Evan Peters is no stranger to playing dark characters, from fictional cult leader Kai Anderson and vampire Austin Sommers to real-life serial killers James Patrick March and Jeffrey Dahmer. Tron: Ares sees the American Horror Story star take on a new type of villain: larger-than-life tech whizz Julian Dillinger – and with no history to help steer his performance, he looked to all sorts for inspiration on how to play him.
"Well, I looked back at David Warner's performance, and Clu's, I think; just watching the previous two was really important to sort of see what the tone was of those characters," Peters tells GamesRadar+, referencing Julian's fictional grandfather Ed Dillinger, Sr from the 1982 flick and Jeff Bridges' hacker Program, who featured in the original and 2010's Tron: Legacy. "You know, Julian's a brilliant coder, so I was watching a lot of DEF CON conferences and lock picking videos and all sorts of fun stuff. But, also, I think a big part of it is his relationship with his mother and the dynamic of that, the stress of that and trying to get her approval, and so a lot of the character work stemmed from that."
