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[Thisstorycontainsspoilersforthefirsttwoepisodesof[ThisstorycontainsspoilersfromthefirsttwoepisodesofMan on fire Season 1.]
The past few years have seen the emergence of a new generation of quality shows about heroes in the mold of Jack Ryan or Jack Reacher: military veterans who use their battle-tested skills to protect the innocent and make sure the bad guys pay the price. At first glance, the new Netflix series Man on fire Sounds like one of those shows.
Executive producer Steven Caple Jr., who directed the first two episodes of the series starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (who dropped all eight episodes on Thursday), explains what’s so appealing about the genre. “It’s wish fulfillment,” he says. “People like to see themselves as Jack Reacher or Jack Ryan in terms of spy thrills.”
But there is a difference between Man on fireJohn Cressey and his peers are like Reacher or Ryan, and that difference gets to the core of what Cable and Abdul-Mateen wanted to achieve with the show in the first place. Creasy, as adapted from AJ Quinnell’s book series and previously played by Denzel Washington in the 2004 film of the same name, works through a messy reality that is far removed from the traditional hero’s journey.
“We were intentionally trying to create our own path with the character of John Creasy, who is very layered and very nuanced in the way he deals with some of the traumas,” Cable says.
The trauma he refers to is severe PTSD, the origins of which are explored in the pilot: Chrissy’s special forces mission in Mexico City goes south unexpectedly, resulting in the violent deaths of several of his friends and colleagues. Cressy is the only one to survive, and the disaster – and the psychological scars it left on him – derail his military career.
Only four years later, following a desperate suicide attempt, he gets a chance to try to get his life back on track, when an old friend (Paul Rayburn, played by Bobby Cannavale) offers him a private security job in Rio de Janeiro. Then, when terrorists blow up the entire high-rise where the Rayburn family lives, Chrissy becomes the only person left to protect his friend’s surviving daughter (Billie Bullitt) — that is, if he can overcome the PTSD closely tied to the violent tragedy.
“There’s a lot of things to explore with the character, and trying to connect that to the journey itself — which makes the public IP interesting to me, and that’s why I’m here — because of the layer of depth added to the character,” Cable says. “It’s wish fulfillment, finding yourself in a strange place, alone, with no one else to help you. What are you going to do? How can you step up to the plate, especially when you have to save someone you care about?”
Abdul-Mateen says that the emotional and psychological struggles his character went through were a large part of what sparked his interest in this role. “Actors love this stuff. You know what I mean? I want to feel, I want to feel,” he says. “Honestly, I really like the complexity of Creasy.”
He adds: “Stephen and I had a conversation very early in the process where we said, ‘If we’re going to do this, we want to do it a certain way.’ One of the things was to try to stay as close to the truth as possible. I had this idea of trying to figure out what would be true in this scenario? It’s very tempting when you have a character as great as Creasy, to do what’s ‘cool’. It took a lot of faith on the part of the director to allow me to not think about what’s great but try to validate what’s true, and then we can say, ‘Now What if we did it with that kind of situation?” But we were always working from a place of truth, and this was a very exciting opportunity because it also seemed a little bit dangerous. As an actor, I’m drawn to risky opportunities, because they provoke my thinking.”
The goal was to find out what would happen when Chrissie, accustomed to excelling in horrific situations, faced the exact circumstances that would likely trigger his most disturbing memories. Abdul-Mateen adds that they were worried that it might not work, but they decided to double the risk.
“That’s why the first few episodes feel particularly cinematic,” he says. “We went straight into it and said, ‘We’re going to make it honest and cinematic. We’ll lean into the scale because we believe in what it is.” When we do it that way, it’s no longer so serious. Now we know that there’s a lot of potential in terms of the kind of story we can tell and the kind of art we can create with these seven episodes of this epic story of this character called John Cressey.
The inciting explosion at the end of the pilot was certainly cinematic, as was Chrissy’s attempt to fly a plane while under fire in the second episode, about which Cable says, “Delroy Lindo definitely did his part in making sure he was able to do some of his own stunts.”
“As we go on this journey with Chrissy,” he notes, “he’s going to have to make decisions to either go down the path he’s on to redeem himself or go down a darker path. So it was like: How far should we go with this thing? How should we feel about it? And then we wonder who’s behind this? What’s the conspiracy behind this?”
THR Not going to spoil the ending here, but we had another question for Abdul-Mateen: Was it difficult to take on the role that Denzel Washington played last time?
“No, no, was that scary? I never looked at it that way,” he says. “I’m a big fan – I’m a big fan of Man on fireWhat should I say? I don’t want to underestimate how much I love this work. So it was an opportunity for me to slow down and ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” And to be honest about it and find the reason or not [do it]. If I couldn’t find a reason to do it, so be it, but I did find a reason, and it had a lot to do with getting the opportunity to work with Stephen. It was very much about having the opportunity to create work separate from the last thing I had done The miracle man. This time around, it felt like there was a global scope to it, as I was able to speak some Spanish, and there were a lot of great opportunities. This is what I saw. “Those were the green lights that inspired me to move forward.”
all Man on fire Season 1 is out now Available to stream on Netflix.
