While Kiefer Sutherland was promoting the new 24: Live Another Day miniseries with the Television Critics Association, I asked him about the movies he filmed before returning to his trademark role of Jack Bauer. Sutherland shot the historical disaster movie Pompeii and the western Forsaken.
Pompeii of course tells the story of the famed city buried under a volcanic eruption. The film is an adventure story build around the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. “I play Senator Corvis, a Roman senator who goes to Pompeii to close a business deal and secure a wife,” Sutherland said. “Kit Harrington plays the character of Milo who is in love with the woman that I am going to take. My character’s kind of a fantastically not nice guy.”
Paul W.S. Anderson brings the spectacle of Mount Vesuvius to life. “It’s huge,” Sutherland said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done something that had $100 million film. Paul Anderson is a phenomenal director and has kind of the most finite understanding of technological possibilities for film and 3D film of anyone I’ve ever seen. He is so current that literally in the course of the five months that we were making the film, things were changing and he was on top of that. So that gives you an unbelievable sense of security when you’re working with half a set, half a green screen and all of those other things that it’s going to look fantastic.”
Forsaken is the first time Sutherland has shared scenes with his real life father, Donald Sutherland in a movie. They had appeared separately in A Time to Kill. “It’s about a gun fighter who a terrible things happens,” Kiefer said. “In a gunfight he accidentally kills a child and decides it’s time for him to go home. When he gets home, he finds out that his mother has passed and he is now stuck in a house with a father that he is very estranged from.”
The Sutherlands were actually quite nervous about working together, and in fact playing father and son in Forsaken. “One of the sweetest things was I had called him the night before and I said, ‘I hope you have a great sleep, I’ll see you in the morning.’ There was a long beat and I said, ‘Just so you know, I’m really nervous.’ And he went, ‘Oh my God, thank God, me too.’ So we got to have that laugh and get that out of the way. He’s a craftsman. He has such a strong understanding of the material, writes such great backstory for his character and why his character is coming from the place that he is, such command over his voice and physicality, just all of it. I had to catch myself a lot of times because it was like going to school, and I found myself oh no, I’ve got to stop watching and actually have to partake in this though.”
Pompeii is out February 12 and Forsaken later this year.
Jack Bauer still has big screen dreams.
Though Kiefer Sutherland and 24’s executive producers Howard Gordon and Evan Katz originally intended to bring Jack Bauer back in a movie, fans were disappointed when 20th Century Fox announced that they would not be moving forward.
Fortunately, Jack would live to see another day as Fox is set to bring 24 back as a 12-episode miniseries, titled 24: Live Another Day, later this spring.
But that doesn’t mean Sutherland has given up on the idea of a 24 movie, or even rebooting the series! Sutherland, Gordon, Katz and executive producer Manny Coto teased the series’ highly anticipated return at the 2014 Winter TCA Press Tour on Monday, revealing plot details and why they haven’t given up on the idea of a 24 movie.
When asked if the plot for the 12-episode miniseries, which is set in London and will premiere in May, is similar to the original idea for the film, Sutherland revealed, “The script for the film was very, very different. The film’s an ongoing situation. There’s always an opportunity to do that, but Howard came up with an idea of a 12-episode run of this and it was an opportunity that presented itself to us first. It was a fantastic idea…if this ends up rebooting the show or causing a film to be made, so be it.”
Jack Bauer to the rescue, indeed!
So what is our hero up to when 24: Live Another Day begins? “If you remember at the end of season eight, Jack was left fugitive and we’ll pick four years later and he’s still a fugitive,” Coto teased. “He is hunted and he is still hunted when the show begins.”
And his hunter? Chuck vet Yvonne Strahovski, who will be playing a London-based CIA agent that “has been on the hunt for Jack Bauer and the show will open with that dynamic,” Coto divulged. “When Jack returns into the story on his own terms, we’ll learn he has a mission.”
Enter fan favorite Mary Lynn Rajskub, who is set to return to the series as Jack’s trust tech master sidekick Chloe, but don’t expect to see a warm reunion between the two. “They’re actually pitted against each other…that is a dynamic that Mary Lynn and I get to play that’s very exciting. It’s always something that’s going to evolve over the course of the show,” Sutherland teased.
Gordon added, “We found a place emotionally and physically to locate Jack, and the same for Chloe,” whom the producer described as “someone who is quite damaged and has now joined the Free Information movement.”
