Eric Matthews (Saw) - Characterization

Characterization

During an interview, Wahlberg offered his opinion of Matthews:

I think he's a selfish person. He's the type of person who's incapable of concerning himself with other people's feelings including his son's. In his mind, he probably has bigger issues. As we discover, he's not the most ethical person in the world. It all makes sense if you think about the first movie and what Jigsaw's mode is; what his MO is. This is a guy who doesn't really care anymore and he's kinda mailing it in. It's no mistake that he's brought into this case. It's by design and I think Jigsaw probably knew that this guy wouldn't want to get involved in the case and that's why he singled him out. When his name is on the ceiling, he's basically saying, "You are going to be my next subject." If my character was a little less selfish and a little less self-absorbed wasn't in a world of self-loathing, he might have been smart enough to realize that he was being pulled into something. That's sort of like life. We are at time so worried about ourselves we miss other stuff; and if you get carried away with that like my character does, it could really get you. In most cases and in real life, we figure it out before it's too late.

In the same interview, Wahlberg commented on the appeal of playing this character:

He didn't care about himself. I hope that audience would get that he cares about his son, but that doesn't mean I expected the audience to have sympathy for him. If they believe that he knows he made a mistake, that's good enough. I didn't want the audiences to say, "What an asshole!" I don't know if women in the audience care about Cary Elwes from the first Saw film. I think they still thought he was a bastard even if he didn't sleep with that woman. His mistake put him in that predicament and in real, if you mess around on your wife, you're probably not to going to end up chained up in the bathroom somewhere with a saw, but you can still make a mess out of things. What I kept zeroing in on with my character and his son is when I talk to my son, I tell him I love him every time I hang up the phone. I say, "I love you," when I drop him off at school, only because I want to make sure that the last things I say to him is something wonderful. That's one of the things we added to the script. That was one of the best moments for my character, to see what was the last thing he said to his son. When Jigsaw asks him that, that was something I had to have in that scene. If you are a parent, you will say probably say to yourself, "That's not good." That's the thing that you have to live with.