Speaking to Kurt Russell and his son with Goldie Hawn, Wyatt Russell, is like seeing doubles out of time, doppelgänger stars of different generations. If you close your eyes, it’s a little difficult to tell who’s speaking. Of course, Kurt has a little more gristle to his voice after more than half a century in the movies. From being a top Disney star in the ’70s with flicks like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, to becoming an action icon with Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China, all the way through his recent masterpieces like Bone Tomahawk and The Hateful Eight, Kurt Russell is the dictionary next to ‘Movie Star.’
Wyatt Russell’s performances are rocketing him to a similar stratosphere. He has a heroic ‘all-American boy’ vibe as Captain John Walker, the second Captain America, in Overlord as Corporal Lewis Ford, and as a retired baseball player in the upcoming Night Swim. It’s something which he gleefully subverts in what we’d call post-Lebowski media — Folk Hero & Funny Guy, Everybody Wants Some!!, and Lodge 49. That last show is a cult favorite, with Russell’s performance as the lackadaisical Dud remaining one of television’s best performances in recent years.
He swerves back into ‘all-American’ mode in the new MonsterVerse series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. He plays Lee Shaw, an Army colonel who becomes involved with the investigation into monsters by and eventually with Monarch, the mysterious organization at the heart of the Apple TV series. Here’s the kicker — dad Kurt Russell plays him in the future, as the series oscillates between 2015 and the 1950s. Similarly, Anders Holm plays the younger version of John Goodman’s MonsterVerse character, Bill Randa.
We spoke with the Russells about playing the same character in the Godzilla show and what attracted them to starring in the same project to begin with. They also have fun hypothesizing which of each other’s projects they’d like to be a part of. You can check out the video interview above.
Kurt and Wyatt Become One Russell
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is such an expansive series, a very bold show that fits into Apple TV’s history of intricate, epic shows with large casts (For All Mankind, Silo, Foundation). It follows a variety of characters in different timelines who are all ultimately connected to the Monarch organization in some way or another, in a way that fleshes out the MonsterVerse films and connects them. It seems like a huge project for the pair to join, but that’s exactly why they did.
“I think that what attracted us to it was exactly that, that it wasn’t small,” said Wyatt Russell. “That if we were going to work together, we wanted it to be something that was of some kind of size, that felt [big]. I think we’re both people who’ve stepped out into the arena and enjoy being in the arena, and this is a big arena. So it’s like, ‘Well, cool, if you’re gonna do it, like, go do it, go try it. If you fail, you’re gonna fail miserably, and if you succeed, you’ll succeed, and it’ll be really cool.'” Kurt added:
“It was great of Apple to support it the way they did. By that, I mean, this was no small task, and it was gonna cost a lot. They did make it, they wanted it to be epic, and it is epic. And the people in it are — I think what’s fun about it being people-centric, is that when the monsters do come on, it has more impact. It fits the storyline.”
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When we spoke with Anders Holm about whether he intentionally modulated his performance after John Goodman, who played the character as an older man before him, Holm explained that he tried to avoid any mimicry as much as possible. After all, John Goodman is a high bar to set for yourself. However, Kurt and Wyatt Russell are already so similar in some mannerisms and vocal behavior that it made perfect sense not only to cast them together, but to have them develop some sort of consistency.
“We knew that we were gonna have to do that,” said Kurt, “but I must say, it was really helpful for me and really fun for me to go down to Wyatt’s set. And even after talking about it and working on it as much as we did, it was really great to see him laying it down first, and that was going to be who Lee was. And then obviously, later on, I’m gonna do it.”
“It was really just trying to get the character right before we went out and started shooting, so that if you get it and if the scenes are good, you just play them the way that they’re written,” added Wyatt. “Then you’ll have a through line that will be congruent. And it was really fun to be able to work on that with my dad, and Chris [Black] and Matt [Fraction], before the show started.”
A Russell Role Swap
It only seemed natural to ask the father and son acting duo if there were any other characters they played that one or the other would like to have a shot at. Has Kurt Russell played any role that Wyatt would like to take on, either as a prequel or a reboot?
“He’s been asked quite a few times to play versions of some of the characters that I had the pleasure of creating,” admitted Kurt Russell. Wyatt thought about it and said:
For me, I love Used Cars. I think it’s one of my favorite movies. And playing the son of Rudy Russo would probably be pretty fun. I don’t know what that would look like, but I would… I would do that.
What about Kurt Russell — would he like to take on any of his son’s roles in a sequel of some kind, or in some other hypothetical version? “Now, I think I’d be too intimidated, honestly. To be honest with you, I just can’t imagine myself being able to pull off Dud [in Lodge 49]. I don’t think I could pull off Captain America and do it with some aplomb. I don’t know, it would definitely be hard,” said Kurt.
“That’s definitely not true,” responded Wyatt immediately. Kurt smiled and said:
I think the one character would be the guy in Black Mirror. I might want to give that a shot.
That would be Playtest, an increasingly disturbing episode with Wyatt Russell. Please make it happen, Charlie Brooker — Kurt was in The Thing, for goodness’ sake. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters streams on Apple TV+, with the final two episodes coming to the platform on Jan. 5 and Jan. 12. The first episode is free to watch. You can find the series through the link below:
