So Bad, They’re Good! TV’s Best Villain Characters: Helena Eagan, Livia Soprano and More

Cersei Lannister (Game of Thrones)

“I don’t know if I sympathize with her. I admire her,” said Lena Headey to Time of playing Game of Thrones’ cruel queen, who once blew up a church killing everyone inside. “Every time you think you know her, there’s another depth of insecurity or fury or resentment or drive or grief.”

J.R. Ewing (Dallas)

“I love it,” Larry Hagman said in 1979 of playing Dallas’ cutthroat oilman, who used sabotage and blackmail to get his way. “It’s so much fun. Nice guys don’t have any fun. I get to love all the ladies, stab all the men in the back.”

Catwoman (Batman)

“It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever done without thinking how funny I was,” Eartha Kitt said in a 2007 interview about playing a sassy bad girl on Batman. “People say to me, ‘You are a cat. You move like a cat. You talk like a cat. You grrrrowl like a cat. And you look like a cat.”

Mr. Burns (The Simpsons)

“I styled his voice on Ronald Reagan,” says actor Harry Shearer, who has voiced The Simpsons’ callous nuclear plant owner (and Homer’s boss) since 1990.

Over the years, the mega-millionaire has dumped nuclear waste in Springfield’s park, tried to bury Homer alive, stolen the Simpsons’ puppies and even attempted to block out the sun!

Gus Fring (Breaking Bad)

“My talents are facial expressions and intensity,” Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito told The Guardian. He practiced yoga to control his breathing while playing the icy drug kingpin. “It’s all about energy.”

Helena Eagan (Severance)

On Severance, the daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Eagan is cold and calculating.

“Hurt people, hurt people,” Britt Lower, who plays Helena and her innie alter ego Helly R, told Vulture. “There’s a longing, I think, for something she hasn’t had access to: connection.”

Benjamin Linus (Lost)

Lost’s enigmatic Ben evolved over time.

“He was so dangerous, such a good game player,” actor Michael Emerson told TV Insider of the early seasons. Later, “He’s our Other, he’s had a long and difficult life of his own.”

Trinity Killer (Dexter)

John Lithgow was Arthur Mitchell, a mild family man who is also a serial killer on Dexter.

“One of the things you learn as an actor is that human beings are capable of almost anything,” he said. “I’m sort of in the business of illustrating that.”

Livia Soprano (The Sopranos)

Self-centered and scheming, The Sopranos’ matriarch, played by Nancy Marchand, was based on show creator David Chase’s mother.

“Something made me think that it might be funny to do a story about a guy who was a lot tougher than me,” he told the BBC. “A lot more masculine, tough, savage, all those things, with a mother like that.”

Alexis Carrington (Dynasty)

Joan Collins didn’t look at Dynasty’s diva Alexis as a bad person.

“She was the first empowered woman on TV,” she told CBS. “I knew who she was, I knew her back story, I knew everything about her, and I really, really liked her.”