Chris: So Clay
and Lenny are the last of the original nine? Or is Otto one of the original
nine as well?
Kurt: No, Otto's
not. Otto would be a little young for the original nine, like Tig and Bobby
would be a little young. It's Lenny and Clay are the last of the original nine.
Chris: I love that you brought Lenny back. A couple
more questions. There were two antagonists added this season: Lt. Roosevelt and
Asst. U.S. Attorney Lincoln Potter. Sort of a twist on the gruesome twosome of
Dept. Chief Hale and Agent Stahl. Roosevelt, like Hale, is a man of principle
and wants to catch the bad guys fair and square. And Potter, like Stahl, will
catch the bad guys any way he can. Can you give us some insight into the
creation of these two characters? Were they conceived together or independently
and how much did Rockmond Dunbar and Ray McKinnon bring to these guys?
Kurt: The
characters were conceived separately. As
far as Roosevelt, to me we've seen two types of law enforcement on Sons. We've seen guys like Hale who are
a little bit obsessive and have this personal vendetta against the club, who
are rigid in their pursuit of bringing them down. Then you have Unser who is
clearly in their camp. So I wanted to create a realistic law enforcement entity
and by bringing in the Sheriff's dept. who has a guy who comes from gang
taskforce. All the guys I know in gang taskforce are really interesting dudes
because they know they have to learn to live with these guys. There has to be
compromises. That you have to look at the big picture and you can't be a hard
ass that brings them in and down for every minor infraction. There has to be give and take, that's the only
way it works. And the way these guys usually operate is they go into these
territories to piss on the ground so these guys know what they're capable of.
And we see Eli do that in Episode 2 when he trashes the club house. That's him
saying I'm here, this is what I'm capable of doing, don't fuck with me. Then at
the very end of the same episode he says to Clay "I hate doing this. Let's find
a way to work together." That's really an interesting law enforcement entity
because they've never dealt with that before. He's a guy that's upright and
plays by the rules, gets sucked into this bigger investigation that is mired
with red tape and political machinations and bigger goals who don't give a fuck
about his county, and ultimately gets played by that and does things he wishes
he didn't do. And being the guy that he is, he apologizes to Juice in the end.
In Episode 12 or 11 he says I fucked up, I'm sorry. And it doesn't mean I won't
arrest you, I'm still going to do my job. I just love the fact he's man enough
to say I got played over by this dick, too, and I fucked up. To me, Theo's
reaction in that scene is great. It took him by such surprise that a cop was
saying sorry I fucked you over. They're not used to a cop being fair and to me
it's a really interesting dynamic. And yes, Rock brought a tremendous amount of
that. Rock's a badass, but he's got this great vulnerability and compassion and
definitely brought that to the character and we were able to write to that.
Chris: To be
clear, he's an antagonist but he's not exactly a villain. He's a character you
don't want to root for, but you feel for the guy.
Kurt: Yeah, to me
it was too easy to hate Hale. You know what I mean? He was just a dick
(laughs). And Rock, he's the cop, so on this show he's the antagonist, but yet
he's a decent guy. He's got a wife who's trying to get pregnant; he's a guy
with problems. It's more complex, it's not black and white. And to me, those
are the interesting characters. I love the fact this season that what
ultimately would undermine all the law enforcement was another agency of law
enforcement. Eli got undermined by RICO. RICO got undermined by the CIA. You
know, it's just what fucking happens. They all got fucking played by somebody
above them. They all were pawns.
Chris: You kind of
tip it in the end with Danny Trejo right before the end of Episode 13. My wife
and I are sitting there going what's that angle? What's going on? I didn't see
that coming, I thought that was fantastic.
Kurt: It's fun,
man. I thought people would see it coming, only because we didn't really lay in
clues, but I knew I was doing that arc from the jump. So if you go back and
look at all those scenes with Romeo and Luis it all kind of makes sense. Even
in Episode 2 when they suddenly show up out of the blue to take down the
Russians. Clearly they're just plugged in, so in a little bit of a sick sense
kind of way it all hooks up and makes sense. The truth is it's pretty much what
we did with (Pablo) Escobar. We've been fucking doing it for a decade. It's not
a new dynamic.
