Devil Went Down to Georgia: How Erik Oleson Crafted Kevin Bacon’s Undead Demon Hunter in “The Bondsman”
Writer/producer Erik Oleson definitely knows a thing or two about characters chasing personal demons. He was the head writer on The Man in the High Castle, and went on to be showrunner and executive producer for seasons of both Marvel’s Daredevil and Amazon’s Carnival Row. It makes perfect sense, then, for him to take on Amazon’s new horror-comedy series The Bondsman.
In it, Kevin Bacon stars as Hub Halloran, a murdered bounty hunter and former musician brought back by the Devil to trap and return demon escapees from hell. Why he wound up in hell is a question his family is trying to determine. That includes his mom and former bounty hunter Kitty (Beth Grant), his ex-wife Maryanne (Jennifer Nettles) and son Cade (Maxwell Jenkins). The series is an interesting mashup of horror, comedy, and drama. It’s great escapist fun, and the sight of seeing son Hub and mom Kitty brandishing various weapons like some kind of demon-fighting superhero duo is reason enough to watch The Bondsman.
It’s musical, too. The fact that the actors portraying Hub and his family are all talented performers, then, came in handy when Oleson set about writing the story arc, because at one point, they all sing together. If the whole thing sounds nuts, don’t worry, that’s the fun. The Credits sat down with Oleson to have him explain The Bondsman, which is as heartfelt as it is blood-soaked.
How did you and your production company CrimeThink get involved in The Bondsman?
There was a terrific script by another writer that inspired the pilot I wrote. Grainger David wrote the script that got Kevin and Blumhouse attached, and were trying to sell it. I got attached to it through CrimeThink at Amazon. Grainger’s script was great, so I had the seeds of potential show. I redeveloped it and wrote it, and that’s the show that you see.
What led to casting Beth Grant? She’s a wonderful character actor, and her chemistry with Kevin Bacon, playing his gun-wielding mom, is a major selling point for watching the show.
Beth is honestly one of the most delightful people I’ve ever worked with, and when I cast her, the other showrunners started emailing me how lucky I was to have such a wonderful human being and great actor on the show. She is just such an enthusiastic, amazing human being that we became friends outside of work. The chemistry between her and Kevin on the screen is amazing, and most shows don’t give an action role to an older actress, but I was like, “Hell no, I’m sticking Beth in there with shotguns versus demons.” Kitty is a combo of Grainger David’s grandmother and my grandmother. A take no prisoners, call it the way you see it person. You reach a certain age, and you’re just going to say what you think, everybody else be damned. That very much inspired the role. My grandmother was always out helping us fence the horse fields and doing the manual labor with the rest of the family, so the idea that Kitty would be a bondsman, prior to Hub growing up to become one as well, felt like a really fun tribute to my grandmother.
Some know Jennifer Nettles as a Grammy-winning musician, but to others, she is a serious actress. Her casting is also perfect for the show, and she gets to use both her formidable acting and singing chops.
Jennifer was brought to Kevin and my attention by Blumhouse. They’d done The Exorcist remake with her, and thought she was terrific. I’d seen her in Righteous Gemstones and loved her in that. I wasn’t aware of her band Sugarland until I started casting this show, and when I saw her perform, I was blown away. At that point, I knew she had to be Maryanne Dice and that we should lean into the music. Kevin and Jen actually wrote a lot of the original music that plays in the show. To have that kind of collaboration, for any showrunner, to get a Grammy-winning musician to come onboard and help create music, is really a pinch yourself moment.
She creates great harmony with Kevin Bacon, and I’m guessing fans of his musical career will be really into knowing that he performs on the show.
Funnily enough, initially Kevin was reticent about playing music on the show. The character Hub Halloran is actually someone who gave up on his dream of being a musician and doesn’t want to touch a guitar. He was sensitive to the fact that audiences would say, “Oh that’s just Kevin Bacon wanting to play music” and that wasn’t the case at all. I was the one twisting his arm. Towards the end of the season, after he’s achieved a certain character arc, you see in the flashbacks Kevin Bacon as Hub that’s the musician, and ultimately that becomes part of the storyline. His separation from music becomes a symbol of his failed life in a lot of ways, so seeing Kevin and Jennifer and the family making music when they get to doing that, it’s an important part of the story.
A great way to describe the show is that it’s Supernatural meets Tremors. How did you come to settle on the tone, which is alternately bloody, creepy, funny, and dramatic?
Honestly, the world is hurtling off a cliff, and I wanted to write something I’d have fun writing and would be fun watching, an escapist mashup of horror, action, and suspense, but that’s got music. You’re laughing your ass off, then it’s got blood and guts, but there’s also heartfelt family dramedy scenes. The sweet spot for me is making it all those things, like a surprising, twisty-turny rollercoaster ride. When I’m writing these narratives, I want the audience to have no idea if they’re going to leave a scene screaming, laughing, crying, or asking themselves what the hell they just saw.
The scenes shot inside a studio and on location were all filmed in Georgia. There’s been a thriving film community there for a while. What was your experience of that, and why did you choose those locations? They certainly add an authentic Southern flavor to the show.
Georgia had some stellar crew members. We never could have made the show we did without them. We had amazing ADs, Jeff January and Robin Bronner, and DP Dave Daniels, who are all local to Georgia. James Lilley ran craft services, and that food was amazing. It may or may not be responsible for increasing my waistline.
Our stages were in Senoia, Georgia, where The Walking Dead was filmed. When we were looking forward to where to film the show, the Appalachian flavor was important and a cornerstone of the show. We found the hero town of Granville, Georgia, which became our Main Street, so to speak, our small town Georgia. The script was originally in another state, but we shot Georgia for Georgia, and there aren’t many shows that show rural America with respect and love, and since I grew up on a horse farm in rural Virginia, that was really important to me. It was important to Kevin, too, that we treat these people and their towns with respect and not look down our noses at them the way people sometimes do towards people who didn’t grow up in Manhattan or LA. I really think that was our special sauce.
Circling back to tone, Kevin is a huge part of shifting tone, because Hub is such a complicated character. He can alter the mood of a scene from very funny to horrifying at breakneck speed.
Exactly. Kevin was great because he played a range of options in every given take. He makes really interesting in-the-moment choices as an actor. For the same exact scene, he can go very dramatic or very comedic, so we were able to dial in the tone in post-production. He’s such an experienced actor, he’s worked in pretty much every genre and with pretty much every great filmmaker of the last two generations. He’s a chameleon who has done all these different things, so it was really great to have him as a creative partner, figuring out how to dial in a really unique tone to the show.
Can we expect a second season? I could see this quickly building a very strong fan following.
We really all laughed and had fun making it, so hopefully audiences will enjoy it, and we’ll be able to make more. I wrote an ending that makes it pretty hard to end it right there. There have been conversations, but there’s nothing official yet. I’m cautiously optimistic based on the testing results, which have been great. I already have what happens going forward in my head, which would be an escalation of certain elements, while still delivering the fun that the first season had, but expanding upon it. I very much like to reward fans who invest their time and effort and fall in love with the characters, as we did, so that there’s going to be more coming. And so if the Amazon gods decide to give us the thumbs up, we’d be all in for a second season.
All episodes of The Bondsman are currently streaming on Prime Video.
Featured image: Kevin Bacon and Kitty (Beth Grant) in THE BONDSMAN. Photo Credit: Tina Rowden/Prime Video © Amazon Content Service LLC
