The first season of Apple’s “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” series has come to an end, and TheWrap spoke with stars Kurt and Wyatt Russell to talk through some of those major reveals.
The series thoughtfully expands the MonsterVerse that was first established in 2014 with Warner Bros.’ “Godzilla” and continued on with “Kong: Skull Island,” “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” “Godzilla vs. Kong” and the upcoming “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” Instead of focusing on the monsters, the show tracks Monarch, the mysterious organization that has been tasked with watching and cataloguing the city-leveling threats.
Putting Godzilla in his first-ever live-action television show was cool enough, but the series quickly introduced another mystery: the existence of Lee Shaw, a former Monarch agent who holds the agency’s biggest secrets. We meet him as an older man, played by Kurt Russell, but get flashbacks to his earlier time with Monarch in 1955 and that time he is played by Kurt’s real-life son Wyatt Russell. But how does he look so good in 2014? That is one of the many conundrums surrounding the character.
Major spoiler warning; if you haven’t seen the series yet, turn back now.
Towards the end of the first season, it is revealed that Russell looks so ageless because time works different in the Hollow Earth, the realm just below our planet, where the monsters dwell. He went down for what seemed like an afternoon but was actually 20 years. And what’s more, the big adventure in Hollow Earth (which, of course, involves Godzilla) ended with our heroes returning to the surface. It is now 2017 and the research station they are scrambling into is actually on Skull Island. The final image of the first season is big man King Kong himself, yelling into the camera.
The Russells explained that reveal, their love of Godzilla and whether or not they’d be back for more “Monarch” time.
Kurt, you’re a big Godzilla fan but what was your first introduction to the character. And what about you Wyatt?
Kurt Russell: I just remember seeing Godzilla when I was a young kid. I don’t know how old I was. I don’t remember anything about the story. I remember he was coming out of the water. But I don’t remember being afraid of him or terrified by him. “The Blob” was terrifying. I was a little bit older when I saw “The Blob” and I was like, Man… That’s nightmare time for an eight-year-old. But I remember King Kong, I remember certain monsters. But Godzilla had this thing about him. I don’t know. There was just something, I think it was even to a kid, there’s backstory there somehow. There’s something about him. Where did he come from? It’s not a dinosaur. Why is he doing what he’s doing? And it seems like he’s always fighting other monsters. You never see a love scene between Mothra and Godzilla. They’re fighting each other. They’re fighting each other all the time. That’s what I remember.
Wyatt Russell: I didn’t watch a ton of monster movies when I was younger. It just never came across my radar as something that I was into. But as we went and shot this TV show, I recently watched the first Godzilla and realized some things. There was an Emiko in there, there’s different people who are in that show that they tie things together in a really cool way, if you go watch that first movie. And it’s much more about the people, it’s much more based on a societal feeling surrounded by 1954. They’re just surrounded by atomic fear, engulfed in atomic fear and why these things were created. It goes back there further than it goes back to any of the other monster movies.
You’ve talked about how people have wanted to cast you as father and son but never as the same character. Can you talk about where that came from and how you built this character together?
Kurt Russell: Well, it was a casting idea. Ronna…
Wyatt Russell: Ronna Kress.
Kurt Russell: I guess she’s responsible for the concept of, “Hey, what about those guys?” So, great. That’s an idea, instead of doing CGI or something else. We’ve come to find out that it’s never been done before between two known actors, father and son, in adulthood stages. And that was interesting. And then Godzilla gave it sort of like, Well, this might be kind of an epic thing, that could be kind of cool, and maybe let’s get into this. So we started talking to [series creators] Chris Black and Matt Fraction because it was just a casting idea, Lee Shaw was not someone that you see now. It was a much different situation. We wanted to never get in the way, but we also wanted to make… You had to make him matter. He had to have a greater purpose. We started talking about the reality is that he’s going to take these two time periods and bring them together. He’s the only one you’re going to see in both these time periods. Ultimately you are going to understand things through him or because of him. That was the stuff we started focusing on. And then we started talking about, well, what is the behavioral stuff that we feel will best display that for the show, for the story, and for the betterment of the concept of doing something a hell of a lot more than a creature feature.
