In Season 2 of the Starz series American Gods, the battle between the Old Gods, or the traditional gods of mythological roots from around the world, and the New Gods, who reflect society’s modern devotions (i.e. money, technology, media, celebrity and drugs), is really heating up, and Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) is on his own path to figuring out exactly what he believes. One of those New Gods is Technical Boy (Bruce Langley), the one responsible for all things technology, and whose life is a daily struggle to remain relevant and on the cutting edge.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actor Bruce Langley talked about why Tech Boy is “an absolute gift of a character,” why he made the deliberate choice not to read the novel before finishing the audition process for the role, basing his own character work off of the scripts, the aspects of this story that resonate for him, what he’s most enjoyed about the evolution between Seasons 1 and 2, Tech Boy’s fear of becoming obsolete, the power dynamic between Tech Boy and Mr. World (Crispin Glover), having New Media (Kahyun Kim) join the God Squad, and the possibilities for Season 3, which has already been picked up by Starz.

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Image via Starz

Collider:  I love this show, and I love all of these characters. They’re all so tremendously interesting and fun, and I can’t imagine how much fun it must be to play a character like this.

BRUCE LANGLEY:  Yeah, you more or less hit the nail on the head. I've said this many times before and I will continue to say, it’s an absolute gift of a character. He’s wonderful. He’s brilliant, not the least of which is because I get to play it with so many other of the wonderful members of the cast, who are obviously fantastic at what they do and genuinely fun to hang out with. The character of Tech Boy is something that I have legitimately and am still continuing very much to enjoy playing with.

Since you hadn’t read the novel, prior to auditioning for this series, when you did read it, did it change the way thought about or approached the character, at all, or have you really just developed him from what’s been in the script?

LANGLEY:  That’s an interesting question. It was a deliberate choice of mine to not read the novel before I actually completed the audition process because the character has changed so much in the, at the time, 17 years since the book’s release, and Neil [Gaiman] has also talked about that. The Tech Boy in the books, quite simply, is not the Tech Boy of the modern age because technology has changed so much. So, it was quite important for me to do a bit of my own character work around the iteration of Tech Boy that was in the original script, in Episode 101 from Season 1. But then, from there, I’ve read the book and used it as a springboard to go further into Neil’s work. I’ve read a load of his other stuff. The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Neverwhere are two other huge favorites. The book provided some great, very valuable context, in terms of backstory for the character. That was incredibly interesting, in the terms of backstory, but my initial character work was based off of these scripts. That was a very deliberate choice because technology has evolved, and the character needed to reflect that.

There are so many interesting characters in this story, and the overall story itself has a lot of really important things to say. What speaks most deeply to you, in this story?

LANGLEY:  There’s a centralized concept on which the show is based, which is that, quite legitimately, your beliefs can give birth to representations of those ideas in real life. That’s a somewhat more verbose way of just saying, “Careful what you believe in.” What is humanity, if not just a collection of stories that we’ve agreed to tell? And with that in mind, you need to be very careful about which stories you tell, which stories you believe in, what gods you are creating, and what you’re sacrificing to. It’s also incredibly poignant to represent and shine some light on the fact that America is a nation of immigrants. It’s a patchwork. It’s important to highlight that the foundations of the national identity of America is made up of so many different backstories. It’s ridiculous to try to ignore all of that. That’s something that’s very, very important to highlight. America is a nation of immigrants. That’s what this place is. There’s a slight political trend these days, in certain contexts, to try to ignore that or cut that out, and it’s beyond idiocy. We’ll see where that goes. So, I think that’s an incredibly important thing to highlight, as well.

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Image via Starz

You’ve talked about how much a character like this had to change from the books to the show, but even in just the two years between Season 1 and Season 2, a character like this has to go through an evolution. What have you most enjoyed about what you’ve gotten to explore with this character in Season 2, especially with the way that he’s evolved from last season?

LANGLEY:  That’s actually a great question. This season, I was given more room and inclination to dig deeper, in terms of what fully engaging with this level of technology, consistently, would do to your psyche and your emotional health. That’s an incredibly important thing to highlight, in terms of how things have changed in the last two years. One of the reasons that the New Gods are so alert and aware, all of the time, and they lack the laid-back nature that you see in a character such as Wednesday, it’s because they’re aware that they are entirely capable of being replaced. They need to stay relevant. They have to. If they are, for one moment, not completely up to date and refreshed with new hardware, then they’re irrelevant, and irrelevance, in their world, means death. That’s an important thing that we’ve gotten to play a little bit with, and you get to see some of that with the interplay between the somewhat unholy trinity of World, New Media and Tech Boy, and how they interact with each other. It’s a somewhat screwed up triumvirate, but it’s a very accurate representation of how those deities would respond to each other. I don’t think it would be as much fun as people think it would be to actually be a God, at least in the context of our show. It’s probably quite a traumatic experience. You get all of these fancy bells and whistles, but you are ostensibly and somewhat intrinsically, by definition of your own creation, as something to be worshiped, separate and alone. When you’re trying to work with other creatures that are also feeding off the thing that’s keeping you alive, you have to have some kind of synergistic relationship. The Old Gods are bound together by the solidarity of being screwed. But with the New Gods, not so much. They’re all doubling down and growing in worship, all of the time.

With a character like this, where technology is always updating, upgrading and changing, can he ever be satisfied with anything, as a result? Is it always about trying to chase that next thing, so that he can stay relevant?

