Stephen Root: ‘Perry Mason’

Character actor Stephen Root has dozens of television and film roles under his belt, and, as he tells Elvis Mitchell on ‘The Treatment,’ many of those roles share an outward display of confidence even if that’s far from the characters’ inner feelings. Root tells Mitchell that that confidence may very well have come from his childhood of moving around and having to start over every few years. Root says his most recent role, Maynard Barnes, the ambitious district attorney on HBO’s ‘Perry Mason,’ is “a peacock on the outside and not a nice person on the inside.” 

He talks about being in the fortunate position of carefully choosing his roles, whether they’re in an animated series like ‘King of the Hill’  horror such as ‘Get Out’ or a Coen brothers’ film. And, he talks about a surprising source of inspiration: Looney Tunes.