iZombie’s Malcolm Goodwin Channeled Diogenes From the Comics For His Audition

In fact, Liv eats the brains of the recently deceased in order to get mental impressions of them and help solve their murders…but that’s not something Clive knows or, according to actor Malcolm Goodwin, would be likely to accept if he was told.

Goodwin joined ComicBook.com during Comic Con International: San Diego this summer to talk about the series based on Chris Roberson and Mike Allred’s Vertigo comics, which is presenting today at the Television Critics’ Association.

Now, you’ve said before that your character had a very odd mix of influences. Can you recap that?

On the breakdown, when it came out for Clive Babineaux, they said he’s a cross between Shaft, Cleavon Little from Blazing Saddles and Jordan Peele. For me, I was like, “I get it.” For me, that was just crystal clear. So I just did my version of how that blend of characters would live for me, and I went to the audition and it worked out.

Are you going broad with the performance, then, or a bit more understated?

He’s a bit more understated. That was the tricky part: finding out how big to play him, how small to play him and finding that balance. I just try to keep honest, you know? I’m also working with a great ensemble of actors, so there wasn’t a need to push. Just be real and the comedy is already there without me having to play it. All I need to do is just commit to the situation and circumstances and the result should be funny as a testament to Rob [Thomas] and Diane [Ruggiero]’s writing.

Clive believes that Liv is a psychic. Is it fair to draw parallels to shows like Psych and The Mentalist?

Obviously the audience is on the fact that she’s not really psychic, that she eats brains and she gets visions but I don’t know that.

So I think that’s a nice relationship, being that the audience is in on something that my character isn’t in on, especially with the whole procedural side of things. Also, how I deal with it. Me being in the dark about that leads to some really funny conversations, some funny back-and-forth between Liv and me.

Have you given any thought to how your character would react when and if it all falls apart and he finds out the truth?

Yeah, that’s going to be interesting. Obviously he has to believe it, and maybe a series of weird things happens over and over again?…But Clive would never think the zombie thing! That would probably be the last thing he would think. He’ll buy the psychic thing because he got a story about that but whether or not he’ll really 100% buy into the zombie thing, it would be a tough sell. He’ll have to see it. Even if he sees it, he’d be like “Oh, that’s a good makeup job. Somebody’s playing a trick on me?”

But it would be interesting if that were to happen, how he would react to it.

What are you guys doing tonally to pick up what’s important from the comics?

I think tonally it’s just that the iZombie comics are tonally funny. There’s a lot of sarcasm and humor within Gwen and her situation and I know for me, what I found to channel was Diogenes, the lead head hunter of the vampires. For me in terms of going ot the source and not even knowing how far away it was from the comics, for me it was like, “Should I go to the audition with some shades on? Should I have a bad eye?” Really, all those thoughts ran through my mind and choices.

But I think tonally, fans of the comic book will not be disappointed with the TV show. All they really did was just took the Gwen character and placed her in a different environment, but it’s still the same tone, same sarcasm and kind of a similar struggle with her humanity. It’s very close to the comic books in that regard.