Patrick Schwarzenegger Hates His 'Moxie' Character Just As Much As You Do

While every movie needs a bad guy, Moxie's villain is truly vile. Even the actor who plays him thinks so. Patrick Schwarzenegger's quotes about his Moxie character Mitchell call out exactly why this fictional dude is the actual worst and explain why portraying him in the Netflix film was so important.

Moxie, directed by Amy Poehler and based on a 2017 novel of the same name, hit Netflix on March 3, fittingly just in time for Women's History Month. It follows 16-year-old Vivian (Hadley Robinson) as she accidentally starts a feminist revolution. After anonymously releasing an old-school, anti-patriarchy zine to her classmates, Vivian finds herself secretly leading a rebellion against the toxic masculinity. The catalyst behind her newfound activism is the school's star athlete and popular kid, Mitchell.

Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers for Moxie. So uh, what's so bad about Mitchell? While he seems to fit the usual "hot jock dreamboat" teen movie stereotype, Mitchell is straight-up terrible. He harasses Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Peña) — a confident new girl at school — after she turns down his advances, and at the end of the film fans learn he sexually assaulted a popular girl named Emma (Josephine Langford) when they were dating.

Since the character was written to be detested, Schwarzenegger admitted he "wasn't excited to play [Mitchell]." In a Feb. 23 interview with ScreenRant he said: "I'm very far removed from this type of character ... It sucks to play the villain and just a terrible guy. He's just disgusting on multiple levels, so it was kind of tough. But at the same time, it was great to be able to be part of this overall project and message and to work with someone like Amy Poehler and Netflix."

According to Schwarzenegger, it was Poehler who urged him to make Mitchell as unlikable as possible. "[Poehler] really wanted me to play with it, and she always pushed me to be more of an assh*le." As for why Mitchell is the way he is, Schwarzenegger didn't have an answer, but he suspected something in his past made him "feel powerful by doing these things."

Luckily, the end of the film finds Mitchell being questioned about his actions and his victims coming together to heal. Considering how distastefully Schwarzenegger feels about his character, it sounds like it took serious ~moxie~ for him to portray Mitchell.

Moxie is streaming now on Netflix.