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It’s not easy playing the straight guy, says The Brink’s Pablo Schreiber

SINGAPORE — You would think playing the straight man in a farcical comedy would be entry-level stuff. But not when you have to do a scene for The Brink, in which a creepy British couple forces you into a Conquistador costume to make an, erm, private home video.

"I didn't sign up for this!" Actor Pablo Schrieber plays it straight in the farcical comedy The Brink.

"I didn't sign up for this!" Actor Pablo Schrieber plays it straight in the farcical comedy The Brink.

SINGAPORE — You would think playing the straight man in a farcical comedy would be entry-level stuff. But not when you have to do a scene for The Brink, in which a creepy British couple forces you into a Conquistador costume to make an, erm, private home video.

That is the situation Canadian actor Pablo Schreiber once found himself in — and it really messed with his head.

“In the episode that just aired, I was in a Conquistador outfit and being told to make an amateur porno by the British couple. It was not only the weirdest scene of the season, but also the hardest scene for me to play. Things got so strange. As an actor, I kind of lost the thread,” he said wryly.

“My job in this series is to be in the midst of really ridiculous situations and respond to them really truthfully and honestly. I lost that ability ... As an actor, I was just going, ‘What is happening and who am I?’”

In the show, which he describes as a “geopolitical disaster comedy”, the 37-year-old film, stage and television actor plays a Navy fighter-jet pilot and drug dealer. Also starring Jack Black and Tim Robbins, The Brink deals in absurdist Cold War humour, a la Catch-22 and Dr Strangelove, with politicians teetering on the edge of World War Three.

“Dr Strangelove is kind of the template for this show, the jumping-off point. We’re trying to make a modern version,” explained Schreiber, whose character was having the worst day of his life when we first met him.

The sequence of events leading up to that particularly weird scene involved mixing up his drugs during a flight, being sprayed with vomit by his co-pilot during a video conference with the United States President, and crash-landing in a desert.

Before taking on The Brink, Schreiber was best known for playing the lascivious prison officer George “Pornstache” Mendez in the comedy Orange Is The New Black, for which he currently has an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.

Between the famous stick-on moustache he wore in that role and the giant onesie pilot uniform he wears in The Brink, which is worse?

“I don’t mind the onesie so much. You can take the arms down and tie it around your waist, and that’s fun,” he chuckled. “The ‘stache was definitely worse. I love that character and I hope in the future I can play around with him a little more, but putting on the moustache is definitely one of my least favourite things in the world. It’s so gross, the glue they use — and it’s itchy and uncomfortable.”

But black comedy is obviously something that resonates with Schreiber. Finding humour in the awful, like The Brink does, is “of the utmost importance”, he said.

“I believe that the world we live in today is not only complicated and scary, but it’s ridiculous as well, and a lot of the decisions that are being made in foreign policy can border on ridiculous. Looking at it through that lens while not being disheartened by current events, and instead allowing them to be fodder for humour — I hope that can allow us to then look at them with a more critical eye.”

Catch The Brink on Mondays at 10.30am, with same-day encores at 10.30pm, on HBO (StarHub TV Ch 601). Also available on HBO On Demand (StarHub TV Ch 602).

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