Here is an excerpt of the interview:
Was this a character that was just irresistible for you to play on so many levels?
Yeah, on so many levels. One I'm a huge fan of the first 2 films. I thought the 2nd one was better than the 1st which is so rare. It's clear that they have this well-oiled machine and they know exactly what they're doing. The actors and Sam. On another level I was a really big fan when I was a kid of the comic book. Literally when the character of Venom was being born, I was getting really into comic books reading Todd McFarland who was this new illustrator and was kind of blowing my mind and he was doing Amazing Spiderman and he did like his own Spiderman comic book, so I felt like I had the inside track and no one else should play it. In fact when Sam told me, he said I want you to play Venom, I kind of had to bite my tongue and say “like tell me about the character” and I hadn't negotiated yet for money yet so.
This is a pretty big departure from other characters that you’ve played.
Right. I'm a bad actor to answer this question because I know with my career I should be like yes, I had to go to such a dark place and really get into that but you know I think it's all on the same plane all that stuff, happiness, sadness, being mean and being nice. They're all very close to each other. But I'll tell you my goal in my career is to kind of do movies that are both--I hate it when someone says is it a comedy or a drama? It's like my favorite movies are kind of both, just like life is never like one day you're not crying all day and the next day laughing all day. I like to find characters that have that kind of balance too.
So you're the 1st person we've talked to that really has a comic book background that thinks that....
Am I though? My favorite thing is when someone gets a role on Star Wars or something and is like I've never seen the films before but I rented them once I got the role. You know, I don't know, whatever, maybe I'm the first.
Everyone's said I never read the comic after the fact.
Right. That's what I'm saying. But I'm the geekest guy to ever be in a film like this that's for sure in terms of when we were at Comic-Con and they showed that preview where I turn into Venom at the end. I was jumping around backstage. Someone actually came up to me and was like “hey, man you've got to cool it. You're starring in these films you shouldn't this crazy excited.” But I figured screw it. This is why you buy the bus ticket to
Did you take any souvenirs from the set being that you are…
Oh, man I forgot to. It was like a year long process making the film so you don't ever know when it's ending exactly. I think I'm going to try to get the newspaper of me getting whatever fired where they print the retraction on it and I must try to get a bust of Venom.
What facet of this character could you identify with and as a Spiderman comic book geek were you able to bring in any of that knowledge into this process?
Yeah, I think there are 2 kinds of origins to Eddie Brock. There's one where he's more of Peter's peer which is ultimate Spiderman and there's one that's a little muddled it's kind of told in the flashback which is the original origin. So I guess what I really brought to it was kind of a fear at the beginning that I shared with Sam which is I don't think I'm the right guy to really play this role. In the original comic book he's like 40 and really muscle-bound and I had to work out for 6 months. I could never get to where he was in the comic book but then what Sam described to me is he wanted to take the best of both worlds approach and kind of make him this evil twin brother of Peter Parker who's basically a case study and if someone similar, you know if they have the same job and they're after the same girl. Even Eddie kind of has the edge even though they're similar. He's a better dresser and clearly has more money and kind of a better flirt. If they both received the same power and one of those 2 people didn't have someone like Uncle Ben like a mentor to say you have to take responsibility for this power how would that turn out? Even Peter used it for personal gain originally. What's great about Eddie is that even though he's really slick he kind of hides a really hollow interior. Like he's got a really great exterior, he's got nothing inside, whereas Peter's just the opposite. He might not have his whole act together but his core is very strong and that's why he's able to kind of shed this power but Eddie totally embraces it.
Eddie Brock was a successful columnist in Daily Globe, a rival of the newspaper, of Daily Bugle, where Peter Parker, a.k.a. spider man works. According to the comic book, Brock loses his job after the sin-eater case. He blamed spiderman for his misfortune and hated him. When he tried to commit suicide, he steps on the symbiote discarded by spiderman and turns into venom.
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