Rami Malek and Christian Slater on the relevance of ‘Mr. Robot' at 10: ‘Is technology bridging us, or driving us further apart?'
'That show was ahead of its time, man,' Christian Slater, who played the eponymous character, recently told Gold Derby, alluding to the current state of Big Brother technology and politics, especially given the rise of artificial intelligence.
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Or as Malek once told us: 'It astonishes me how well Sam Esmail, our brilliant creator, can foresee the future. But that's also troubling.'
A brief recap of the show's premise: Slater's Mr. Robot recruits Malek's gifted but troubled cybersecurity whiz Elliot as a modern-day Robin Hood to take down E Corp, which they call E Corp — and which could stand in for any number of tech companies with long-reaching tentacles, then or now. (We'll leave it there; but if you want to know more, like how Mr. Robot is really a manifestation of Elliot's dead father via one of Elliot's alternate personalities, we recommend you start bingeing the show for free on Tubi.)
'It felt special from the beginning,' Slater says today. 'It started off with me and Rami sitting in the Wonder Wheel [at Coney Island] doing all those scenes together. And that was the perfect way to start it. It put us together in close quarters where we couldn't help but get to know each other and how it was we both like to work. So that was a wonderful accident.
'It was exciting. And it just drew the two of us together. So I think it just helped with our chemistry throughout the show.'
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Mr. Robot was an immediate sensation; aside from its instant online following, critics were universal in their praise, with the pilot, titled 'eps1.0_hellofriend.mov,' scoring a 100 percent 'fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The show would go on to earn 13 Emmy nominations between 2016 and 2020, winning three.
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'It struck a nerve with people,' Malek told Gold Derby after that first season, which still speaks to the show's prescience a decade on. 'I don't know what everybody's yearning for, but it's something they could identify with. This cause. I think an unlikely hero in these times is something people wanted to connect to and were ready for.
'The show offered many characters who were on the fringes of society trying to find their way in, and I think that's something people just got charged by.'
During the course of the show's four seasons, Malek said that its too-close-to-reality storylines made him wary of technology – especially when it came to discussing top-secret plot points. 'There are days when I haven't gotten on the phone to share my notes with Sam. I'm that paranoid now that might even call him from a landline somewhere. Sometimes I'll see if I can find a random New York payphone to use. I'm not so paranoid that I go to those lengths every day, but I'm often questioning my method of communication.'
USA Networks
Malek also revealed that it was vital to Esmail and the cast to tackle cutting-edge issues that they saw were only getting more divisive. 'We talked about it on set quite a bit: we wonder if people are going to get turned off by technology by the end of the show. It does ask you if you're connected or if you're disconnected, or is this world that you live on – that we we all live on – sitting behind a monitor, is this bridging us, or is this driving us even further apart?'
Ten years later, and Mr. Robot remains as relevant as ever.
'It was a show that got delivered to me as this hacking story,' Malek told us after that first season, for which he earned the Emmy for Best Actor in a Drama Series. 'But before all of that, it's the story about how we connect as humans and how difficult it can be for some people.'
As for Slater, who won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for the series, he still views Mr. Robot as a highlight of his storied career. 'I was definitely proud of the show," he says, looking back. "It was wonderful to be on that ride.'
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