When not voicing all of your favorite characters on The Simpsons, Hank Azaria plays slimy FBI director Ed Cochran on Showtime’s Ray Donovan, which wraps up its electrifying second season tonight. He’s been a welcome addition to an already stellar cast, and we recently had the chance to briefly talk to him about the reaction to his character on Twitter, and of course, sex scenes.
While checking Twitter to see what people were saying about your Ray Donovan character, one of things I noticed was someone hoping he’d get stuffed into a suitcase. What about him do you think people are reacting to?
Well he’s a creep. He’s at least a borderline sociopath. He starts out so straight and you kind of root for him to clean up the situation, and he ends up being the worst of them all. So he’s not a particularly likable guy. But I’ve had a lot of fun playing him, and hopefully people are loving hating him. Unless the suitcase comment was just about my acting, in which case I can only apologize. Or stuff myself into a suitcase, I guess.
How does it feel that thanks to Ray Donovan, when you Google your name, the words “sex scene†come up?
Mission accomplished. I’m sure my wife is really excited about that. Anytime you see that in a script, actually, everybody on the cast and crew had read it before I did, and they were like, “Did you see what’s coming next week … ? So it sort of had been built up for me, and that’s going to be a day of really awkward moments. And it always is. You just try to get through it as fast as you can, while also remembering to act, and not just be naked in front of everybody.
It’s a show with such a large cast. Is there anyone whom you haven’t shared a scene with this season but would have liked to?
I’d love to work with Wendell Pierce. I love him. I think it would be fun for Cochran to mix it up with Ray’s wife [played by Paula Malcomson].
Is there anything you can tease for the season finale?
All I can really say is, things do wrap up in a few ways you’re not expecting them to. It gets pretty insane. I don’t want to give anything away, but it gets as insane as you’d imagine.