Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and director Steven Caple Jr. are breaking down what makes ex-Special Forces agent John Creasy tick in the new Netflix series Man on Fire.

Abdul-Mateen told Blavity’s Shadow and Act that his character, John Creasy, is just trudging along as he tries to redeem himself.

“I think if it’s a Monday, right? Creasy is just trying to make it to Tuesday. You know what I mean? And then if he can make it to Tuesday, then he sometimes wakes up like, ‘Why did I make it to Tuesday? But since I did, I gotta try to make it to Wednesday,’” he said. “This character, it’s hard for him to do that, you know what I mean? And…it is a huge undertaking just to do that. And then you make that person responsible for the fate of somebody else and for multiple other people in a lot of ways. He’s really just trying to get this job done so that he can get back to trying to get himself right.”

“He just happens to stumble into a circumstance that revives him,” Abdul-Mateen continued. “I think he has the mentality of, ‘If I could just get everything right. I need to get everything perfect so I can just take care of it, so I can get onto the next thing.’ But we know that’s not how life is. It’s hard to get everything to cooperate at the same time. That’s not reality. But the attempt is where the drama and entertainment come out.”

Caple also talked about his personal growth as a director, who started out in television before jumping to films.

“I think when I first did grown-ish with Kenya [Barris], I was lucky enough that Kenya was on Season 1 and he was still finding the style and he was like, ‘I want you to come in and actually create the style,’” he said. “…The way Kenya worked, he opened the door and I was sitting in the writer’s room. I was seeing him actually juggle black-ish and grown-ish at the same time. Just to see him operate. So I have much respect for the TV space, [and] Kenya specifically, and how he operated and worked.”

“It gave me a different perspective,” he continued. “I was like, ‘Oh this is interesting to oversee a whole entire series.’ You know, when you are on a film, you only got an hour and a half, two hours to really tell a whole entire story, where a series, you’re doing eight episodes and you want people to be invested enough to continue to go on even for multiple seasons. That’s a challenge in itself.”

Watch the full interview below. Man on Fire is now streaming on Netflix.