When Betty Gilpin started research for her starring role in Mrs. Davis as Sister Simone, a badass nun who takes on a world-conquering artificial intelligence, she went right to the source: actual nuns. What she discovered was the complete opposite of what she expected.

“I viewed nuns as a group of people who were shutting themselves off from society,” Gilpin tells Inverse. “I realized in talking to nuns for research how wrong I was. Yes, they’re shutting themselves off from certain things, but not to disconnect, to hyper connect.”

This hyper-connection is what Sister Simone is trying to attain in her quest to shut down the Peacock show’s titular AI, and Gilpin’s research only confirmed that her character probably has the right idea.

David Dastmalchian is used to making the most of a small role. His first feature-film appearance was in 2008’s The Dark Knight as Thomas Schiff, one of the Joker’s henchmen in the film’s taut assassination scene. You remember — he’s the guy captured by Gotham police and interrogated by Harvey Dent in the ambulance. With little more than a deranged giggle and a sweaty, darting glance, Dastmalchian created a career.

Since then, Dastmalchian has turned the small supporting performance into an art. He’s worked with Denis Villeneuve, David Lynch, James Gunn, and, of course, Christopher Nolan, with whom he’s reuniting in the upcoming Oppenheimer. He’s run the gamut of genre films — from horror, to sci-fi, to fantasy — but Dastmalchian’s first love is, fittingly, the superhero movie.

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