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" Chris Noth is done playing the &amp;quot;nice guy.&amp;quot; After years of playing (mostly) good guys on shows like Law &amp;amp;amp; Order, Sex and the City, and The Good Wife, he&amp;#039;s recently turning to darker roles in indie films like the explosively gritty White Girl. The film revolves around the titular white girl, Leah (played brilliantly by Morgan Saylor), a young college student in New York who falls in love with Blue, a drug dealer who mostly sells cocaine\u2014the other &amp;quot;white girl,&amp;quot; so to speak. When Blue gets arrested, she goes to great lengths trying to save him, and turns to George, a high-powered lawyer played by Noth. But George poses even more of a threat to Leah.  Noth is involved in one more disturbing scenes in a movie that&amp;#039;s comprised of many of them. I talked to him about what it was like playing such a complicated character, what he thinks about the movie and its controversial reception, and how there&amp;#039;s more to him than the famous character he played for six seasons on Sex and the City.        How did you get involved with the film?  How any actor gets a part: my agent. I wouldn&amp;#039;t have known about it if it had not been for my agent calling and saying, &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s this interesting script. It&amp;#039;s an indie and I think you should do it.&amp;quot; Then I read it, and the guy rapes a girl who&amp;#039;s unconscious, and I said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not doing this. My kid&amp;#039;s gonna watch this movie someday.&amp;quot; But then I was having a conversation with someone about Last Tango in Paris, and she was saying, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s such a misogynist movie.&amp;quot; And I said it&amp;#039;s so much more than that on every level. Even if Paul, the main character, is a misogynist, you&amp;#039;re asked to go into his experience, and you do yourself a disservice by qualifying it with all these labels. Which is exactly what I was doing with [White Girl]. It was like, open your eyes, dummy and just jump into this person&amp;#039;s experience. So I did.  What do you think that experience was?  Well, as written, you gotta do what&amp;#039;s on the page. And ultimately I had to go to that place, which is a pretty ugly place. I think [writer-director Elizabeth Wood] tapped into something, that there&amp;#039;s always dirty little secrets in a lot of men, who, when given the opportunity, will go to a place they wouldn&amp;#039;t even admit to themselves maybe, when it comes to sex. And that&amp;#039;s what this guy did: took full advantage of a situation and got what he wanted. I think that exists out there, and I just had to go to that ugly place.  Is that what drew you to it?  Yeah, I thought by saying no to it, I was being a chicken, too. As an actor. When you limit yourself, what do you want\u2014to just play heroes all the time or &amp;quot;nice people?&amp;quot; To be nice, you have to make your behavior so palatable to everyone. You&amp;#039;re a non-being. So [Elizabeth] wrote a very dark part, in a very dark movie. One critique I read that I thought was right on the mark was that it&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;an American nightmare dressed up as a party.&amp;quot; I thought that was quite succinct. Because you really do come out of that movie like with a hangover\u2014like get me some coffee, let me sober up\u2014but you haven&amp;#039;t even had a drink!  The movie also reminds me of my own recklessness as a younger person in my teenage years and around college\u2014not in college, that&amp;#039;s a different story. I look back on, mostly as a teenager, things that I did with absolutely no real thought to the consequences. Some really dumb stuff, because we were bored, because we wanted to get a buzz, we wanted to feel alive, and we wanted to be with our friends when we did it. I can say, honestly, I feel lucky to be alive when I think back on some of those adolescent dumb things that I did.  I don&amp;#039;t think that&amp;#039;s just what the movie&amp;#039;s about. But there is that recklessness that&amp;#039;s almost a kind of courage in a way. You don&amp;#039;t think you&amp;#039;re gonna have to pay the price.   