In person, Edi Gathegi seems easy-going and charming.
That wouldn't describe him in NBC's The Blacklist, where he played Cabal enforcer Matias Solomon last season, and starting Tuesday it won't describe him in StartUp, a Crackle web series in which he plays Haitian-American gang boss Ronald Dacey.
Something in Gathegi's manner, or maybe mostly in his eyes, enables him to turn colder than the polar ice caps. He morphs into a very bad guy - not just one of the most menacing on television these days, but one of the most distinctive.
Gathegi's fine with that.
"I love playing villains," he says. "They're the most fun. When I read for these parts, I think maybe I do a better job than if it's for something lightweight."
He adds, though, that not all villains are created equal.
Matias Solomon on The Blacklist (above) is a ruthless cog in the criminal machine known as The Cabal, and accordingly, he shows no sign of human connections.
"What's interesting about Mr. Solomon is that he's 'on' all the time," says Gathegi. "This is his job. Everything is life and death, and he must be in control every minute."
Ronald Dacey, less so.
Dacey is drawn almost by accident into the central storyline of StartUp, which revolves around Izzy Morales (Otmara Marrero), a smart and ambitious young woman from a tight-knit working-class Cuban family in Miami.
Izzy has come up with an idea called GenCoin, an alternate money system she is convinced would fix the flaws in BitCoin. She just needs money to launch it - thus the title of the show - and after multiple turndowns she runs into Nick Talman (Adam Brody), who happens to have some.
Ironically, even though Nick works in finance, he doesn't really want this particular batch of money. He's been forced into hiding it for his crooked father, with whom he also wants nothing to do.
So he decides the easiest course would be to park it with Izzy and her startup. Except that one of the people from whom his father pilfered it is Ronald Dacey, who now wants his share back.
Except that once Ronald finds exactly where Nick stashed it, he starts to wonder if maybe he should get in on the GenCoin action himself.
An innocent-enough tech startup has now become way more complicated and dangerous, with further nuances like Ronald's hope that perhaps GenCoin could help him ease out of the gangster life.
"One of the things I really like about this show is that it's three-dimensional," says Gathegi. "Ronald wants to get into another line of work. He's got a family. He looks around at his situation and this is the first time he sees a potential to improve it."
But unlike Mr. Solomon, Gathegi notes, Ronald isn't in full control. So he has to keep leading his gang at the same time he tries to become someone else with his new partners and his family.
"Solomon is very easy to play," says Gathegi. "This is different. Ronald has to be two things at the same time."
An ambitious story that weaves crime with tech, StartUp signals that Crackle is working to reach the next level in the increasingly crowded field of streaming original drama.
To this point, Crackle's best-known and most successful original program has been Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. StartUp, which also stars Martin Freeman as a badly flawed FBI financial crimes agent trying to get inside the hidden-money part of the case, should move Crackle further into the conversation about serious drama.
As for Gathegi, he does say that despite his fondness for villains, that isn't the limit of his hopes.
"I'd like to play lighter parts, too," he says. "You always want to try something different.
"I haven't done stage work lately, and I'd like to do that. I love Shakespeare. It would be fun to be part of Love's Labor Lost."
But he's not about to abandon his franchise.
"One of the things I'd love if I ever had the chance," he says, "would be to play the villain in a really big summer blockbuster film, like Mission: Impossible."
He's got the look.