O-T Fagbenle Explains How He Followed His ‘Yuck’ to Craft ‘Presumed Innocent’ Character

O-T Fagbenle is an actor on the rise . He’s been working in film and television for over 20 years and has experience in theater that goes even further back, but with roles in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Marvel’s “Black Widow,” and most recently “Loot” and “Presumed Innocent” for Apple TV+, audiences are finally starting to take notice of him. How could they not? The ease with which he takes on each performance has become more and more enticing, even when he’s playing a gross district attorney like Nico Della Guardia on “Presumed Innocent.”

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Chatting with GQ for a recent interview , Fagbenle discussed the process of taking on the character and how the writing guided him in the right direction.

“There was a moment in the script where some of the other characters are watching my character on television, and they were like, ‘Oh, he’s so yuck.’ And I loved that description of the character,” Fagbenle said. “So I just kind of went with my yuck, as they say. Followed my yuck.”

The British actor also found inspiration for his American political figure in real-life characters who carry that same disingenuousness.

“I kind of spent a lot of time watching politicians on YouTube—some famous ones that I won’t mention—and just kind of going, okay, what is it about them that can compel some people and repel other people?” said Fagbenle to GQ. “And so I was trying to find that line where you could hate this man, but still totally believe he could be an elected politician.”

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If all politics are theater, then it helped that every actor on set of the series , including Fagbenle, was a bonafide thespian, each with a laundry list of stage credits filling their resumes.

“One of the other things that I found really interesting is almost every single actor in ‘Presumed Innocent’ started in theater,” Fagbenle said. “They’re all theater actors. I did a theater workshop with Ruth Negga like 25 years ago when we were both first coming out of drama school.”

Adding to this sentiment later, Fagbenle also said, “The set is a theater. A courtroom is literally a theater. And so there was this kind of combined sense while you’re acting that we’re all part of this ensemble, this theater ensemble, performing in an actual theater, which is obviously like a courtroom. It just had this kind of meta quality to it.”