Lee Raybon may have spent the first season of The Lowdown getting ever more bruised and bloodied, but the actor who plays him has been on something of a creative upswing. Not only did Ethan Hawke earn critical raves for his work on the Sterlin Harjo comedy — his first-ever TV role — but he also factored heavily in the film awards conversation for Blue Moon, a far less perilous but equally formidable performance that landed him an Oscar nomination.
Now back in the awards conversation for The Lowdown, Hawke took a break from filming the second season of the Tulsa-set series to talk to Gold Derby about returning to Lee’s well-worn world, acting opposite new series star Tommy Lee Jones, and why he considers the role one of his favorites.
Gold Derby: You’ve had a storied career with a lineup of iconic characters. Where does Lee rank among them?
Ethan Hawke: I was on the plane down [to Tulsa] to start the show, and I thought about one of my favorite actors, who is James Garner. I love James Garner. James Garner had this really huge career before he did The Rockford Files. And I thought, I might be doing my Rockford Files here. This is all anybody will remember me for, because it’s so well-suited to me. I love the part so much. It’s definitely one of my favorite characters I’ve ever played, by far. Sterlin is a great fit for me. I loved Reservation Dogs. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. So having never done a television show, getting to work with a filmmaker who doesn’t really fit any normal category, Reservation Dogs feels like a generational shift in the way people are thinking about television. It feels like we’re making an eight-hour independent movie, but we’re supported by FX, and we have all these great cinematographers and great production design. It’s a wonderful mix for me to have this great character and great collaborators.
What does it mean for you that Sterlin wrote this character for you?
It made me think he was really smart. [Laughs.] He and I have a very strange trajectory, which is that I met him years and years ago, and we started writing something together, and so we were becoming friends, the way you do when you try to write together. And then he called me up one day and he said, “I have good news and I have bad news. And the good news is that my dream project just got greenlit. It’s called Reservation Dogs, and I have to write that and direct that. And so I’m not going to be able to finish the script with you right now.” But we stayed in touch, and then he asked me to be in the penultimate episode of Reservation Dogs. He wrote me this brilliant character, and I had some of the most fun I’ve had on a set in a really long time. He’s incredibly relaxed and the crew has an energy about it that feels like he’s hosting a party and not directing a movie. I loved Tulsa, and he started talking about a dream he had for a different show, a Tulsa noir. And this whole thing took off — and now I’m here talking to you.
How did you find your way into Lee?
I found my way into him incredibly easily. It seems to me like in some alt universe where I wasn’t in Dead Poets Society, I could totally imagine myself running a bookstore in Fort Worth. I make documentaries sometimes, which is a little bit like the journalist part of my brain. And I really love it. It’s a guy who’s trapped in the ’90s that feels like me. Most of my whole entire wardrobe could be mistaken for his wardrobe. It was a strange year last year because I did Blue Moon, which is the most different than myself I’d ever played. And then, right after that, I was being asked to play something that felt form-fitted to me. So I loved it.
How did you get the tone right? What was the tone you were going for, and when was the moment you thought you nailed it?
Really good film directors really understand tone. When I think about Dead Poets Society, I remember Peter Weir used to say anything can work if it’s pitched in the right tone. He was always playing music on set to try to invite in the crew and everybody working. Sterlin is the first person I’ve really worked with since then who does that nonstop. He just plays music constantly. He’s singing, he’s got speakers cranked up on set, and so the mood of the show is kind of obvious to everyone there. He has a very contagious laughter. He’s ruined so many takes by laughing. He laughs constantly. But when he doesn’t laugh, you know the tone is wrong. He’s so enthusiastic, but he can’t fake it when it’s not what he wants. No laughter? What are we doing? This is terrible. So I knew right away just listening to him behind the camera, just cackling. Cackling was like, all right, this is it.
Talk about making a television show, since this was your first time. What was that experience like? Was it what you expected it to be?
The difference between television and what people call cinema is something I’m feeling now. At first it wasn’t different at all. What’s different is Season 2. You build a world and you tell the story. That’s the first season. It was like a long movie, but it felt like we were making an independent movie that had a lot of digressions. Now the challenge comes into it because the best shows get better as they go along — until they get worse. But they grow. And the audience has a familiarity with the world, and it’s a place they feel comfortable. If you can utilize that to deepen the storytelling and get richer and more complex, then you make it really great television. But so the challenge exists for me as right today as we’re halfway through Season 2.
What did you learn from the first season that you want to bring to the second season?
