The Perfect Couple's Liev Schreiber Talks About Playing “A Pathetic, Narcissistic Child of a Man”

On the subject of conflict, one of my favorite scenes in the show is that dinner argument where it’s revealed that Tag had another affair with Will’s old tutor. Can you give a sense of what it was like to shoot that?

Susanne [Bier] really liked improv. We’d learn the thing as scripted, and then she would ask for these improv variations, which is where we get a bunch of my lines. In particular, Jack [Reynor]’s Doritos line, which I really love.

But the effect is that you have everybody really on edge and listening. Normally, when you get into improv, there are some actors who are just gunning to be funny; this was a really extraordinary ensemble because they were making room for each other, which I think accounts for a lot of those really awkward silences for the cast, sort of looking around, waiting to see what’s going to happen.

Do you like improv?

I love it. It’s really fun. And it also gives a quality to the dialogue that feels unrehearsed. It feels spontaneous. People overlap each other, and people make mistakes, and that’s what life is like. That’s what real conversation is like.

Tag has this tic where he just goes off into song, sometimes—notably during the book launch scene in episode five. How much of that was in the script, and how much was you?

It was on the page in the book scene, [when] he sings the Whitney Houston song and “Never Gonna Give You Up.” But I’m a terrible singer, so I really hated it. And when I hate something like that, I tend to go as deep into it as I can, because it makes me feel so uncomfortable. So I brought it into a couple of other scenes.

It was a nightmare for the producers because every time I would start singing, you’d have to get the rights for that song, which was expensive. [Laughs.] But I couldn’t really think of things to sing that were public domain. They let me, I did it.

Do you enjoy karaoke? What’s your go-to karaoke track?

I love karaoke. My favourite karaoke song at the moment is “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy. I like to do the reggae part. I like to be the guy who says “It wasn’t me.” I get someone else to do the part where you’re going [he mumbles the RikRok part of the chorus: butshecaughtmeonthecounter] “—It wasn’t me.” I like that song.

It’s very revealing that one of Tag’s final lines at the end of the finale is when he says to Greer, “It never occurred to me that you might actually leave me.”

The ultimate narcissism. But y’know, she’s no choir girl. And in that way, I think they remind me of the Macbeths. They embrace each other’s sins to a degree.

Tag doesn’t kill anyone as far as we know, but do you think he would have it in him?

To kill someone? Oh, we all have it in us to kill somebody. We’re all capable of that.

This story originally appeared in British GQ.