "HBO" from the name of that service, combining it with Discovery+ to become just "Max." However, if you want to reenter the Sublime with Bernard, you can do that for free on Roku (albeit with ads), where "Westworld" is now streaming.