UGO: I watched The Kill Point last night and it's pretty damn intense.

DONNIE WAHLBERG: Thanks.

UGO: I'm noticing there's a common theme of serious intensity in the roles you choose.

DONNIE: Sometimes.

UGO: It seems like you're often playing a detective or soldier - mostly characters that carry a gun. Are you drawn to that, or do casting directors seek you out for that type of role?

DONNIE: I'm carrying a gun in this show, but I don't use it. I use my words - and my cunning, and my instinct and my intellect. One of the reasons I was comfortable playing a cop again, were those very reasons. Because he's a thinker, it's not a physical character. It's a mental character.

UGO: Is that something that you struggle with, the implications of having violent characters?

DONNIE: Me, do I struggle with that? No, I don't think many of them are violent, but you mentioned that they're cops with guns. He's a cop who doesn't use a gun. You know, he's a cop who has a lot of personality quirks that I've never played before and operates in a place that I've never had a character operate from before.

UGO: The character's interesting. He's a little off-center.

DONNIE: Yeah, I think he believes he's the smartest man in the room, or wants everyone to believe that he believes that. Maybe he feels like he has to. I think he does have a past, I think a lot of the stuff that he does is sort of his way of dealing with the frustration of his job. I mean, you have someone on the other end of the phone who is wrong and is doing something wrong and bad, and is jeopardizing the lives and you have to be polite to them, you have to patient with them. You have to sort of be an authority with them and at the same time give them a lot of leeway. You have to sort of out think them and try to guide them, and manipulate them but try to earn their trust at the same time. To do all of that, it's a very delicate tightrope to walk, and this guy, you know, I think he vents the frustration that he can't vent onto the hostage takers onto his coworkers. I think it's a fun character, and I've probably said this before and I'll probably say it a few more times: I've definitely played my share of cops, but they're all different. I've probably played a disproportionate number of cops, but at the same time, Hollywood makes a disproportionate amount of shows and movies about cops.

UGO: For the character, it's very delicate - but maybe more so for you. The show starts off with this incredibly, incredibly intense scene, then your character comes in. It's not funny, but there's a sense of levity there. Is that difficult for you to play in the context of the rest of the episode?

DONNIE: No, I think there's a tightrope to walk. My initial reaction to the scene was that it was too light, when I read it. The scene has changed a lot from what was originally there for that very reason.

UGO: Do you have input with that?

DONNIE: Yeah, sure. But I think it was also a matter of overconfidence. I think, you know, the character is very good at what he does. He has a very high success rate. He takes it very seriously, and his priority is to save every life in that bank, including the bad guys. He has a swagger. Is it overconfidence? Perhaps a little bit of that. Is it sort of an inferiority complex? I think it's a bit of that. I'm playing a guy who corrects everyone's English but doesn't speak proper English. He's a stickler for things he doesn't necessarily tend to himself, so he's a bit of a... I don't want to say hypocrite, there's a better word for it. He's not perfect, but I think when he shows up on the scene, his attitude is "I've done this fifty times, and I'm going to do it again. It's not so much that it's a light scene, but he's trying to keep it light. You have to keep it light. I worked with a real hostage negotiator - one of the most renowned hostage negotiators in the United States, a man named Jack Cambria from the New York Police Department Hostage Negotiation Unit. I've watched real hostage situations with them - they hang up the phone and tell jokes.

UGO: They'd have to.

DONNIE: They have to! We didn't really touch on half of that. If you think that opening scene is - I could show real footage of these guys doing real negotiations where they're laughing hysterically in between phone calls. They do have to. It's like, you know what? Yes, there are 35 people in that bank and 200 people outside the bank, any of whom could be killed at a moment's notice. And, you know, I'm not ready to think about that just yet. I'm not ready to face that I'm going to be the person that prevents death from happening right now.

UGO: I'm sure that's true of any profession where you have to take on someone's survival as your own responsibility.

DONNIE: Yeah, yeah, and I think in time the characters all change in the show. I think it's one of the best things in the show. The first two episodes we're really still setting everything up. I think my character and a lot of things he wears as a badge of honor - they crumble. And we realize he has a past. We realize he's worried about Stockholm Syndrome and in some way he suffers from it himself. I think he really gets to close to Mr. Wolfe.

UGO: As the audience, people often take a literal reading of a show, because we see it as a single narrative. I don't think people realize how much is filmed in separate rooms at different times. Have you actually had a lot of interaction with John Leguizamo on set?

DONNIE: Yeah, I do. We didn't do a lot of the phone calls together, but we worked on a lot of them together. I know the way he likes to work - he doesn't like to come in two weeks he shoots his side of the phone call and act out his side of the phone call. We both worked on rewriting the phone calls, and adding stuff in, and taking stuff out that didn't work for us, and sort of playing around and rehearsing them. But when it came time to shoot, it was like, "Okay. I don't know what this guy on the other line is going to say. I don't know what the guy reading with me is going to say." And so I just used that to help me; my lack of familiarity with the guy I'm reading with translates to a lack of familiarity with John. Hopefully.

UGO: You have to understand that I was a teenager when NKOTB came out, so I'm morally obligated to my 12-year-old self to ask: how do you explain to your kids you used to be an international heartthrob? I know they grew up with you as an actor, but the New Kids phenomena happened before they were born.

DONNIE: It doesn't come up much.

UGO: Do they know?

DONNIE: My older son knows. He's got his own deal, you know? I don't think he's too worried about that. I think he thinks it's cool. He's in a band, he plays bass. He's in a heavy metal band. And he's like, "Dad, you guys were okay. You weren't metal, but you're all right." He's more interested in my war stories, that I had a fight with Billy Idol's bodyguard. That I hung out on Warrant's tour bus and had a beer with him, or something. He's more interested in the cool stuff, anything metal-related.

UGO: Has your perspective on that time changed since you were in New Kids on the Block?

DONNIE: Your perspective changes with life, with growth. I look at that experience as, like, college. I learned a lot, I worked really hard. It's like being the quarterback on the college football team, or being the starting five for a national champion college basketball team. You work your butt off more than anyone could ever imagine, you play in front of thousands of people all of the time, millions of people. You have tremendous perks and fun, and then when you're around 23, it's all over.

UGO: Most people would consider those the golden years, but you've done remarkably well since then.

DONNIE: I always thought there was more for me than just that. If that had been the end of the story, that would have been okay. But I felt like there was more for me out there.

UGO: What kind of music do you listen to?

DONNIE: I listen to all types of stuff. Mostly old stuff.

UGO: Old... '60s?

DONNIE: In my car right now, I have Carol King, Joni Mitchell, Public Enemy, Linkin Park and Led Zeppelin.

UGO: Joni Mitchell and Linkin Park are a match made in heaven.

DONNIE: You'd be surprised. Chester Bennington is very wonderful with melodies, as is the wonderful Joni Mitchell.

UGO: Blue is among the greatest albums ever made.

DONNIE: One of the greats.

UGO: What's the best concert you've ever been to?

DONNIE: I think... Zapp - Roger Troutman. You know him?

UGO: I don't.

DONNIE: Old funk band. The late great Roger Troutman. Look it up. Fantastic concert. Actually, you know what, I'm going to backtrack on that. I'd say it's Zapp - which is Roger Troutman, he was the face of Zapp. You'd know him, you probably know some of his songs. They were around '70s, '80s. They were a great funk band. But I think it's Prince's concert, two years ago, was sick. It's one of the two. Prince wouldn't be insulted by that. He loves Roger Troutman too.