"Evil is a broad church," Frain explains. "There are so many different ways to be evil. Sometimes it’s fun to be the guy who doesn’t know that he’s bad, like the character I played in True Blood. He was pretty angsty about it, but he thought he was doing the right thing. And sometimes it’s fun to be the guy who just really enjoys it, like the guy I’m playing now on The Cape. He’s more that. He’s much more flashy and debonaire and devil may care-ish. He just loves doing bad in the world. That’s real fun to do."
The actor points out that so far there hasn't been a very specific backstory put to Chess, so in a sense there's a lot that's up for grabs at this point. "There's a lot of big storytelling on The Cape," he says, "and there’s a lot of things that they’re throwing up in the air, to come back to in later episodes. It’s very open. What happens is that, in doing a show like this, you find out who the character is as they write it, and they’re finding out as well. It’s an ongoing thing. I have my own sense of who he is. I don’t think people who behave this way come from very loving families. But, I’m not bogged down in that, necessarily.
"I’m not particularly an expert on the genre. Correct me if I’m wrong, but usually you see most of the super-villain in his villainous role. He’s the Green Goblin, or whatever various bad guys in Batman, or something like that. It’s the excessive, larger than life, cartoon-ish, costumed character that is the personification of evil and has to be destroyed. With my guy, every now and then, he puts on a mask and does that, but he isn’t that. Most of the time that we see him, he isn’t that. Most of the time that we see him, he’s fun to hang around with. I think that’s unusual, to that extent."
For much more on both Tron: Legacy and The Cape, follow the link.