Season 1 of FX’s The Old Man saw two of Hollywood’s best actors — Academy Award®-winner Jeff Bridges and Emmy®-winner John Lithgow — engage in a cat and mouse game of foreign espionage and personal demons over seven thrilling episodes.
While former CIA agent “Dan Chase” and FBI Assistant Director “Harold Harper” — played by Bridges and Lithgow, respectively — are meaty roles for both actors, the story in Season 1 required that the two spend much of the season in far-off locations, and not often on screen together.
In Season 2, which premieres Thursday, September 12 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX and streams the next day on Hulu, the promise of seeing these legendary actors team up comes to fruition. Their characters set aside their differences and come together to recover the woman they call “daughter” after she’s been kidnapped.
According to Lithgow, it was “a terrific frustration” to be featured alongside Bridges in Season 1 without getting much time to act against him. However, in Season 2, the actors were able to act together in “an abundance” of scenes, and “just had a fantastic time,” Lithgow said.
“We had a ball,” Bridges added.
And the producers agree. “As much as you guys wanted to work together, we wanted to see you together,” co-creator/executive producer/writer Jonathan E. Steinberg said of the actors. “I think there’s a promise in the first season that it’s coming. In a way, it’s driving the show in the sense of what’s going to happen when these two guys are together. And it turns out it’s pretty great.”
Season 2 picks up at a very high stakes moment for both characters, as they must work together to recover “Emily Chase,” played by Alia Shawkat, after she is kidnapped by “Faraz Hamzad,” played by Navid Negahban.
‘Two Very Different Disciplines’
FX’s The Old Man was afforded a luxury not given to all shows: rehearsals.
“Watching these two guys explore these roles, these moments…they take the time to just want to make it special,” executive producer Dan Shotz said. “They want to take the time to see all the possibilities, and then keep tweaking it and keep trying, and that is what is remarkable about watching them work together.”
While they were able to prepare in harmony for production, the acting training of the two leads comes from “two very different disciplines,” Lithgow noted.
Bridges mainly learned screen acting, while Lithgow was raised in classical theater.
That difference in their backgrounds helped add an extra layer of depth to their characters, because Chase and Harper “operate in extremely different ways and are constantly in conflict with each other,” Lithgow explained.
“In a way, just the fact that I’m much more a theater actor who’s had to tone it down to work in front of a camera, and Jeff has a long, long history… acting in front of a camera. I think it’s a very interesting combination,” Lithgow said.
The Old Men
Bridges noted “when I prepare for any role, I start with myself.” For The Old Man, he didn’t have to do much to make good on the promise of the title.
“I’m an old man, I don’t have to play it,” Bridges, 74, mused about his role. “I mean, I bring that to the party without any trouble.”
Lithgow, 78, concurred. “I’ve sort of entered into my old man chapter and it’s been very exciting,” the actor said.
Just because the actors are septuagenarians, that doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of stunts and action on The Old Man. Season 1 saw Bridges perform hand-to-hand fights throughout the season in long, wide takes that highlighted the physicality that he put into the role, and that continues in Season 2.
“I’m feeling great now and I’m coming back for more punishment,” Bridges said of the physical nature of the role.
Warren Littlefield, an executive producer on the show, lamented that the long hours and travel do take their wear and tear on older production members, but that it doesn’t translate on screen. Instead, “the Zen of this show is a playful spirit. And it comes because of these two men [Bridges and Lithgow], and everyone, our entire crew, what that set feels like, is this kind of playground.”
In fact, Littlefield said that the collaborative and easygoing feeling on set causes ideas to flow freely, and that work feels more like playing in a sandbox. Unlike the characters, Littlefield noted, that feeling “just doesn’t get old.”