LANGLEY:  That’s quite an astute observation. To stop for a moment would be to risk destruction. If you’re gonna incorporate a partly artificial mind, it’s not for you to stress. It’s just simply further calculations and algorithms to incorporate. But having to translate that through a somewhat human, emotional context, that’s horribly traumatic and just consistently traumatic. People talk, all the time, about the effect of having loads and loads of cortisol fed into your system by constant engagement with social media and constantly being slightly stressed out, but having your amygdala slightly activated, all the time, so your fight-or-flight is always active is not healthy. That’s not great. The only time you see Tech Boy exhale is after he’s taken in a big hit of synthetic toadskins, in an emotional sense. That’s the only time you see him breathe out, and even that is some kind of chemical engagement. Emotionally speaking, he’s always ready and has to be ready to adapt. The only time he exhales is when he can, and that’s usually involving some kind of drug.

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Image via Starz

One of the things that I really love most about this season is that we do get to see more interactions between the characters and we get to see more about these relationships. The dynamic between Tech Boy and Mr. World is such an interesting one because it seems like Tech Boy likes to manipulate just about anyone, but Mr. World is the one person who can manipulate him. What is that power dynamic like to explore, and to have Crispin Glover to explore it with?

LANGLEY:  It’s wonderful, and you hit the nail on the head, as to a large part of why it is so wonderful. Crispin is brilliant. He is utterly brilliant to work with. It’s fascinating because it’s a constant struggle for recognition. And then, once you incorporate a performer like Crispin, you never quite know what he’s gonna do. It’s great, and his depiction of the character is so wonderful. The scene with the thumbs in his eyes is a perfect example of that. When we were blocking that scene, Crispin said, “The way this is described to me, it feels like, in terms of reference to sight, this might be something appropriate to do. Would you be comfortable with this?” I was like, “I would absolutely be. If you think that’s the way your character is gonna respond, then absolutely. By all means, please.” So, the result of that very, very physical interaction with Crispin was Crispin’s idea, and I was more than happy to go along with it. He’s an incredibly creative performer, and he is wonderful to play with.

Mr. World is operating from a position where he knows a hell of a lot more than most of the other people in the room, pretty much all of the time and consistently. The slight difference between him and Tech Boy is that Tech Boy can process information faster than anyone else. So, while in terms of literally having access to a partly-artificial mind that can process information faster than any other computer in the world, the level of an artificial super-intelligence is part of his consciousness. So, while World simply knows things, Tech Boy can process information incredibly quickly, and he knows the statistics and logic. He’s run so many other paradigms of possibilities in his own consciousness while he’s listening to World talk. That’s a nice little power play in the dynamic. He can think faster than him, but World simply knows things, and Tech Boy can’t understand why he’s doing what he’s doing.

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Image via Starz

As much as I loved Gillian Anderson in Season 1, and I thought what she did as Media was brilliant, the character of New Media is so interesting, and so is Kahyun Kim’s performance. She’s like the living embodiment of emojis. What have you enjoyed about that dynamic, and having a new member for the God Squad, this season?

LANGLEY:  I absolutely love working with Kahyun. She’s great. And yes, the new depiction of Media is actually an entirely appropriate representation of where we are today. I think it’s absolutely spot on. I absolutely loved working with Gillian. Gillian is great. Gillian’s absolutely fantastic. But then, Media changes, and working with Kahyun is great, too. It’s a different dynamic because, just as Media has changed, my relationship with Gillian definitely had a different feel to the one that me and Kahyun do. There’s an implicit level of authority that came with Gillian’s portrayal of the character, and a certain level of status that comes with the depictions of icons, like [David] Bowie and Marilyn [Monroe], but when New Media is reborn, she is new. She’s the same deity, in a certain context, but different. She has changed. She’s the same, and not the same, at the same time. It’s a hard reset. It’s interesting because New Media can really only exist because of technology. She couldn’t exist without me. I make it possible for her to be there. However, because she is there, I become much, much stronger. It’s an interesting symbiosis. It really is. We couldn’t be there without each other, but at the same time, there's definitely a rivalry and a power play there. When viewers pick up on some of the nuances of Kahyun’s performance, they realize that she knows a lot more than she’s letting on. She may play it all cutesy and dumb when interacting with a character so brash and impulsive as Tech Boy. She knows what’s going on. There’s a lot more happening than she’s letting on. She’s willing to be observed that way and be underestimated, in order to be able to make her plays when she needs to, and people don’t see them coming. She’s a lot smarter than she lets on, and it’s a big credit to Kahyun for that performance.

I have to say that between you and Orlando Jones, who plays Mr. Nancy, I think you have some of the best dialogue on the show. Are there ever times when you get some of those great lines of dialogue where you’re like, “I can’t believe that I get to say this stuff”?

LANGLEY:  There are sometimes, absolutely. There’s some great stuff, which is full credit to the teams, this season. They allowed us to play. They allowed us to come in and when it was appropriate, give our two cents on the voices of these characters and how they would feel, in certain contexts. And in terms of Orlando’s dialogue, a large amount of that credit has to go to him. He’s wonderful, and not just in his depiction, but also in the creation of it, as well. He was, at points, very intimately involved in that process, as much as he could be, and it shows. So much of his dialogue, this season, is just great. It’s brilliant. He’s a true wordsmith.

Congratulations on the Season 3 pick-up for the show! Are there things that you would still like to explore or get to know about this character, in the future, and have you had conversations about where next season could likely take things?

LANGLEY:  I don’t know quite how much I’m allowed to say, so I’ll be vague. There are myriad directions that this character can go. It’s important to know that, when you consider the show and the premise of the show, as long as technology is around and people are worshiping it and putting their time into it, in some form, there will be an iteration of that God, in some way, shape, or form, so there is a hell of a lot more that we could go into and play with. I can’t say too much, but I do have a slight idea of where things may or may not go, going forward. Until technology is gone, I think it’s probably unlikely that we’ve seen the last of a representation of that kind of God. Without going into any potential details, as to what that depiction may or may not be, but as long as tech’s around, there will be a representation of that deity.

American Gods airs on Sunday nights on Starz.