Kyle Chandler’s bringing back dramatic family values with Bloodlines
KYLE CHANDLER shakes his head and laughs. “People view me as ‘Mr Dependable’. If you ask any of my friends about that, they’d find it pretty funny,” he says.
The beefy American (49) has become Hollywood’s go-to-guy for solid-as-a-rock decency. He embodied the virtue as Coach Taylor in the cult TV show, Friday Night Lights, and has played variations on the same super-reliable archetype, in movies such as Argo and Wolf Of Wall Street [in the latter he was the detective gunning to take down Leonardo DiCaprio’s playboy fraudster].
Chandler shrugs — he has never regarded himself as that person, the one you want at your back in a fight or when your team is 20 points down at half-time. But Martin Scorsese and Ben Affleck, the directors of Wolf and Argo, respectively, looked at him and saw that.
“I guess I’m not a bad individual. It sort of started with Friday Night Lights. It comes from the Coach Taylor thing, I’m sure,” he says.
Chuckling, Chandler recalls his first day on the set of Friday Night Lights in Texas. Show-runner, Peter Berg, wanted Chandler to demonstrate his authority, as head coach of the football team, to the assembled crew and extras. So he asked his leading man to arrange for the actors who were playing footballers to line against a wall. Chandler politely passed on the instructions and was roundly ignored. Berg told him to do it again, only properly.
“So I shouted ‘Hey, you! Turn around. Yes, all of you!’ Like that, they were all lined up against the wall. I owned the part after that,” Chandler says.
BIDING HIS TIME
Chandler is immediately recognisable, but not a major star. Following a string of big-screen parts, he has returned to TV for the first time since Friday Night Lights, with a leading turn in Netflix’s new family drama, Bloodline. It’s taken a while, he says, for an interesting new television offer to come along.
“After Friday Night Lights, I was sent a lot of coach-like roles — as in, people literally wanted me to play coaches,” he says. “I stayed away from those things. Which is when all the movies popped up. They were looking for these ‘heavy’ characters, who exuded gravity and truth and honesty. They were a lot of fun. Working with Scorsese was amazing. It was like ‘You want me to be in your movie, Mr Scorsese…well, okay….I guess I can do that’.”
When he was approached by Bloodline creators Todd and Glenn Kessler (the sibling team behind Damages), Chandler wasn’t sure if he was in the market for small-screen drama. He’d broken out of TV and was establishing a reputation in cinema. Did he really want to return? The Kesslers said that the show, a family epic set in the Florida Keys, would constitute an enormous leap of faith on behalf off everyone involved. That was all he needed to hear: for Chandler, it’s the danger that makes a project worthwhile.
Brothers argue. It's in their blood. #Bloodline #SneakPeekhttps://t.co/2YI1FAzX5u
— Bloodline (@Bloodline) March 13, 2015
“There was nothing coming along that I was willing to jump out of a plane for,” he says. “And here were these guys saying, ‘We’ve got something — we don’t know if it’s going to work, but we think you might be right for it’. And I was, ‘hey, yeah’. We’re all jumping into the same boat, with the same leak.”
See you this Friday. #Bloodline pic.twitter.com/SAavkl0S4e
— Bloodline (@Bloodline) March 19, 2015
MAN OF THE SOUTH
Chandler was born in New York State, but spent most of his childhood in Loganville, Georgia (he speaks with a southern twang). He was a college footballer, before quitting the sport as a teenager, following the sudden death of his father. He studied drama at college, dropping out when he was picked up by the ABC network in a drive to unearth new talent. His first part was in Vietnam war series, Tour of Duty, though it was supernatural thriller, Early Edition, that established him.
For all his protestations to the contrary, up close Chandler radiates everyman decency. He is jokey, approachable — not at all precious about his ‘craft’. He is, in fact, about as far from the stereotype of the tortured thespian as is possible to imagine.
He uses sports metaphors a great deal — for him, acting is a lot like football. You go out, give it your best shot, don’t get too hung up on the results.
Bloodline has a reputed $50m budget and is tipped to be Netflix’s biggest hit since House of Cards. It represents a throwback to the dynastic dramas of the 1980s — shows such as Dallas and Dynasty. The difference, of course, is quality. The script is gritty and lean and the cast top-rank, with Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard playing the heads of the imperious Rayburn family, and Chandler the favourite son with a dark secret.
“The people you’ve got in this are just great,” says Chandler. “As an actor, it’s like… I don’t know… getting to interview Jesus or something. There was a scene where I was opposite Sam [Sheppard]. He’s slower, older than he was. Now, my father passed when I was 14. In that moment, talking to Sam, it was like I was communicating to someone I haven’t seen in 30 years.
“Those are just great moments. As an actor, that’s what you want. Of course, you have to be working with great people — you can’t just put the guy from the hot-dog stand in there. You need to be working with someone of absolutely the best calibre.”
BIG INVESTMENT
Netflix is investing considerably in Bloodline, as part of its strategy to remain dominant in streaming television (with Amazon, Yahoo and even Sony Playstation breathing down its neck, the stakes are increasingly high). Chandler, however, does not seem especially fussed as to how the show performs. For him, it’s about quality. You would , of course, expect him to say that — nonetheless, he is speaking from the heart.
We need to talk about Danny. #Bloodline #SneakPeekhttps://t.co/MoOMDC3flw
— Bloodline (@Bloodline) March 18, 2015
“The one thing you don’t want is to be on a bad show that gets good ratings,” he says.
“With Friday Night Lights, the awareness came after it was on the air. It was only when the whole thing had finished that I had people shouting ‘Hey coach!’ at me on the street. With Bloodline I think it’s going to be a word-of-mouth thing. People will see it, tell their friends. I don’t get the whole social media angle. However, I think the power of recommendation is very strong. It shouldn’t be underestimated.”
- The first season of Bloodline can be watched on Netflix from today
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