Colin Farrell explores the life of an alien in ‘Sugar’

At the end of the first season, it was revealed Sugar is an alien. Now, without anyone to report to, “he’s lost the most significant structure of his life and he’s, again, a man alone,” Farrell says.

To access that feeling, Farrell says he draws on his first years in the United States.

“I definitely felt like an alien when I was a teenager and in my 20s at various stages,” the Oscar nominee says. “I did find L.A. to be quite a lonely place. But I never found New York to be lonely. When I first arrived in New York, I felt like New York just grabbed me up into the swell of its energy and the frenetic kind of movement that exists in that city.”

For John Sugar, a private investigator, it’s a constant struggle to find that place in Los Angeles where he can fit in. In the first season, he traveled the affluent portions of the city. Now, in the second season, he’s in grittier parts — East L.A., for example — and he has new challenges: violence, desire.

“He’s someone who’s completely against violence, which is contradictory, because he’s involved in it so much,” Farrell says.

Farrell says Sugar’s inherent goodness makes the series particularly fun.

“He’s not naïve. He’s lived in this world, on this planet, for long enough. He recognizes the breadth of violence and cruelty … and he still maintains this very real and deeply set belief in the decency of human beings,” he says.

That decency makes Farrell thrilled to come to work.

“You put this good guy into all these testing scenarios and all these confusing relationships and then drama comes from that,” he says.

Sinister characters — like his award-winning Penguin in “The Batman” and his stand-alone series — can be easier to play because “playing a character that you don’t feel you share traits with is less sticky. It’s cleaner. It’s clearer. But both are interesting," he says. “You try to figure out what ways the person is different from you and in what ways, possibly, they’re the same. It’s always a riddle to be uncovered.”

While Farrell has had a wide range of roles over three decades, the 50-year-old doesn’t take the work for granted.

“I’m very grateful to still be working after 25 years and to get to read some wonderful things and be a part of them," he says. “It’s such a joy to play a character that is so fundamentally decent.”

In the first season of “Sugar,” “we were still very much writing (the scripts) as we were shooting them," Farrell says. "I wouldn’t recommend it necessarily, but it was good to have some influence and involvement (as executive producer). I feel like I know this fella pretty well and I do love this world.”

When some viewers were taken aback by the “alien” reveal, Farrell was invigorated. That’s his approach to acting, too. He doesn’t want to get locked in on anything until shooting begins.

“There’s always room for a surprise (and then) an actor comes in, you do your first rehearsal, and you see for the first time what they’re doing or what they’re going to do," he says. "And, more often than not, that’s a lovely surprise.”