Chris: Shame on
me for not even noticing!
Kurt: You know,
as I was writing it I was like "Ah fuck, they're going to know what's going
on!" I'd get through an episode and be like "They're going to see it coming!"
So I'm glad they didn't and I love just dropping it at the end of the teaser
there and giving people a couple of minutes to go "what?!"
Chris: I
definitely want to talk about Ray McKinnon as Lincoln Potter. I love Lincoln
Potter as a character. As soon as you see him riding a motorcycle and as the
season went on, he got creepier and creepier. His tactics are as unsettling as
his mannerisms are. I wanted to know how much is planned and how much is
adlibbed. I particularly like, maybe one of my favorite throwaway things in the
entire series, is the fact he's smoking strapped into an inversion table.
Kurt: (laughs)
Chris: First of
all the head rush from that must be insane. I turned to my wife and was like
"What the fuck?!" That was amazing. Where'd he come from? He's awesome.
Kurt: We knew we
were doing this RICO thing. My brother-in-law is actually a Fed in New York and
he was sort of our TA on all of that because he's been in a couple of big RICO
operations. He was the guy that was telling us these young guys and women are
really the rock stars of these RICO operations now. The interesting thing they do is they'll
really recruit every area. Every region has these Asst. U.S. District
Attorneys. They'll recruit from these regions to be locals just because they
know the turf. If you look at the landscape of all the guys working on the Wall
Streets are these white dudes from Princeton that know the world.
Chris: You go for
Italian mobs, you bring in Giuliani.
Kurt: Well, yeah.
There's an Asst. DA my brother-in-law worked with that's working on the Gambino
stuff, it's just this ballsy Italian chick from Staten Island. They're the new
rock stars. They're the ones that want to make a name for themselves and work
their way up the food chain and be the guy, or the woman, that's appointed by
the President. They want to be the U.S.
District Attorney. So it's very competitive and I had that information, so we
knew we were going to make him this local dude. We gave him this realistic
backstory and organic and stuff, but then I wanted to flip the character on his
head. I wanted to make him a little absurd, a little quirky, and just a little
bit interesting. I just didn't want somebody coming in and playing a dry,
procedural... It just felt so fucking boring to me. I was lucky enough and got to
create and write Forest Whitaker's character on The Shield. We wanted to create a guy that was little bit
upside-down. So I knew I wanted this guy to be off the beaten path and
originally was hoping to get Donal Logue to do the role, but Donal ended up
booking a pilot that took him out of the running. And I knew of Ray through Walten, he's Walten
Goggin's producing partner. I have seen him on Deadwood so we went after him and made him the offer. He came, we
sat down and he's just a really delightful human being. He totally embraced it
and totally ran with it. So yes, a lot was on the page, but a lot wasn't.
Chris: It's kind
of like a dark Jim Henson type.
Kurt: Yeah! This
is a perfect example of when Ray takes it one step further. The scene in Episode
4 where he's on the table and just starts dancing, you know, he starts doing
that little weird dance. It was scripted he jumps up on the table to get a
better view of those photos. But Ray was a guy that decided he then heard a
tune in his head and started doing that odd fucking little jig! Which is so
distressing for the director is that it wasn't even in the director's cut and
then I saw this footage and said it was fabulous, how could I not show that? So
I'm blessed that I have super talented people surrounding me who take a seven
or eight on the page and make it a nine or ten. Or a four on the page for that
matter and make it a nine or a ten. Ray was definitely that guy. Again, I didn't
want to create a guy who was completely a hard ass.
Chris: He's a
good guy! With Roosevelt and Potter, you root against them but you're also like
"these guys are awesome!"
Kurt: He tries to
keep himself detached, yet he's a human being and couldn't help but be impacted
by Eli and knowing that Eli felt beaten up. That impacted him and he clearly
had some kind of history with guys like Hale and at that point it wasn't even
about helping the club or charming, it was about fucking over Hale.
Chris: The good guy
needed to win!
Kurt: Yeah!
