Tuesday, April 9, 2024

‘Mr. Mercedes’ Director Jack Bender Dishes on the ‘Frighteningly’ Entertaining New Season [EUR Exclusive]

*The second season of Audience Network‘s “Mr. Mercedes” premieres Wednesday, August 22, at 10 p.m. ET,  and in case you weren’t tuned in to last season, here’s a brief recap to get you ready for the all-new episodes.

Based on Stephen King‘s Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch), and directed by Jack Bender and adapted by David E. Kelley, the first season focused on a demented serial killer (Harry Treadaway) who taunts a retired police detective (Brendon Gleason) through a series of disturbing letters and emails.

As noted by bleedingcool.com, the series picks up a year after Brady Hartsfield’s thwarted attempt to perpetrate a second mass murder in the community of Bridgton, Ohio. Since the incident, he has been hospitalized in a vegetative state and retired Detective Bill Hodges has done his best to move on. But when unexplainable occurrences begin to affect hospital staff members caring for the killer, Hodges is haunted by the feeling that Brady is somehow responsible.

“Let me just make one Stephen King note, he’s a major fan of the show,” said  Bender during 2018 Summer TCA in Beverly Hills last month. “And he said — midway through  Episode 1, he wrote me an email saying, “I just watched Episode 6 or whichever one. I love it and some of the stuff you guys do in the show, I wish I would have done in the book because I think it’s  better.”

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When EURweb.com contributor Ny MaGee sat down with Mr. Bender to dish about the new season and he noted that “the balance this season was very much making sure that we kept it steeped in the character world and that there was time for all these people living their lives and fumbling through them, like we all do. And the plot of what Brady is up to, what Brady is capable of, how is it possible that he’s capable of it, which I call more Stephen King-dom.”

In terms of Hodges and Brady’s dynamic this season, Bender said fans can expect them to “remain the stars of the show.”

Adding, “Giving where he left them at the end of season one, you might question how that’s possible. The title sequence last year was Hodges waking up in the morning. Every episode we had the title sequence that way ‘cause this is the guy’s morning and we’re going to be with him and his life. This season, the title sequence is a montage used in episode one when Hodges visits him and the year passes and he’s in the hospital room and then we make it the title sequence starting with episode two but it’s still these two men; one is in a hospital bed one is sitting in a chair looking at him. I always pictured it like Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp standing on opposite sides of the street for the gunfight. The show is still very much these two people and these two forces and all the characters that are tangled up around that in both their lives.”

Continuing, “Part of the trick of the season for me was how do we balance the believability of that, and I happen to believe that we’re all capable of lots more in our brain than we even know. I think anybody would acknowledge that. But what our brains are capable of in the Stephan King universe is really part of the mystery of the season and I think it’s very entertainingly and frighteningly depicted.”

In terms of the how challenging it was to push the envelope this season, Bender explained: “It was challenging both for the writers and for us making the show and we had a lot of discussions and a lot of disagreements and we had a lot of “No, let’s cut these lines, let’s not do this.” We just went for making it real. Really, it was about how do we keep examining these characters and make them as real because that was always the approach which I wanted.”

When asked why he believes audiences are so engrossed by death and tragedy and exploring the minds of killers, he stated: “I think that’s it’s a really scary time in the world and I guess there’s that part of us that’s always the ambulance chaser; where you always want to get close to tragedy but God-forbid it invades your life. You want to look into it and see how people react. You want to look into the abyss and I think that there’s something in all of us as humans animals that want to sniff that air,” he explained.

“And also being scared as kids and scary movies, there’s something cathartic about that. And when it happens in story, around the campfire, in cinema, there’s a safety in being scared and I think that distance allows you to really say “WHAT IF?,” and I think that’s just part of human nature,” Bender added.

“I think all the way back to the cavemen and women — sitting around the campfire. I’m sure a lot of those storytellers were talking about the bear that was chasing them. There’s also this Native American thing that when you dream and you’re being chased by the lion, you can run from it or you could train yourself to turn and face it in your dream. If you can train yourself to turn and face that lion, or whatever it is you’re scared of, at least in a dream or in a movie, there’s power in that.”

Don’t miss the second season of this thriller when “Mr. Mercedes” returns TONIGHT (Aug. 22) to the Audience Network on DIRECTV channel 239!

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