E-mail a friendGabriel Byrne
airdate March 11, 2008
Though he discovered his passion for acting later in life, Gabriel Byrne has made up for lost time. He earned a Tony nod for his stage work and a Volta award for lifetime achievement in acting. He also received an Oscar nod as a film producer. The Dublin native previously held various jobs, including archaeologist, cook, bullfighter and Spanish schoolteacher. A well-known human rights activist, Byrne helped launch Amnesty International's Imagine campaign. He currently stars in the HBO series, In Treatment.
Gabriel Byrne
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Gabriel Byrne to this program. The talented actor currently starts in the critically acclaimed HBO series "In Treatment." The show airs weeknights at 9:30 with a cast that includes Blair Underwood. Here now, a scene from "In Treatment."
[Clip]
Tavis: It's nice to meet you.
Gabriel Byrne: You too, Tavis.
Tavis: Glad to have you here.
Byrne: Thank you.
Tavis: I didn't know what clip they were going to play, and that's a fascinating choice because I'll let you explain what the series is but the clip we see now is you sitting, talking to your therapist, but you in fact play a therapist on the show. So I'll let you explain what the series is.
Byrne: Well, the structure of it is - the structure of the series is kind of unusual. You have a doctor, whom I play, who has four patients of various temperaments that you see him interact with over the week, and then on Friday, on the last day of the week, you see him interact with his therapist. So with that knowledge, you then come back to see the next week, having had an insight into what he thinks about his patients.
So part of - I think of the success of the program is that it puts the audience in the room with these two people, and it allows the audience to become the unseen third party in the room so that you get, because you have this knowledge of what my character has in his head, you then see the patients with this knowledge that you have surreptitiously, by the way, gained by spying on him in his therapy.
Because there is a voyeuristic element to the whole thing, the whole notion of being able to listen in on the private conversation and thought of two people is kind of fascinating.
Tavis: I'm glad you raised the word voyeurism, because when I first saw it, my thought was - and I'm curious to juxtapose my thought against yours. My first thought when I saw it, Gabriel, was whether or not a TV audience, an American TV audience - because this series is based on something that runs in Israel.
Byrne: Yes.
Tavis: Very successful in Israel.
Byrne: Yes.
Tavis: I was wondering whether or not an American audience would be interested to sit and watch dialogue every night between really just two characters, and I decided that they would, in part because of the voyeurism aspect of it. Is there something else that you think drives a person to sit and want to pay attention to just two people? Not a lot of action there.
Byrne: It's a very ambitious conceit. Really, you're watching televised radio. You're asking people to really listen to two other people just interacting, but I think also we have a tremendous curiosity about how other people think and behave, and it's part of what it means to be human is to be curious about how other people are, what their private thoughts are, and I think the series also reflects a kind of a need - this is just my opinion, and it may be slightly pedantic.
But the idea that America at this moment is ready to watch a show that is about healing, because America as a country seems to be a country that is in need of some kind of healing, of being listened to. So it strikes a deep chord, I think, somewhere among the general viewing audience.
And also, I think that in terms of the way it's structured and written, I think the idea of having a half-hour episode ties in with the notion that audiences' attention spans are getting smaller and smaller, so that 30 minutes is not that long to invest. Plus I think that people have become very used, recently, in the last couple of years, to watching what they call reality television, and so the line is blurred oftentimes between drama and reality.
Tavis: You've said a couple things I want to go back and unpack. Let me go outside first and then come back inside, and I say outside because you happen to be born and raised in Ireland.
Byrne: Yes.
Tavis: You have a world view of this, and I'm curious as to what you meant - I think I get it, but I want to hear you explain it - what you meant when you suggested that it's your sense right now that America is in need of healing, in need of having someone listen to us. What's at the center of that, given how we are situated as a part of the global world that we live in?
Byrne: Well, I occupy, like many immigrants, exiles, whatever title you want to give us, I think that we occupy a unique view in that we are part of the culture and at the same time we bring a different perspective to it.
I think the last eight years in America have been traumatic and the idea that we need to tell our story and the need to be listened to and the need, the longing to be, in some way to confront and to heal, is something that I think is very deeply rooted in the society.
I live in New York and I've said this before, but I get a tremendous sense in New York of a lack of confidence, lack of certainty about the future, a certain amount of fear. A deep-rooted desire for some kind of coming together, a desire for intimacy.
Tavis: This has how much to do with 9/11, do you think?
Byrne: Oh, I think it has everything to do with -
Tavis: Yeah, that's what I thought you meant, yeah.
