This is my first year as a series regular, and so I've never got all the Mr. Robot scripts before, and now all the information is there for me, and I'm not sure I want to know.
Whiterose and Minister Zhang are a theatrical character embodied by two very different persona. When Sam first came to me and asked me to play this part, I was apprehensive about the notion of playing a trans woman, I didn't want to play a man pretending to be a woman, when Sam explained to me that Whiterose was more like a woman pretending to be a man, that was much more interesting.
I spent a lot of my career bemoaning the fact that the characters that I play don't really matter that much, they don't change the action, and in this case I said, oh well a game changer that's the character that I want to play.
Whiterose is a woman in a male dominated world, and it makes her sad that she has to interface in the world part of the time as a man, Minister Zhang's relationship with Philip Price is kind of an alpha relationship, are we going to work together or are we going to tear each other's throats apart.
I think that Whiterose is using time to put herself in a more superior position over someone she's trying to manipulate. She puts someone on the defensive, and I think that she does it because it keeps her in the powerful position.
The show's a real mystery that dares to not tell you exactly what is going on within. The satisfaction of having a show like this reveal itself is a gift that the filmmaker is giving to the audience, because you will have those aha moments, and those moments that are absolutely like jaw-droppingly amazing, it takes a really disciplined storyteller to have the confidence to withhold. I always tell people, just keep watching, good things come to those who wait.