Kevin Bacon on ‘The Bondsman’, Horror and what season 2 could bring

Spoiler alert: This interview contains mild spoilers about this season of ‘The Bondman’, now available to stream on Prime Video.

The new series “The Bondsman” plays Kevin Bacon as Hub Halloran, a recent murder federal man who gets new life through Satan, as long as he uses his follow -up skills to detect and kill demons that have escaped from the underworld. That is a hell of a starting point, but this show has much more to his thoughts than just monsters-of-the-week, deep in Hub’s relationship with his ex-wife and son and his love-hate relationship with the country music industry.

The surprises start at the top. In the first instance, Bacon’s Macho-Hoofrol seems to be a normal badass: all one-liners, muscles and cool-guy poses. But that was only half the attraction for the veteran actor.

“You see him kicking right away, right? But he is also a man-child,” says Bacon. “He still lives in his mother’s garage. That is an interesting look at masculinity for me, because some people would define masculinity by going into a bar and kicking ass. Some people would define it as still under the wing of your mother. He is stubborn, but he is also a kind of baby, and I find that fascinating.”

The mix of supernatural with family drama increased this project for Bacon, which is also an executive producer.

“On the one hand you have all this insanity in terms of the plot and demons and devils and the violence,” he says. “But the way in which the characters respond and are on each other very well -founded. It remains very small and really while the rest of the world is simply so insane.”

Erik Oleson, the showrunner for “federal man”, as well as an executive producer and writer, was very happy to work on a series that had robust characters, but was also looser and lighter than some of his previous projects.

“I did the big, beautiful shows,” says Oleson. “I leaned it politically, ‘Daredevil’ kind of things did. This was an opportunity to do something that would just be fun to write and look. During the jump, when we pick out the alchemy of this new show, we think,” Ok, let’s make this a smile, shout out loud, unpredictable. ”

Because “The Bondsman” runs the tricky fever of comedy and horror, Bacon knew that the show was needed to get the right tone to keep horror fans happy. And yes, it is filled with Campy Setpieces and Wilde Gore who plays well for an audience looking for a wild time. Bacon says he knew that the mix was good when the first eight minutes of images that were screened for an audience this year in South by Southwest. The reaction of the crowd – including his wife, Kyra Sedgwick – was enthusiastic.

“My wife hadn’t seen it yet, so she didn’t know what to expect,” he says. “The audience, when I got my throat, they are so [makes a shocked face]. And then they laughed and it was exactly what we wanted, a lot of ‘oh, shit’ reactions. And she was in the audience and looked at me and [mouths ‘Oh shit!’]. She had a good time. So it was very satisfying. That is the kind of things that I dig when horror works that way. “

Bacon knows what works in horror. During his career, the productive actor played in scary films, from being killed in the original “Friday the 13th” from 1980 to the bovenulining of the franchise launch “Tremors” in 1990; In the lead role in Paul Verhoeven’s film “Hollow Man” from 2000 and last year’s trilogy “Maxxxin”, and appears in the upcoming reboot “Toxic Avenger”. What does horror mean after decades of impactful roles in the genre?

“It’s life and death. Stakes are high,” he says. “I also feel that as a consumer I like to share that experience with people in the theater we from:” Oh fuck! ” And everyone jumps at the same time and everyone laughs at the fact that they have jumped at the same time.

The effort was also high during some of the wild battle scenes of the series, including one striking hub that had fought a malicious entity in a swimming pool. Both Bacon and Oleson knew it would be a challenge because of the complexity of shooting scenes while they were under water.

“I have done some underwater items before, but I don’t think it would have been a real fight,” says Bacon. “I didn’t think about the fact that it is blurry because your eyes are open, so you swing and takes hits, but you don’t realize how much air you lose to do that. I was exhausted, but that was nice as shit. I like to do that.”

“Hey, Mr. Bacon: Do you want to hold your breath under water while fighting a demonic cheerleader?” Says Oleson. “I certainly thought he would do that and said,” You’re crazy “, but instead he doubled,” Oh hell yes, we’re doing that scene. ” When others thought it might be too expensive and we can think of a different order, Kevin and I were determined that it would be cool. “

Given the pleasure they had made the first season, Bacon and Oleson are optimistic that they can maintain ‘the federal man’.

“They didn’t choose the show for a second season, but we already had conversations if they were to do what it could be,” says Bacon. “Deeper in the problems of Hub – I leave it to the writers to find out all the plot items, but from a character point of view I am always looking for new and more difficult challenges, whether physical challenges or emotional challenges are: loss, guilt, redemption.”

“I have bad, cunning plans for a second season, and I tried with the way I wrote season 1 to make it so difficult at Amazon not to give us a second season,” Oleson adds. “There is much more story to tell in this world. We have just started.”

View a trailer for “The Bondman” below.