Byrne: - with 9/11. I think 9/11 changed America in the most powerful and fundamental ways, but I think that the idea that as a country we need to expand and to move out and to communicate more with other cultures beyond our borders, the need to express who we are to other people, is not just something that I feel that's endemic to the kind of society that we live in, but I think it's what people outside America also want. In a way they've felt that they've lost that over the last eight years.
Tavis: Which raises a fascinating question, a two-part question, in my mind, at least, which is whether or not you think, given your unique perspective, which is why I asked you that to begin with, whether or not you think that Americans feel, by and large, that we are misunderstood by the world at this critical juncture, and whether or not you think that the world is willing to hear what we have to say, born of the fact that there's some sense in their own heart that we may be misunderstood, that the Bush administration is just part of our story.
Byrne: Mm-hmm, I think that's true, and I think that to imagine that everybody outside America has a one-dimensional view of what America is or where it's going or what it's become I think is a facile one. I think that one of the things that I've noticed is that America, culturally, socially, and as a country as a whole, has become more insular.
It has tended to go in on itself instead of reaching out, and that's not good for the rest of the world and it's not good for this country, either. You notice it particularly culturally, I think. There's much more of a flow from this way out that way than there is from out there, in here.
We need to hear other voices, we need to hear other cultures, we need to hear what other people are thinking, otherwise we get to this situation where it becomes a them and an us, and they're completely different from us, and we're completely different from them.
People talk about how much they want that relationship that they had before back with America that they feel that they have lost over the last number of years. The danger of cultural and political insularity is that you leave yourself open to being separated from our common humanity and our common brotherhood, and more than ever now the problems of, say, Ireland or China or America are not just unique to those countries. We have common problems as a global society now that we need to address radically and urgently.
Tavis: I hear your point about nativism and I couldn't - our being nativist, and I couldn't agree with you more. Let me circle now back if I can to the TV show, "In Treatment." Back to that original clip where you're sitting talking to your therapist, what kind of research did you do to play this character, and I'm curious because I'm really curious about whether or not this is true of most therapists, that they talk to their clients during the week and go talk to somebody else about their troubles on Friday.
Byrne: I believe that is the way it operates, and it's understandable that - first of all, I have great respect now for therapists. I actually have not been in therapy myself but I didn't do any research, to answer your first question, because I don't think that you can research listening. You either listen or you don't.
And to listen is a very complex and profound form of action. Reaction is another form of action, and listening is - to truly listen to another person is one of the greatest compliments you can actually pay them. Not just to hear them, but to actually listen and to take it into yourself.
I think the idea that they are being monitored and that they need to go to somebody else to monitor their own perspective and progress I think is a great one. But where does it end? Who's the top guy that they all go to?
Tavis: Right. (Laughs)
Byrne: The guy who says, "Okay, I see the domino effect. I wonder who that top guy is." But I think Europeans tend to be a little bit more skeptical, I think, about therapy than Americans, who have embraced it, I think.
Tavis: Maybe we just have more problems.
Byrne: I think we all have the same problems. There's no problem, really, in terms of the emotions I think that the average American has or doesn't have that we don't have in any other part of the world. I think we're all united by that.
Tavis: Given that you have these four sets of patients Monday through Thursday on the show, then you see your therapist, again, on Friday, as an actor, have you done this long enough now to be most curious about what the character is doing with said patient next week? Is there one that you, every week, can't wait to see what the writers have given you for this particular patient?
Byrne: Well, the way the - the scripts came in and were developed by Rodrigo Garcia Marquez and Stephen Levinson, and I actually didn't know what was going to any of these people. And I kept it that way deliberately, and although we worked through each episode debating points and arguing points and changing things, in the end there was a part of me that didn't know what happened next because that curiosity is very much part of the character.
I don't really - as I was saying earlier on, it's like reading a very good book. You don't want to cheat and go to the very end. And also it was fascinating to watch those actors work through that process, and some of the actors who didn't know what was going to happen to their characters, who suddenly find out in the last couple of weeks what actually happens, to see the look of shock on their faces when they realized where they were actually headed was fascinating.
But that curiosity and enigma and mystery, I think, is essential, at least for me, anyway, because if I know what the person is going to say I kind of - it makes me react in a particular way.
Tavis: Yeah, those are three good words to describe this show: curiosity, enigma, and the third one was - it was good.
Byrne: Mystery.
Tavis: Mystery, there you go. (Laughter) Mystery. Curiosity, enigma, and mystery. The show is called "In Treatment," stars, of course, one Gabriel Byrne, on HBO. They have done it again. Gabriel, good to see you.
Byrne: Thank you very much, Tavis, thank you.
Tavis: Glad to have you on the program.
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