Why ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Star Paul Bettany Is Playing The Unabomber

Paul Bettany is not playing a superhero in “Manhunt: Unabomber.” The British actor, who will reprise his role as Vision in “Avengers: Infinity War” next year, is playing the titular terrorist in Discovery’s new miniseries. Bettany told International Business Times that he enjoys taking roles drastically different from his part in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“I think for me it’s more born out of being bored terribly easily,” Bettany told IBT. “It’s nice to have done different stuff and come back and love getting back into the Vision character. It’s a lot of fun to work that way.”

READ: Brian D’Arcy James Teases ‘Manhunt: Unabomber’ Role

“Manhunt: Unabomber,” premiering Tuesday on Discovery Channel, follows the end of the FBI’s journey to capturing Ted Kaczynski. Also known as the Unabomber, Kaczynski had been sending bombs through the mail for over 20 years. Bettany had heard the stories about the terrorist, but he hadn’t realized how complex he was until he dove into researching the role. Kaczynski had been smart enough to get into Harvard at 16, where he became the subject of a government experiment called MKUltra that focused on breaking people’s wills.

“He was a monster made inside the walls, if you take my point, by the very people who have promised to keep you safe,” Bettany said. “I thought that was a fascinating thought. That is not to say that Ted wasn’t a mess when he turned up at university. It’s hard to find a 16-year-old that isn’t a mess. I know I was. And I guess, the TV show asks for your empathy. It doesn’t ask for your sympathy. The things that Ted did were heinous and awful and unforgivable, but the problem with just labeling people as monsters is you don’t have to think about it anymore.”

That’s exactly why the 46-year-old wanted to make a return to the small screen after nearly 20 years of focusing on movies. He believes that telling this story as a TV series allows the characters to be more complex and nuanced.

“I’ve been looking for something to do that was sort of more long form,” Bettany explained. “I guess if you make this story a story about Ted Kaczynski and the FBI agent [James R. Fitzgerald, played by Sam Worthington] that caught him as a movie, it would be a thriller. It would be an hour and a half, and you would cut out all the extraneous stuff. And the FBI agent would become a sort of maverick, relentless dogged detective and Ted Kaczynski would just be a monster. And I think those characteristics are true of those people, but it’s not all they are.”

READ: Keisha Castle-Hughes Discusses ‘Heavy’ Material In ‘Manhunt: Unabomber’

Fans will get to see Bettany play the complicated character Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EDT on Discovery Channel through September, but they’ll get to see him back in the role of a good guy soon enough. Bettany is shooting “Avengers: Infinity War,” which will hit theaters May 4, 2018, and it sounds like it’s going to be a big movie for Vision.

“My reaction was, ‘This is the best storyline for me so far,’ so that’s been fantastic,” Bettany said of his reaction to the Marvel movie’s script. “I mean, each time I’ve read them, I’ve gone, ‘How are they going to do that? How are they going to make a city rise up out of a’ — it just puzzles, it’s flabbergasting...I just had no idea when I read the script how they were going to go about realizing this thing that was in black and white on paper. It’s just so mammoth. It’s huge and sprawling. Yeah, it’s enormous.”