be a foil to

“They no longer had to be this perfection onscreen. People who came after him had the ability to be messy. They had the ability to be evil. They could be a villain. They could be complicated. They could not just be a foil to injustice. They could be the injustice, they could have this full embodiment of a person onscreen. When we think about his run of roles that we were all thinking and talking about, that is what his legacy means.”

Martha McSally and help to be a foil to Trump, but decided his status as a former Republican would have been a liability in the crowded primary field.

On the far left, the authors identified antifa, a loosely organized group that claims to be a foil to far-right extremists that it believes are fascists.

A campaign aide argued that the strategy could be a foil to Trump's reach on social media.

The public advocate candidates have also made a point of discussing how they would be a foil to the mayor and challenge him on issues such as lead contamination in New York City Housing Authority apartments.