In an interview with Elizabeth Wood, she said there were a lot of men who were angry about the film, saying essentially the sex dynamics are unrealistic, that there&amp;#039;s no way all of these things would really happen to this girl. They were saying it was just for shock value and there&amp;#039;s no way things like that happen in the real world. According to who? Who are these people with opinions about experiences people are having? Coddled by their own opinions. I don&amp;#039;t understand the premise, frankly. What limits are there on these experiences that he is sure about? That everybody has to live under? I know kids can go, when given an opportunity, to places we would never imagine, and it&amp;#039;s every parent&amp;#039;s fear. I&amp;#039;ve often said, one thing I want for my son is for him to not do what I did. I was smoking weed at a very young age, because it was there, and we were looking for a buzz, we were looking to feel alive...and with your band, your crew, you can find your way into some real trouble. So I didn&amp;#039;t think it was unrealistic at all. She said in that same interview that nearly all of the women who have reached out to her as a response have been saying, &amp;quot;No, this happens in real life.&amp;quot; There are a ton of predators out there, and the instinct to be a predator is firmly entrenched in the male psyche, I think.  You think? How so?  Yes. I think that sex for males is the number one issue in their lives when they&amp;#039;re young. And like I said about my character, there are those that will go to that place and those that won&amp;#039;t. Maybe it&amp;#039;s upbringing, maybe it&amp;#039;s a sense of personal morality or whatever. Look at the ugliness you see in these Trump campaigns, all the hate and vitriol spewing out of them\u2014it seems like a cold. It spreads, and it&amp;#039;s very easy to catch. It&amp;#039;s very easy to go to that place if other people are doing it, and it probably feels good to them to lash out with racist taunts and this idea of America as it should be or something like that. Now that&amp;#039;s a whole different subject, but all I meant by that is that given the opportunity human beings can go to a very ugly place. My main point is I think that no one can really know anyone, and there&amp;#039;s a lot of different things that can happen to a person under certain circumstances.  Do you think Leah&amp;#039;s character uses sex in a dark way as well?  A reckless way. They talk about her being a white, privileged girl, it&amp;#039;s true, I think that without even being conscious of it, white people in general from a very privileged background don&amp;#039;t feel they have to pay a price. Maybe they can just have a dalliance with a world that other people are trapped in. Knowing that you have an escape, is it really honest to feel like, &amp;quot;Well, this is great, I love living in this neighborhood and hanging out with these people, and okay, I&amp;#039;m doing a little dealing?&amp;quot; So it&amp;#039;s reckless. But is it dishonest, you think? It could be considered dishonest, in a bigger picture. The whole idea that white people just don&amp;#039;t get it, that other people have to pay a price and can&amp;#039;t get out of that situation that they&amp;#039;re in and that it&amp;#039;s not a fair deal. And you have a better chance of escaping if you&amp;#039;re from a certain class and a certain culture. So she may think naively that she&amp;#039;s being honest, you could say. But I found her character, at least the way Morgan played it which was brilliant, very pure in a way. Open in a way that was scary. Yeah, she played it brilliantly. What was it like working with her?  She was just, completely there all the time which made that whole scene for me so much easier to do. Completely in the moment.  A lot of people are saying it&amp;#039;s kind of a political movie. Do you agree with that?  If that&amp;#039;s what people get from it, then it is, and for many it&amp;#039;s not. Like I mentioned, Last Tango in Paris could be seen in a political way. But that&amp;#039;s adding a epidermis of intellectual, as if [Elizabeth Wood] wrote this to say, &amp;quot;I want you to see this, and then think this.&amp;quot; I don&amp;#039;t think that&amp;#039;s what she did. I think it was a very visceral film about another person&amp;#039;s experience. Saying it&amp;#039;s a political statement about men or women who can act like men\u2014I think it dilutes it. Do you think the fact that it had a female director is going to affect the way people view it?  I hope not. It&amp;#039;s ridiculous if it does. It stands on its own. She happened to write it from a female point of view, because the protagonists are two girls. I think that&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s exciting and refreshing about it. But I don&amp;#039;t know if that&amp;#039;s your question\u2014that she is a woman writing and directing, has that made a difference in the way people write and experience the film?   