Dan Stevens rose to fame in the popular British period drama Downton Abbey. And don’t say you didn’t get a little weepy when good old Matthew Crawley met his untimely death due to a lack of seatbelts and a desire to leave British costume drama behind. Dan had this crazy idea to move to America and test his mettle in roles and environs as far from Highclere Castle as possible.

You might think he was mad for leaving a show at the height of its popularity, but Dan’s pretty comfortable with madness. As he explains, “Filmmaking is an exercise in collective madness; it’s one mad person saying, ‘I have this mad idea. What do you think?’ When you find another mad person who thinks you’re maybe not so mad, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”

An appetite for expanding his oeuvre has led Dan to team up with fellow madman Noah Hawley as the lead in his mind-boggling television show Legion, very loosely based on the Marvel comic book series of the same name. Dan plays David Haller, a seemingly schizophrenic mutant whose mind has been hijacked by a disturbing and hilarious parasite, played by a maniacal Aubrey Plaza. And if that sounds confusing, you don’t know the half of it.

Dan joins Off Camera to discuss what he loves about the uncertainty of Legion, how he found his voice for Beauty and the Beast, why you might catch him at the local deli taking a new accent out for a spin, and why we must hold on to our invisible wrist watches.