From Tumblr: Anon Ask - What drew me to Nicholas Rush as a character?

[nym_wibbly]

What drew you to Nick as a character?
~ Anonymous

Heh. Everything? His broken heart, his secrets, his anger, his desiccated wit, his snark, his uber-dark humour, his next-level assholery and weaselling, his stubborn, just-over-the-borderline-into-obsessive grip on his personal definition of ‘the greater good’, his quirks and nervous tics, his inferiority complex, his ability to be (not unlike Rumple) a completely different person when he’s with the people he loves - open and warm, tender, passionate, emotive, vulnerable. His competence, with an intelligence equally adapted to high-minded theory and hard, functional pragmatism. The sense that he’s worked hard and sacrificed plenty to achieve that. His commitment to his chosen path. His total lack of fucks about what anyone thinks of him. His ability to overcome his instinctive fears, even a streak of real in-the-bone cowardice, and do the right thing with everything he’s got, when push really comes to shove. The self-awareness of the weight on his shoulders from his mistakes, his regrets, his grief, and his bitterness. His loneliness, surrounded by all those people, and that he makes so little effort to reach out to them when he easily could.

My own inability to define or pigeon-hole him. Robert Carlyle’s passion for the character and the story they were telling, and his apparent relative comfort in talking to the media/audience about both. And, of course, the magnificent beard and hair-mop of scruff that made the whole thing very nice to look at.

Yep. Everything.