I was thinking, there could be the argument that if a man had directed it, it could come off a little more exhibitionist. Like, this girl going through some pretty shitty stuff in terms of being taken advantage of at times. It&amp;#039;s Elizabeth&amp;#039;s story\u2014only she could tell it, and I believe only she could really direct it. She&amp;#039;s very open to the actors, actually. A man might have tried to manipulate it. The political stuff is fun to intellectualize, but if you didn&amp;#039;t get the experience of seeing that and feeling something and thinking about your own misspent youth or whatever... I don&amp;#039;t see that any political conclusions are going to do anything for that movie. That&amp;#039;s fair. Do you think there&amp;#039;s another message or theme people might take away? I think it really smacks you in the face, that film. You come out in a daze. You kind of wonder how those girls could find themselves in that place. Like I said, I think about my own past and I go, what was I thinking, how did I get out of that, what was I doing with those people? And I wasn&amp;#039;t thinking. That was the whole point.        Switching gears a little, can you tell me about another upcoming film you&amp;#039;re in, Chronically Metropolitan?  I haven&amp;#039;t seen the movie. I don&amp;#039;t know why. I mean, White Girl was easy\u2014they had a screening I went to. But I like the part tremendously. [My character] is just a novelist, commercially successful, marriage falling apart, but it really doesn&amp;#039;t go into the marriage that much. It&amp;#039;s really about the son and his journey and sort of our relationship. The son has written this book that has become a big deal, and he reveals some things about his girlfriend. She dumps him because of it and when he comes back to town to try to resurrect that, I&amp;#039;m in a hospital after getting into a car crash with a bunch of young girls I&amp;#039;m having sex with. The part I was given, I enjoyed it. He&amp;#039;s childlike, he&amp;#039;s a guy that never grew up really, in a sense and doesn&amp;#039;t think he has to pay the price. And I think at the end, he finally comes around to his son. You&amp;#039;ve been doing more indie movies recently, was that on purpose or did that just happen to work out? They were two that I thought it was worth it to do. These two stuck out to me as movies that were worth making.  You said you were in Budapest making Tyrant, did you get to explore the city?  Have you been?  Yeah.  The food, what did you think of that? It&amp;#039;s crazy\u2014shank of lamb cheek with a mint jelly with a sauce of melted cheese, stuff like that. I found the city to be remarkable, as if I were stepping back in time in a way to a city that has almost been protected from the onslaught of what&amp;#039;s happened in most cities like New York and everywhere else. It just dances to its own rhythm. People are, like, draped on the bridges drinking wine. Tyrant is trying to do something different from any other show I see out there, it&amp;#039;s actually dealing with a fictional country trying to start a social democracy and what that means for the people in it. I had a great experience. Meeting actors from other countries was a great learning experience. And Budapest is the greatest city in the world. It&amp;#039;s my own Paris. I hope it stays that way.   There&amp;#039;s a carefreeness about it. A beauty. There&amp;#039;s a beauty to the city, with it&amp;#039;s green-domed churches and statues and waterfalls and little hidden wine bars, I just can&amp;#039;t tell you, I was there for 4 months. So what&amp;#039;s next for you?  I don&amp;#039;t know. I just want to raise my son. He&amp;#039;s eight. I&amp;#039;m on more of an interior journey than just an idea of my ambitions in a business I&amp;#039;ve been in for a long time. I just want to find good work. Probably one of the more important things I did was do theatre last year\u2014a little theatre here called Classic Stage Company, we did Marlowe&amp;#039;s Doctor Doctor Faustus. That was for me, important...in terms of using yourself as an actor, and feeling like an actor. It got very mixed reviews, but I saw that coming.  Why?  When you do roles like I have as Mr Big on TV, you can tell when critics start their review by bringing up Mr. Big.  Does that annoy you?  I think they do themselves a disservice because they&amp;#039;re already written it, in a way. It depends on the part. This is a very classic, difficult play. Andrei [Belgrader, the director] really did a masterful job with some of the humor and the play. He made it very expressionistic, and I thought\u2014incredibly vital. There were a lot of people who were pissed off about that because they didn&amp;#039;t wanna see Mr. Big playing this part. But I come from the theatre. That&amp;#039;s where it all started for me, that&amp;#039;s where I thought I&amp;#039;d be spending my life as an actor when I graduated from Yale Drama. So I keep going back to that well because it makes me feel like an actor. This is a very inarticulate way to describe what I think most actors feel\u2013the purity of the stage.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/news/a47765/chris-noth-interview-white-girl-tyrant/>