The journey of “The Old Man” feels about as stressful as the series itself. The FX drama starring Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brennan and Alia Shawkat was postponed in 2020 due to COVID. At that point, the series only had three more episodes left to film before its shuttering. It finally premiered to critical praise and a wide audience in 2022 — but with another major, industry-shaking obstacle in its path: the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Now, over two years after Season 1, “The Old Man” is back for its second season.
“The weird thing about shooting ‘The Old Man’ is years go by, right? We had COVID, got sick, we had a strike, blah de blah,” Brennan told TheWrap. “Then you ask John Steinberg, ‘How long has it been?’”
During this time gap, “The Old Man” has ratcheted up its already-high stakes to yet another level. Picking up soon after the events of Season 1, the series follows Henry (Bridges) and Harold (Lithgow) after they learned that the woman they view as a daughter isn’t who she appears. As they parse through Angela/Emily/Parwana’s (Shawkat) third identity, they also set off to Afghanistan to save her in a story that blends fatherly devotion with barely legal espionage and geopolitical politics.
“Season 1 was about a secret between two people who didn’t think they had secrets and the lengths that one of them would go to to keep them. Season 2 is about what happens when that secret’s out,” Jonathan Steinberg, the series’ co-creator and executive producer, told TheWrap. “It felt like a story that had enough gravity at its center that it would hold all of these very big characters and very big stories all in one system.”
As executive producer Warren Littlefield put it, Season 2 is all about “identity.” To drill home that theme, “The Old Man” paired two of its most oppositional characters — Bridges’ Henry and Lithgow’s Harold.
“In Season 1, Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow don’t have a hell of a lot of screen time together. They are opposing forces. In a chess game, they’re on different sides of the board,” Littlefield told TheWrap. “The joy of Season 2 is these guys are united, right from the start of Season 2, in the back of a cargo truck sneaking into Afghanistan … Of course, they see everything differently, but now they’re in the same scene, and a camera is capturing those two guys going at it as they are united in their quest to save Angela/Emily, who ultimately reveals herself to be Parwana.”
Littlefield also noted that, unlike the relatively limited focus of Season 1, this season is far more globally conscious. “We’re in a geopolitical world where Russia, China, U.S., Afghanistan, it’s all in play,” he said. “We’re invested in those characters, but the journey is so much different than Season 1.
Bridges didn’t go into Season 2 with any specific thoughts about how he wanted to approach his character.
“My basic direction to myself was, I’m up for the game. Do your best, work with the people in the script and go for it. I didn’t really have any aims I was shooting for,” Bridges told TheWrap. That “go with the flow” ethos applied both to how he approached this season as a whole and his scenes with Lithgow, the on-screen adversary he’s forced to work with this season.
Before Season 2 began filming, Bridges rehearsed with Lithgow and Steinberg to figure out the motivations of these characters. That involved elaborating on the backstory that the two met in Vietnam. But even then, Bridges admitted he didn’t talk with his co-star “all that much” about their character journeys.
“So much of it is based on the script, what’s written. That’s where I go. What does it say in the story? You take that, and you jam a little bit,” Bridges said. “There are those great moments in the makeup trailer in the morning when you’re getting made up, you say, ‘What do you think about this? How you feel?’ We work that way. That’s the fun part of it.”
Though it’s spearheaded by four actors who have been roundly praised for their comedic work, “The Old Man” stands as one of the most somber dramas of the TV season. According to Steinberg, casting comedy heavy-hitters like “The Big Lebowski” star Bridges, “3rd Rock From the Sun” star Lithgow, “Frasier” star Brennan and “Search Party” star Shawkat was “not not deliberate.”
“I like working with actors who can be funny, partly because if you can make somebody laugh, you can do almost anything, and partly because of the show. I knew I wanted to be something that was going to shift its tones frequently,” Steinberg said. “I think that was part of the draw for John, for Amy, for Alia. Pretty much everybody has a sitcom on their resume, and I love that. I think it makes for a really interesting palette to paint from.”
“Being able to do comedy is incredibly difficult, and it requires an actor to be nimble and surgical,” Littlefield, who was behind the development of everything from “Cheers” to “Seinfeld,” said. The EP pointed to another one of his critically acclaimed FX projects as proof that comedic actors can thrive in drama.
“The ‘Fargo’ experience in my life [proved] comedic actors given the opportunity to be in a drama can change it up — [they’re] unexpected, make you smile, make you grab your heart and go, ‘Oh my god, they just said that. They did that,’” Littlefield said. “It’s such a unique skill set, and it’s a mistake to pigeonhole an actor and go, ‘Well, they’re a comedy actor.’ No, they’re a really skilled actor, and we’re going to give them this opportunity.”
Bridges sees the divide between the two genres similarly.
“Both comedy and drama are tools in your kit bag. I remember working with Robin Williams [on ‘The Fisher King’]. They think, ‘Oh, he’s going to be busting my chops. I’ve got big scenes to work with him.’ No, man, just the opposite. Comedy was just something that he could do brilliantly, but he also could do drama brilliantly,” Bridges said.
The Academy Award-winning star then dropped one of his current favorite comedies and comedic performers. “Have you seen ‘PEN15?’” Bridges asked. Both those women [creator-stars [Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle] are so brilliant. You see Maya’s show, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’? But yeah, that new stuff that’s coming up, that’s so good.”
The first two episodes of “The Old Man” premiere on FX Thursday at 10 p.m. ET. New episodes premiere weekly and are available to stream on Hulu the day after their FX premiere.
