Badge Dale on Rubicon: 'The Middle of the Road is Not Good Enough'

It's shaping up to be quite a year Badge Dale. The 32-year-old actor starred on the critically acclaimed HBO mini-series The Pacific, will be seen in Robert Redford's next directorial effort, The Conspirator, and plays the lead on AMC's newest drama, Rubicon (Sunday night before Mad Men). He's also a Verge alum. So, yeah, 2010 has been pretty good to him indeed.

Badge rang up Movieline this week to talk about Rubicon, the expectations that come with following Mad Men and Breaking Bad on the AMC roster of dramas, and just what happens when a bunch of New York theater actors have dinner together.

When you last spoke with Movieline, you were just about to start shooting Rubicon again, 14 months after making the pilot. Was it hard to get back into character after all that time?

I think the hardest part was for hair and makeup to deal with the fact that I had twice as much hair.

Did they fit you with a wig?

No, I knew it was coming, so I grew it back out. I usually keep my hair long and wild; I like to have options.

Was it difficult to transition back into Will Travers after playing Robert Leckie on The Pacific?

[Will] was a lot different, which was nice for me. I spent a year of my life trying to get into the shoes of Robert Leckie. He was a very complicated man, and it was a complicated character and it took its toll on me and a lot of the other actors. To kind of get the jump over into Will Travers and to do something different -- it's a lot of fun. And nothing is blowing up, there's no mortars. [Laughs]

Had the expectations for Rubicon changed after all that time away -- between being a pilot and getting picked up for series?

I try to work without expectations one way or the other. Expectations in the entertainment business will kill you, because you are bound to be disappointed. So when we shot the pilot, I kinda took it as a one-off: "We'll go in, we'll do this and I'm not in control of what happens." Hope the right thing will happen -- you just have to trust that. When we actually got to do the season, we all ran in there very excited and invigorated. It's a privilege to get to do a season. All the actors are excited, the crew is excited. We shoot in New York. It's an all New York crew, all New York actors. Summertime in New York and we're shooting a television show. It doesn't get much better than that.

Does filming in New York bring something extra to the show?

The great thing about New York for our show -- our show is about the unknown, about mystery. That there's a world outside of your own that you can't stop. It's about powerlessness in some sort of way. There's this machine that's going and swirling and there is nothing you can do about that. But it will affect you. And that's New York City. If you stand on a rooftop and look around New York City -- this is a beast, it's a living entity. It's moving hard and fast and there's nothing you can do about it. That's the great thing about shooting in New York for our show. We try to use that. It's not the magic of New York but the attitude and personality of New York.

And that's where having New York actors helps too.

Everyone shows up prepared. Everyone has done their homework. It's a talented group of people. The guys are very experienced, they're very good at what they do. We show up and do our job. That said, we're kind of a quirky group. I remember the first cast dinner we had -- it was geek-a-thon. We just started geeking out, dorking out. I think that's what happens when you get a bunch of New York theater actors together -- everything becomes a song. [Laughs]

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