What’s a role you’ve always wanted to play?
I’d love to play a gay nightclub owner who loves to dance and has a tremendous joie
de vivre.
Do you have someone in mind that you’re basing that on?
All the queens that I’ve ever met. A lot of tap dancing, you know. I mean, [Christopher] Walken’s played a lot of dancing roles. Maybe I can get one myself.
Tobin Bell has been scaring the bejesus out of audiences since the “Saw” franchise premiered in 2004. He plays Jigsaw, the man behind that creepy puppet who sets up torture games. With no end to the series in sight — “Saw VI” hits theaters Friday — Bell doesn’t tire of talking horror and the human condition.
How much of Jigsaw can we expect to see in “Saw VI”?
A lot of what drives the action is what Jigsaw set up before we saw him die in “Saw III.” You see quite a bit of me in “Saw VI” because “Saw” doesn’t play out in a linear way, and so it’s jumping all around in time.
We hear you aren’t a fan of horror films.
No. I’ll stay home with you and watch the game or something.
How do you feel about filming all the gory stuff?
I’m more concerned about the real violence in the world. It’s an artist’s job not to make moral judgments about things but rather to portray anything that inspires them, that expresses something that exists in the human condition. If this sort of thing could really happen, then it’s fair game.