Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Travis Kalanick, former co-founder and CEO of the ride-sharing service. Created by Brian Koppelman and David Levien and based on the 2019 book of the same name by Mike Isaac, Super Pumped aims to tackle the rise and fall of corporate empires.

Playing former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Joseph Gordon-Levitt took this role very seriously in the series Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. While Travis Kalanick was not involved in this project, the actor especially wanted to bring a lot of humanity to this character. “I was really intent on not reducing Travis to his headlines,” Gordon-Levitt said in a Visio conference last February. “I really wanted to show a whole and multifaceted human being. It’s probably a lot more flattering a portrayal than a lot of the press around him because the press doesn’t focus on him as a whole human being. The press more focuses on the particular decisions that he made and actions that he took as the leader of this company because that’s really more the place of journalism and nonfiction. Whereas the place of a dramatization is to dive into his humanity.”

Believing that all human beings are complicated, Joseph Gordon-Levitt emphasized the importance for him not to judge this person who had to leave Uber following numerous accusations against him. In 2017, Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick resigned as chief executive of the $68 billion ride-hailing app following a tumultuous six months of scandal, including sexual harassment, gender discrimination, a toxic workplace. “It’s of utmost importance not to judge any character you are playing”, he said. “I’ve played characters guilty of far worse things than anything Travis ever did and still did my best not to judge but to try to empathize. That’s one of the things I love about acting is really putting myself in the shoes of such a wide variety of people.”

After learning both positive and negative things about Kalanick, the actor especially wanted to portray a character based on facts and the testimony of many people who worked alongside him. “My job is to relay how it felt and who is the whole human being making these things happen, and I’m of the opinion that all human beings are complicated, explains Joseph. Reading the book, reading a lot of the press around Uber, a lot of the focus is on these incredible things that Travis did both good and bad. I wanted to find out, ‘Okay. But how does it actually feel to be in a room with him? What’s he really like?”

The natural charisma of Joseph Gordon-Levitt immerses the audience in the life of one of the founders of one of the most controversial companies in the world in recent years. Remarkably comfortable in the skin of Travis Kalanick, Joseph Gordon-Levitt does not however seek to make judgments but simply to play comedy: “I’m not a journalist, I’m an actor” he says.