When you think of the mastermind at the heart of a heist movie, you probably envision Brad Pitt or George Clooney — someone suave and charming and impossibly handsome who can sweet-talk their way into (and out of) all sorts of situations. You're definitely not thinking of a socially awkward loner who has difficulty ordering a drink at a bar, let alone striking up a conversation with a stranger next to him. But Money Heist's Álvaro Morte was happy to subvert expectations in his role as the all-knowing Professor — a handsome but socially inept genius at the center of the plan to rob the Royal Mint of Spain. 

Morte knows that his character is a "total nerd" at the start of the Netflix heist drama, but that's why he had so much fun playing him. But the Professor we meet in Part 1 is not the same one in Parts 3, 4, and 5, Morte tells Netflix ahead of the premiere of Part 5. And that is, perhaps, one of the things that continues to draw Morte to this character.

"I think the Professor has evolved greatly during the entirety of the show. He begins totally absorbed in his plan, completely obsessed, without a shred of emotional intelligence about anyone. He isn't able to control his emotions, his feelings. He's a guy who hasn't had a romantic relationship in his life, and so on," Morte says.

Morte explains that in the process of conceiving the Professor, he challenged creators — and himself — to think of an atypical mastermind: a villain who is a little different, whose brain may not operate as conventionally as the pop culture heist masters before him have. "We realized that the majority of the brains on a crew in heist stories were these cool guys with disarming charisma, that sort of thing. We said, 'What if we took it in a different direction?' And that's what the Professor has: He's really weird, but you still want to go home with him and hear what he has to say."

Morte also credits his character and the showrunners for giving him opportunities to film truly unique and unexpected scenes.The most fun scene, he says, took place in the junkyard in Part 1. Director Jesús Colmenar "put me in the trunk of a car to have a conversation where I mess around with the inspector. He put me in a car going up and down. I had to speak in Russian. I got chased by a dog. I got covered in engine oil and dirt and all the rest," Morte says. "It was really fun to do. But more than that, I remember that being the moment… when a different door opened for the Professor.”

This was a turning point, he says, because “the Professor, up to that point, had been a bookworm. He was completely immersed in his plans, his calculations, and all the rest. Then all of a sudden he has to leave his comfort zone, his surroundings in the hangar, and get into the action."