The humor, the wit. The superpower of the show — if it has one — is its dance of drama and comedy. It’s a comedy about serious things. I’ll be doing a scene where it seems like it’s about parenthood and fatherhood and the failures that parents can make. And then the next thing, I’m doing some wild farcical comedy with my security guards. That balance is a razor’s edge, because when the show’s working on all cylinders, we have them both. And it’s very unique to Sterlin Harjo. He’s a very passionate, ethical person of real integrity. And he’s really silly. And that combination is magic because it’s completely unpretentious. But why he wanted to do a Tulsa noir is all the crimes of America are right on the surface in Tulsa. The race massacre has made a permanent wound. There’s a huge native culture. There’s all this old cowboy energy and cowboy hats and country music and oil money. And you have all this American stuff that is unavoidable. What’s wonderful about playing a journalist is this idea that telling the truth is actually healing. That the truth isn’t something to be afraid of or to be manipulated. The truth is the ground on which we walk. And if we can walk in a shared ground, we’re really going to get somewhere. If I were doing All the President’s Men set in Tulsa, something very earnest and sincere, it tends to have a political agenda that turns people off. And whereas the humanity of what Sterlin’s trying to do is inviting everybody in.
How is that impacting the second season, which you’re filming now?
A lot of it is happening effortlessly by the addition of Tommy Lee Jones. He’s changing the landscape to a great positive end. And that’s been thrilling. He’s a very intelligent person. He’s asking a lot of great questions. And the show gets better because of it.
What kind of questions is he asking?
Really intelligent ones about character, the why of things, how to make it believable, how do human beings really behave, and how to accomplish the comedy and the missions of the show, but rooting it in real and emotional life. And when that happens, it gets really exciting.
What about for Lee? Can he change?
Well, he has to. It’s not a story if he doesn’t, and that’s the challenge of it. Because when shows get bad it’s when it stalls out and there’s no growth. Luckily for us, Lee has a tremendous amount of growing up to do. So there’s a lot of room, and we’re in an interesting place as a country with journalism and with politics. Oklahoma is an amazing place to be. If you were setting it in some Brooklyn Independent newspaper, it would have a very different energy. This is a flyover state and ignored people with an ignored populace. But it is a vital beating heart of America. So there’s a lot to talk about.
As a writer and director yourself, is that something you can see yourself getting more involved in with the show?
My favorite thing to do is to work with really gifted people. When I get to work with directors I really admire, that’s my absolute favorite thing to do. I always like to say, “If I’m going to make a bad movie, I’d rather make it myself.” My favorite job is to be an actor for a filmmaker with a vision. I feel that’s what I’m most equipped to help. I wasn’t sitting there going, “Oh, I want to do a TV show.” That wasn’t something on my mind. In my mind I wanted to work with Sterlin, and that’s the right way for it to work as far as I’m concerned. Just like if I was doing a play, it’s not some agenda to be on Broadway. I’d like to work with Tom Stoppard. Reservation Dogs just really spoke to me. I hadn’t seen anything like it. And I thought, oh, you could do this on television. And this is something I’d like to do.
What did you learn from working with Sterlin?
In a lifetime in this profession, you just kind of learn the same things over and over again, which is that there’s no right way to do anything. If something is done with the right heart, you can break all the rules. I feel it’s an exciting moment to be working in television, because what those definitions are of cinema and TV, they don’t exist for a younger generation the way they did for me. That was a real hard and fast line in the sand. TV didn’t have budgets, TV didn’t have good writing, TV didn’t have good cinematography. It wasn’t the pool you first wanted to swim in. But all that’s changing. It doesn’t matter what medium or what form or the way it’s boxed in, the way it’s sold. If you’re trying to tell the truth, you’re trying to tell stories you’re trying to make, not waste your time as a viewer. Those are people that I really want to work with that are working from a place of gratitude and excitement to have something to say and to articulate it well and Sterlin is definitely one of those.
Looking back at Season 1, is there a moment you’re proudest of?
I’m really proud of the last episode, because we were still flying by the seat of our pants. I wasn’t sure whether we were ever going to be able to finish the job in it. It feels in a very whimsical, Sterlin way, a complete story was told. Lee is having an evolution as a human being that allows him to go to his ex-wife’s wedding and be a supportive father. It’s all leading up to the beginning of the series. He wouldn’t be capable of doing that. It’s a hard journey, but he’s learning a lot about himself and learning a lot about the truth of not just his community, but of his own relationship to the truth. And so doing those scenes, being at that wedding at the end, I felt like, “Wow, this is mysterious.” The truth is actually mysterious. You know, it’s never one thing. And so the show gets at that.
So what can we expect for Season 2.?
I’m getting my ass handed to me left, right and center again. The big event is that Lee is going to fall in love. If the first season was centered around his relationship with his daughter, the second one centers on his relationship with his father. So he’s learning how to be a son, which is difficult, too.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
