NEW YORK, Oct. 14 (UPI) — Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites, Training Day and Black Phone alum Ethan Hawke says his truthstorian character Lee Raybon is finally getting the attention he craves in Season 2 of the dramedy, The Lowdown.
But that might not be a good thing.
Premiering Wednesday on FX, the second season of writer-producer Sterlin Harjo’s Tulsa-set show finds Lee embarrassing himself with the bombastic speech he gives as he accepts a local journalism award for a story he broke in Season 1.
“There’s nothing to make somebody who’s a borderline egomaniac impossible to be around than a little touch of success,” Hawke, 55, told UPI in a Zoom interview Tuesday.
“It’s going to be a nightmare for Lee, but he’s also going to be naturally suspicious of it,” Hawke explained.
“Watching the success of Reservation Dogs, [Harjo] was really worried about, ‘Wow, this is almost as difficult as failure,’ in figuring out how to maintain a sense of self-confidence from it, but not be pigheaded. I think this season is a little representative of things he learned a few years ago and he was kind of incorporating that into my character.”
The Season 2 opener also introduces Lee’s father, Lee Sr. (Tommy Lee Jones), which offers insight into how Lee became the well-meaning, but unreliable conspiracy theorist he is today.
“You don’t really know a friend until you know their parents, right? You know you’re really becoming friends with somebody when you meet their father or you’re really falling in love with somebody when they introduce you to their parents,” Hawke said.
“It’s likewise with a fictional character. You’re really getting in the deep end of the pool with them now.”
October sees the Oscar-winning Jones, 80, playing Lee’s grifter dad, as well as a 19th-century U.S. Marshal in a re-imagining of the classic western film, Angel and the Badman.
“That’s my job. That’s what I do. I’ve been in repertory companies where we’re playing five different characters in one week,” Jones said of playing such different roles in a short period of time.
“You know how to do it. It’s like riding a flaming unicycle. Easy,” he quipped, noting he is still finding things to excite and challenge him professionally “every day.”
“That’s one of the wonderful things about being put in The Lowdown. It’s entirely original, extremely dynamic and not ever boring.”
The star of The Fugitive, Lonesome Dove, Men in Black, No Country For Old Men and Lincoln said he doesn’t see tremendous variations between working in film and television these days.
“We use the same equipment, same lenses, same lights, same call sheets,” he said.
“Both of the media are coming closer together,” Jones said. “We’re lucky enough to have some pretty complicated and entertaining, for us, narrative responsibilities. We hope we executed them well.”
Hawke added: “It’s kind of like some novels are 200 pages and some are 900 pages. There’s a certain math to some of those longer novels. It’s a different way to pace out and thread out a story, where there’s a certain power and beauty to a six-sentence poem.
“It’s the same exercise, just using different muscles,” Hawke concluded.