EW posted this short interview with Richard Schiff:
Just a few days remain until we’re served up a new episode of Once Upon a Time (Jan. 8!), but Richard Schiff is already excited about the show’s eleventh episode, in which he’ll appear as Snow White’s (Ginnifer Goodwin) father, Enchanted Forest’s King Leopold. (“I don’t think I’ve ever played a king before, except in my own bedroom,” he jokes.)
Shortly before the holidays, the West Wing alum (TOBY!) chatted with me about the upcoming revealing and “intricate” story line that flashes back to his days with the Queen and his daughter, Snow White. “He certainly seems to be a happy guy at first glances,” says Schiff, who will soon also appear in Showtime’s House of Lies. “They wrote him as a happy-go-lucky guy. [He doesn't] desire anything. But at one point he says, ‘I have a prosperous kingdom, a beautiful daughter, and a lovely Queen,’ and I decided to make the Queen line not as excited as the other two items on that list. In other words, he’s unhappy and I don’t think people are ignorant [to that] … So there’s a little bit of darkness underneath him.”
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And while anyone who watched the show’s fall finale can guess how the King’s story ends, Schiff, who shares scenes with Lana Parrilla, Goodwin, and magic mirror Giancarlo Esposito, says his Once costars aren’t so sure they’ve seen the last of the King. “The actors all seem to think I’m coming back, but that’s a discussion I’ve have not had with anyone else. But they all say, ‘You have to come back because you explain this and that’ and ‘You’re the reason that… ‘ But, really, they’re all guessing along with [viewers].”
