WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW!
Ryan Eggold’s character on The Blacklist, Tom Keen, has had to endure a pretty tumultuous time in the past few episodes of the show.
Last week, Tom got quite the surprise when he learned that Liz is pregnant with his baby. Eggold’s character, who often exists in a grey area between good and bad, now has to deal with this monumental shift in he and Liz’s relationship.
Global News chatted with Eggold on what the pregnancy means for the future, Tom’s “bad guy/good guy” nature, and what’s shocked him most about The Blacklist.
READ MORE: The Blacklist‘s Megan Boone on the show’s pregnancy shocker
Global News: Tom Keen always walks in a grey area as a character. How do you deal with that? Sometimes we think that he’s a good guy, but in the next scene he’s a bad guy. How do you deal with this duality?
Ryan Eggold: The duality is my favourite part of the character. You know, I think in Season 1, we kind of had a… perhaps a more simple black-and-white version of if he’s good or bad. And I think where the show has grown, and where the character has grown, is that we’ve been exploring, as you say, that grey area.
And I’m really enjoying that aspect of the show and enjoying exploring the grey area in Tom. Because now it’s really about what is he willing to do for what he believes in and is he doing it for love? And maybe he’s doing some violent or not-so-nice things. It’s that question we’ll have to ask ourselves: what are we willing to risk for what we love and what we believe in? And how far are we willing to go?
READ MORE: Megan Boone, Ryan Eggold talk The Blacklist and their Canadian co-star
In Season 1, Tom Keen was this nice, unassuming guy, then he turned into this villain. And now he’s changed back into this guy that we can all root for. So, is he actually a good guy or is his loyalty offered to anyone who’s willing to take his fee?
You know, I think you’ve described where he started and where he has come. As you said, I think he started off as a character whose loyalty can be bought and paid for and is willing to sell his services to the highest bidder.
And with Liz, I think he discovered what a relationship looks like and feels like and maybe what love looks like and feels like. I won’t say too much, but there’s conceivably a family involved in all these things, so that has left an indelible mark on him and I think changed him. And I think now he is still capable of what he was capable of before, in terms of being manipulative, being violent.
Tom genuinely loves Liz because she has, in a way, made him rethink a whole lot of his life as a spy and the things they used to do. But now is there a chance to finally have the family that they wanted with the news of the baby?
It is a chance. It is a chance at happiness. And I genuinely don’t know how it’s all going to end because I haven’t read it, but I know that it’s obviously going to be a tumultuous road because of their lives, because she’s deeply ingrained with Reddington, whose life is insane. I mean, he’s a world-class criminal who has relationships with thousands of killers and psychopaths.
And Tom is this guy who’s badly damaged, probably emotionally stunted, and also capable of great violence, probably has certain tendencies in him that can be scary. So I think he wants to be a father and whether or not he’s capable of that remains to be seen. But I think he’s trying his damnedest. It is certainly that chance. And that’s what I love about this show, is that it’s set in a fairly tough, harsher, darker kind of world, but with this more innocent, naive hope of a simpler, better life, which I think we can all relate to.
Will you have a choice if Liz decides that, no, I’m not going to keep the baby — will Tom be able to convince her to keep it?
Yes. Tom completely will have a choice in the matter. I don’t know if I should say what that choice is, but yes, Tom has a strong opinion on it.
WATCH: The Blacklist star Diego Klattenhoff comes home
With the pregnancy, do you think anything will change in how Tom feels about Liz in their relationship?
Yes. I think everything will change with the news of a baby. I think however you felt about someone before, when you are now tied to them in this way, the stakes are just raised dramatically for you, and decisions carry more weight. And damaging the relationship or walking away suddenly means a lot more.
As a viewer of the show, what has shocked you the most?
At least speaking for Tom, I’d have to say where they’ve ended up with the relationship, in the sense that he’s now this guy who really does care for her. And I think the fact that he genuinely cares for her has been surprising to me as a way to go. And refreshing really, because I think it would have been easy to make him either the sweet, doting husband which we’ve seen before, or make him this villain who’s manipulating and using her and trying to kill her, and then gets shot, and that’s that. But I think he’s a guy who’s not a perfect man and he’s not good at being in a relationship. He doesn’t know how to do trust and intimacy and these things. But he wants to and he cares about her and he’s trying.
‘The Blacklist’ airs on Global TV on Thursday nights at 9 p.m. ET.
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