What was that process like?
Wyatt Russell: It was a challenging process for a lot of reasons, and also fun because it was challenging. I don’t think we would’ve had fun if it was something that was just super easy, as much as at times we would’ve liked it to be just so easy, you don’t have to think about anything and just having fun. Sometimes those can come out flat because there isn’t the energy of, Got to be great, got to be great, got to be great. Putting that energy of, Got to be great, can be very tiring for yourself, but also everybody else.
But that’s the kind of energy that we wanted to go in with it. The bar was very, very high in our minds. It was higher in our minds than it was to anybody else. We’ve been asked to do this a million times. Everybody’s going to expect something and we don’t want to disappoint them. In our minds, pretty good wasn’t good enough, even though everything… Inevitably things end up pretty good, but we wanted them to be great. We were striving for something more than pretty good.
Are the things that you’ll notice across both characters if you watch the season again?
Kurt Russell: Oh yeah, absolutely. We didn’t want to get cartoony about it, but we wanted to do a cinematic blend. We wanted the relationships to matter so much that when you got to the end, it was extremely emotional. Because when you talk about doing something with Godzilla and all these monsters and you want to have the people matter and all well and good, there’s only one chord that you’re going to strike that’s going to match the grandeur of the size of the show and those monsters, and that’s with emotion, because human beings experience emotion.
How did you feel when you learned how Lee was still looking so good at his advanced age?
Kurt Russell: That’s not something we read.
Wyatt Russell: We knew that there was something that needed to be explained, not knowing how that was going to look.
Kurt Russell: In all honesty, this is, like anything else, it was a lot of collaboration, it was a lot of work, it was a lot of creating, finding, always for the good, always for the good of the show. And it was great to work with the fellas because they had so much on their plate. I’m just really happy that the outcome was able to reach the level of entertainment value.
Was there another explanation they were playing with?
Wyatt Russell: No, the explanation was that the difficulty was not knowing what was going to happen. I could say almost everything I’ve done, except maybe one other television show, I’ve known what the end of the show is. This was like not only do we not know what the end of the show is, we don’t know what episode six is. And so you’re like, “Okay, we have to drive the vehicle somewhere. Where are we driving the vehicle?” Because I can’t be left out in the cold going like…
Kurt Russell: In all honesty, you’re comparing notes as to what you feel has greatest value and where that greatest value is. And there were differences there. And therefore, I say I’m really happy with the outcome. It was not easy to achieve but it never is. And especially when people really like something as much as they are liking this, it’s wonderful to see them find the things that you fight to make, that you fight to create, that you fight to pull off, that you fight to execute. And it starts with what’s on the page. Let me put it this way, as making a 10-hour thing goes, that’s five movies back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back, with five different directors. This was in every way the fullest experience you can have.
The ending of the show is pretty open-ended …
Kurt Russell: Look, when you get to the point of the last shot, the last shot in this is when you’re dealing in this world that’s like, you’ve forgotten about that stuff, man, you forgot. You’ve completely forgotten. And you go, Oh. It just makes you want to just jump and go, doesn’t it?
Would you both be down to come back for another season?
Kurt Russell: Don’t know. That’s up to them and we’ll do it… Whatever. We’ll talk about it if they want to talk about it. But the thing that’s great is that it just got to a place where the last shot was… That’s as good as it gets in terms of last image impact.
Do you have the same relationship with King Kong as you do with Godzilla?
Kurt Russell: We don’t know.
Wyatt Russell: No, I mean…
Kurt Russell: We don’t know.
You don’t?
Kurt Russell: We don’t have an answer for you because we don’t know.
Wyatt Russell: I’d tell you.
It sounds like this season was kind of a pain in the ass.
Kurt Russell: No, it wasn’t a pain in the ass at all. It was a full experience. It was a rollercoaster, up, down, sideways. And you know what? Ain’t that fair to say?
