Westworld's naked scene made James Marsden brave the “bizarre”

James Marsden, despite his prolific oeuvre, starts with a clean slate in HBO’s Westworld – quite literally. In the first scene with co-star Anthony Hopkins, he stripped down to his birthday suit.

“First scene ever with Sir Anthony and I was naked as the day I was born,” Marsden quips and quickly shrugs it off with a megawatt smile as we sit down for the interview in Geneva.

“But I embraced it. I love those bizarre situations I found myself in Westworld,” he adds.

The veteran star has indeed embarked on a surrealistic journey in the American sci-fi Western thriller portraying Teddy Flood – a distressed gunman who later awakens to the truth that he is, in fact, a humanoid robot and that his entire life in the Wild West is all just an elaborate lie.

“Singularity would be terrifying,” Marsden says, commenting on the hypothetical tipping point when artificial super intelligence becomes indistinguishable from human civilisation. “What defines being human? When does consciousness begin and when does it end? It starts to twist your mind a bit.”

Being on the set of the thriller created by Jonathan Nolan and his wife Lisa Joyco-produced by J.J. Abrams, Marsden’s character is in the eye of the perfect storm where conflicts intertwine.

“There’s a virtuous element to the character,” Marsden says. “Although against all odds, he will still do the right thing. He’d rather live a peaceful life. I love him working towards that and then getting pulled back and getting killed, reset, and then getting killed and reset [again].”

The all-star production, which premiered last October, has been renewed for a second season. Based on the daunting 1973 film by Michael Crichton, Westworld is set in an adult amusement park where robots fulfil the darkest and often murderous desires of the visiting guests.