If you were a fan of “Lipstick Jungle” or “Privileged,” Robert Buckley is not an unfamiliar face. And if you’re watching “One Tree Hill” this season, he’s pretty much a household name at this point.
Joining the show as a series regular last month, Buckley plays Clay, Nathan Scott’s agent and a bit of a ladies’ man. One with a good heart however, but a somewhat shady past as well.
Buckley’s take on the whole deal…
You’ve been filming on the “One Tree Hill” set down in North Carolina for while now, no?
RB: Yes ma’am. We started around mid to late June.
Are you getting used to it?
RB: The humidity? No. But the rest of living in North Carolina? So far, so good, yeah.
You like it?
RB: Yeah, I do. I’ve had a blast so far.
Do you get to come back to LA on the weekends?
RB: You know, usually I love to come back as much as I can, and I tried to at the beginning. But the fact is, it really is such a commute. Especially from Wilmington, which doesn’t have any direct flights to the West Coast. A weekend trip ends up taking a lot out of you. So the trend has become less and less as time has gone on. I’ve definitely set up a nice little camp here, with a cozy apartment in downtown Wilmington which is really nice, so it’s not like I have it too bad or anything.
It’s probably easier to get to know your cast mates since you’re all living in this small Southern town, yeah?
RB: Yeah. And it didn’t hurt that they are all extremely nice and did go out of their way to show me around and make me feel at home.
Do you guys hang out off set?
RB: Quite a bit… To the extent that when everyone else is working on a day that I’m off, I suddenly realize how few friends I have off the show. [Laughs] It’s kind of a sad realization. I’m like, maybe I’ll go stop by work and say hi.
Are you having fun playing Clay? Do you like the character?
RB: Yeah I do, quite a bit. [Show creator] Mark Schwahn gave me a lot of gifts with this character. The guy’s got a lot to him, a lot going on. A lot of hurt and mystery in his past, which is a fun thing for an actor to play. Ideally, if you do it right, it’s really entertaining for an audience to watch. It’s always fun when you’re playing a secret or when the audience doesn’t know exactly what’s happening. When everything’s out there, when the character is very obvious — like, these are the good guys, perfectly clean and the guys everyone likes — that kind of gets old. To dirty it up, to mess things up, it’s good. You don’t know whether to love him or to question his motives.
Did Mark tell you right away what was going on with Clay or were you in the dark, too?
RB: At the very beginning, I was in the dark, and then he kind of clued me in. One of our [initial] conversations was, What do you have in mind for this character? I like the idea of him [being] difficult and broken in his path. I want there to be some pain or reason. Have it be convoluted with some mystery to it. And Mark was totally on that page. So he kind of clued me in on a couple of things he was thinking, but no way did he tell me all the different things he had in store for [Clay]. And I think part of that is because he comes up with it as he watches the show evolve and the characters grow with one another. But the stuff he told me about, I liked. And he’s come up with some stuff recently that I think is just fantastic.
Is Clay’s past going to unravel slowly this season, or will there be a big episode where we learn something earth-shattering about him?
RB: You know what, it does start off with a pretty big episode. Earth-shattering? I don’t know. But a big enough earthquake to shake down a small village? Definitely so.
Big enough to shake down Tree Hill?
RB: [Laughs] It would maybe knock over a tree in Tree Hill. But not the whole town. There is one episode that really does unravel the story of Clay’s past and inform his behavior to this point, but it doesn’t end there. That’s just the beginning to this story and where he’s at and him trying to figure out where to go from there.
Do you think the audience will be sympathetic to him as we start to learn more?
RB: I hope so. I think so. When I say I hope so, it’s more a commentary on the viewer than it is on the character of Clay, actually. But yeah, I certainly do think people will be more sympathetic to Clay.
Read the rest : ‘One Tree Hill’: Robert Buckley on North Carolina, Clay’s shady past & being a play boy – From Inside the Box – Zap2it.
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