Beneath the mild manners, Westworld’s Bernard is a complex machine

Nothing in Westworld is what it seems and you’ve got to keep an eye on everyone – especially the people running the park.

***** Warning: there’s a huge spoiler in this article. If you haven’t streamed Westworld seasons 1 and 2, do it here at Showmax. *****

When we start, Jeffrey Wright’s character Bernard Lowe is the head of the Programming Division at tech giant Delos Incorporated. He’s in charge of programming the hosts, the cyborg humans that guests interact within the wild west town of Sweetwater (read more about Westworld here). Bernard is so attuned to each host’s programmed traits, that he begins to notice almost imperceptible changes in their behaviour.

Bernard notices because, as Head of Behaviour for Delos, he is brilliant at his job. Perhaps a little too brilliant…

Giant puzzle pieces

Filming Westworld presents obstacles because it’s intricate, explains Jeffrey: “It took a bit longer than we had expected to get the first season out, but that wasn’t a function of turmoil on the set. It was really just the difficult logistics of creating the first season, building these stories and writing these scripts from scratch, and also constructing the sets that are this vast world.”

Bernard is very by the books. He has to be as a programmer because there’s no such thing as shortcuts. Every line of code, every facial tic, every storyline, everything in the actual theme park has been past his mind and eye. Bernard is as key to the success of Westworld (and Delos’s profit margins) as the park and hosts’ creator Robert Ford (Sir Anthony Hopkins). That makes Bernard a central figure in everything that happens in Westworld, both the show and the theme park in it.

Semi-main man

It didn’t take much to get Jeffrey on board the project but he had no idea the scope of his actual role, explains the 54-year-old actor: “At the time, Anthony Hopkins was on board, J.J. Abrams was producing, and [we knew] it was for HBO. That was it.”

Bernard isn’t just Ford’s second in command; the more the episodes unfold, the more apparent it is that he’s not what he seems – and no, the “what” isn’t bad grammar. “Even though I didn’t know the full trajectory for Bernard, I was able to piece it together, because I spent the first four or five weeks of the season largely filming with Anthony Hopkins, shooting scenes from later in the ten-episode arc. I could piece together some plot points that shined a light for me going forward,” reveals Jeffrey.

**** SPOILER *****

Bernard is a host. But he’s also not just any host – he’s arguably more important than Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), who over two seasons went from a simple rancher’s daughter and the unofficial sweet-heart host who welcomed all the guests to the park, to a power player and self-aware cyborg who smashes the hierarchy in Westworld.

Bernard, as it is revealed, was created by Ford to replace his late business partner Arnold. In season 1 episode 8, Ford tells Bernard that he was built to be the best of both Ford and Arnold and ensure their dream was not only achieved but surpassed.

Pinocchio problem

While it’s one thing watching Dolores and brothel hostess Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) realise the truth – that they’re hosts and not humans – it’s far more dramatic and emotional when Bernard makes this discovery, because as viewers, we’ve have developed a bond with him as a human. And it affected Jeffrey at first too: “I think it really was a function of the role, of Bernard’s place in the overall story arc this year, in that he in some ways was kind of the narrator through which the audience took in the various storylines.”

While season 1 is about Bernard discovering that he isn’t real, that his life has been a lie created by someone (Ford hasn’t told anyone else that Bernard is a host – and one operating in the real world on top of that), season 2 is a lot more of an introspection on the world that Bernard has helped create.

Jeffrey explains how he tried to make sense of Bernard’s realisation and newfound position on the show: “The ways in which our choices (as humans) are programmed and the ways in which we’re able to break beyond the systemic programming that we are all vulnerable to. I love the idea of exploring the ways in which we can be genuinely free-thinking and free being individuals.”

For season 2, the show’s creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy also deliberately kept Jeffrey in the dark about Bernard’s journey. They wanted Bernard to be vulnerable yet still shielded, gentle yet assertive, in control but lost as his position in the bigger picture gets coloured in more.

“Because Bernard is in a place in which he’s struggling with understanding it, so they (Jonathan and Lisa) wanted to keep me in the dark a little bit. But at the same time, because of logistical concerns, I ended up shooting scenes from probably seven or eight different episodes during the course of the first four or five weeks of filming, so I was able to connect the dots a little bit,” says Jeffrey.

It’s not going to be a fun ride either – the more Bernard looks for answers about himself, the more lies and deception he discovers not only by Ford but even by the hosts he created. Is anything real in Westworld? Is anything sacred and truthful? “It’s part of the reason we love the show: the challenge of realising the vision, being challenged by it, ideally challenging our audience, who then, in turn, challenge us,” says Jeffrey.

If you want to connect the dots and find out where Bernard is, where he’s come from and where he’s going in season 3 (on Showmax from 16 March), be sure to stream seasons 1 and 2 of Westworld here.