Ethan Hawke had never made a second season of a TV show before The Lowdown.
In FX’s series from creator Sterlin Harjo, Hawke stars as Lee Raybon, a Tulsa citizen journalist with a knack for exposing the people in power. Season 2 adds Betty Gilpin and Tommy Lee Jones, who plays Lee’s father. Hawke spoke exclusively with BLKCinema.com about avoiding the sophomore slump, what the new characters reveal about Lee and why Tulsa is the perfect setting for the show.
Ethan Hawke on making a second season of ‘The Lowdown’
Hawke said returning for Season 2 came with a familiar risk.
“I loved just doing something I’d never done before. I figured it’s a little bit like a second album from a band, and we all know from the history of rock and roll that often the second album is not any good, because you spend a lot of time dreaming and trying to create this first album, and then you have to crank out the second one right away,” Hawke said. “But we felt really strongly that we needed to both grow and hold on to what was good, to stay consistent to the ethos of what we’re trying to say, but also expand.”
He said that was always the plan for the series.
“Our vision always, even when we started, was if this works, it should work like those old novel series where the main character is the same, but each season is like its own novel,” Hawke said.
How Betty Gilpin and Tommy Lee Jones shake up ‘The Lowdown’
Hawke said the new cast members were chosen to reveal sides of Lee viewers haven’t seen.
“The easiest way to do that was to bring in characters that would give the show new energy, but would also explore Lee. So we have Betty Gilpin, because we’ve never seen Lee fall in love, right? What’s that gonna be like? That’s going to bring out a different side of him,” Hawke said. “And then Sterlin and I kept asking ourselves, what makes Lee tick? We started having a conversation about, what do you think Lee’s father’s like? And then we were like, you know what, we need to bring him into the show. Those two kind of operate like twin engines of Season 2.”
“The hard work of building the world happened in Season 1,” he continued. “We have the world, we have all these great characters, and so it was just about expanding it and staying true to the vision.”
Ethan Hawke on why Tulsa is ‘really exploring America’
Hawke said the city’s history is what makes the show work.
“That’s the essence of the show, right? Speaking truth to power. If you really explore Tulsa, you’re really exploring America. There’s a huge Native population. It was the Indian Territory. So the two big American crimes involving race are right on the surface. You have the race massacre. You have the Trail of Tears that brought everybody there,” Hawke said. “And then you also have oil money and this other kind of greed thing that’s been happening in America, and it’s all right on the surface. It makes it ripe for noir, and it allows the show to effortlessly create diversity and to talk about real issues while being a comedy, which is kind of the spirit animal of the show.”
He credited Harjo, a Tulsa native, for seeing it.
“It takes somebody who grew up there like Sterlin to go, hey, wait, my city, I got it all,” Hawke said.
Featured image photo credit: FX
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