24: Live Another Day will premiere on Monday, May 4 on Fox.
Jack Bauer is coming back – Fox is rebooting the conspiracy, real-time thriller series 24 for a 12-episode TV “event,” starting in May. And Kiefer Sutherland, who played the intense, sometimes sadistic counter terrorism agent Jack, says he’s nervous about it.
“It was nine years I spent doing this [character]. And I’m terrified going back to it,” Sutherland said here at the TV Critics Winter Press Tour. “I used to be terrified between seasons, actually. Without patting ourselves on the back, we made eight seasons of great TV. To open it up again and possibly failing to make great TV, is frightening. Don’t want to disappoint a very loyal audience. I’m about as anxious and wound-up as I’ve been in a long time.”
If Mount Vesuvius were to erupt in modern times, surely Kiefer Sutherland’s super-spy character Jack Bauer would find a way to minimize casualties and ultimately save the day. Alas, this is director Paul W.S. Anderson’s disaster film Pompeii, in which the city is destroyed by the volcano’s fury, and Bauer is nowhere to be found.
Instead, Sutherland was cast as Roman Senator Corvis, a cruel man whose only interest lies in gaining political power and making the heroic Milo (Game of Thrones star Kit Harington) suffer.
That villainy wasn’t even remotely on display in June during a visit to the film’s Toronto set, where the good-natured Sutherland – relaxed and comfortable in sunglasses, jeans and a T-shirt – had come in on his day off to discuss the making of Pompeii.
Spinoff Online: We hear your character is super-nice. He’s a really nice guy. He gets along with everybody…
Kiefer Sutherland: Obviously, he’s the antagonist of the film, but it’s very different. I’ve played a lot of nasty characters over the course of my career — I would think the worst one was a film called Eye for an Eye. This is not that guy. He’s very funny, in an awful way, but he’s very funny. With a class system like you had at that time, if someone was wealthy and powerful, the ease with which they dispatched other people’s lives was kind of frightening. He does it with great aplomb. He’s funny. I haven’t really had a character to play that has had the dialogue that is as rich as in the script, so it’s been a real pleasure. But you’re right, he’s an asshole.
With really big films like this, sometimes the complaint is the villain doesn’t seem to have much of a motivation. He’s just kind of evil or mean. Is there a play on class?
It’s two-fold. A lot of it directly informs an audience of that. He wants to marry this girl. He’s come to Pompeii to marry this girl and to take over the father’s company. He has a line where he says, “As soon as this deal is done and the marriage is settled …” The line earlier is my right-hand guy says, “What a mouth on her,” and he says, “Yes. As soon as the deal is done and the marriage is settled, I’ll take great pleasure in shutting it.” That’s exactly what he’s there for. The deal and the marriage, and then he goes back to Rome.
How does he deal with the crisis at hand once this chain of events starts happening?
With unbelievable arrogance, with the arrogancy you would expect. He actually has a line where he’s making a speech in the arena. The tremors start and he’s like, “Come on. Come on. Get over it.” He doesn’t pay attention to it. It’s not a threat to him. Everything he’s had in his life, he’s been able to control. It’s also an interesting kind of result in Pompeii when you actually look because it happened so fast. One of the most awesome things I saw there was a mother holding her child, and she died so quickly that she couldn’t bring her own child to her breast. She was literally holding her up like that and they were locked like that forever. I don’t think any of them had any idea that could possibly happen. That’s an interesting aspect of the movie when it gets into that stage.
Read much more at the source.
Kiefer Sutherland is the newest Gentleman, kicking back after a taxing day of mutilating America’s foes with a splash of Cuervo:
In his passion for Mexican spirits, Sutherland is surpassed only by fellow has-been Ray Liotta, now moonlighting as the suit-clad mouthpiece for 1800. The estimable tough guy, who previously lent a certain hoodlum gravitas to Heineken, has taken over the reins from his old Goodfellas running-mate Michael Imperioli. Liotta’s contribution to the cult of the liquor-ad Gentleman is indispensable, and his minute-long promo its central text.
The liquor-ad Gentleman may be a macho figment, but he is an intoxicant unto himself. These companies have found a way to bottle self-regard and use it to help sell their main products. But why? After all, we were buying those anyway.
Read the rest of the article here.