Wyatt Russell: Look, fair to say that at times it was a pain in the ass. We were a pain in the ass.
Kurt Russell: Yeah! Yeah.
Wyatt Russell: But there’s a reality to that where in movie-making or anything that I’ve done, being the pain in the ass, if it’s not from being late, if it’s not knowing your lines, if it’s not from just being a problem on set or just presenting a problem on set, meaning like, “I don’t like this. Change it.”
Kurt Russell: … Lack of security. Bad ego.
Wyatt Russell: If the pain in the ass comes from anybody on set, but if the pain in the ass is, “I want this thing to be as good as I possibly can, here’s my reasoning why for why I think this needs to be made better or amended or this is why I have a strong feeling about this,” that if the pain in the ass comes from that, I’m all for the argument or the debate or whatever you want to call it. You can’t have two very creative people or three or four multiple creative people who have strong opinions and never going to have a disagreement. That’s going to happen on a movie set almost all the time if you plan on making something that’s really interesting, in my opinion. But that doesn’t mean that-
Kurt Russell: I’ll say this, there are, in my life, rare exceptions to that. If you really want to do something good, there’s rare exceptions to that because rarely do you have someone at the helm, and by the helm I mean… it’s her movie. It’s his movie. Boom. There’s not a showrunner. There’s not a main writer. There’s not three other writers, five directors, 17 producers, got to talk to Toho, got to talk to Legendary, got to talk to Apple. No, there’s Quentin Tarantino. Go talk to him. Figure out what are we doing today.
Speaking of Tarantino has he reached out to you about being in “The Movie Critic” Kurt?
Kurt Russell: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m assuming that Quentin’s going to do his last movie and I’m assuming this will be one he really cares greatly about. Obviously I would love to, but I don’t know anything about it. You want me to want help the electrician over there? I’m available. Didn’t say I was good, I just said I’m available.
This is a franchise that shuffles between television and film. Is that something that is interesting to you?
Wyatt Russell: I’m interested in anything that’s good. You read it on the page and it’s really good and something you’re like, Oh, I really want to play that character. I’m interested. Now, it’s so early, there’s no conversations of how they link this with that. At least they’re not telling us. That is above my pay grade.
Kurt Russell: What is fun about this and what’s really fun talking to the guys all the time, it is fun what you can do here. It’s endless what you can do. That’s rare, also. Because guess what? It’s a great what-if.
Wyatt Russell: Well, look, what’s cool about what this possibly could be, and I’m sort of pumping Apple’s tires here, but I am an Apple employee… And they did give me a free iPhone. So in full disclosure, I’m a paid spokesperson.
But what they have an opportunity here is building out the MonsterVerse, as Marvel did with the Marvel world, they had all these comic book movies and before Marvel hit it with “Iron Man” and Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau and all that, they didn’t really work because they were never really focusing on the people. They were always focusing on the superpower or the muscle, or whatever. It wasn’t like, Yeah, the muscles are part of the thing and the superpower is part of the thing, but what’s behind Iron Man is what’s really actually interesting.
And they were able to build a very successful world on that idea. And here that’s what hopefully this can do is, monsters are super exciting to watch. They’re super fun. They’ve done very well in the box office. Now, add to that a human element and human stories, and you can just expand the MonsterVerse in ways that are endless and exciting and in many different ways with many different characters, and actually add to the monsters in a new way that can hopefully do similarly what Marvel had done for itself, this can do for the monster world.
Kurt Russell: It opens itself up to that. When you start doing the kind of work we were doing with Matt and Chris, that stuff starts showing itself to you and you start saying, Oh, well it’d be great, but it has nothing to do with this show. Oh yeah, it’d be great, but it has nothing to do with this show. Right? And you say, Oh, this is kind of fun. This is… Yeah. And then you see it unfolding in front of your brain and you say, No wonder these guys like this so much. It’s going to be a fun time. Yeah, that’s a world that’s available if it’s tapped correctly.
All of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” is on Apple TV+ right now.
