Who we’re watching in ‘Silicon Valley’
Lots of people are trying to make it big in Silicon Valley — tech companies, startups, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. We talk about them quite a bit, but there’s one person in Silicon Valley we’re watching more closely than any other … a guy by the name of Richard Hendricks … OK, so he’s not real.
Richard Hendricks is the lead character in HBO’s hit series “Silicon Valley,” which is near the tail-end of its second season. It’s the story of a group of programmers that seem to be just on the brink of making the big deal. Thomas Middleditch plays Richard Hendricks.
On his breakout role:
It’s great. It’s all very positive. People seem to be fans of the show, which is nice. There is that sort of feeling, I think, when someone comes into a bigger role, it sort of feels like to other people that you sort of came out of nowhere … like I just decided to start acting the day I got cast. But no, I’ve been at it for a while.
On his character Richard Hendricks:
He’s a very tunnel-vision, focused programmer, as a lot of those guys are. When they get in the zone and they start writing code, they could write for hours and hours and hours, potentially days on end. You know, spending a lot of time in your own world in front of your computer, some things suffer, and for him it’s a bit of social skills. So he’s a little bit of a Nervous Nelly and a little bit of an Awkward Arnold.
On being an actor right now:
There’s just so much opportunity and so much variety going on with a million different networks, and even internet networks. And they’re all trying to do their own thing. They’re all trying to make their own stamp, and a lot of these networks’ mandates are, “We want to be original. We want to move away from network formula.” Yeah, I would say it’s a great time to be an actor on TV.
Listen to Marketplace’s previous interview with Middleditch below:
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