From the mind of Stephen King, Season 2 of the AT&T Audience Network (available on DirecTV) drama series Mr. Mercedes picks up a year after the attempt Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway) made to commit a second mass murder in the community of Bridgton, Ohio, landing him in a vegetative state in the hospital. Retired Detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) has done his best to move on from his obsession with the psychopath, by trying to keep himself busy with work, but when unexplainable occurrences begin to happen among the hospital staff, Hodges begins to wonder if there’s some way that Brady could be responsible.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, showrunner/director/executive producer Jack Bender talked about what it’s meant to him to have such a strong positive response from Stephen King on how they’re telling his story, whether he’s always on the same page as David E. Kelley and the writers, the one suggestion they took from Stephen King in Season 2, how much crazier and more terrifying things will continue to get, having actors as talented as Brendan Gleeson and Harry Treadaway to deliver this material, and whether they already have a plan in place for Season 3. He also talked about developing a TV series based on Stephen King’s The Outsider and why that project appealed to him.

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Collider:  Since you had wanted to and were looking to work with Stephen King on something when this came your way and grabbed your attention, what did it mean to you to hear him respond so positively to what you were doing with the series?

JACK BENDER:  It’s the ultimate gratification to have a genius like Stephen King. He wasn’t committed to being an executive producer, and then he saw the first few episodes and said, “I love this and want to be an exec producer on it.” That was like the first big compliment. And then, I was keeping in touch with him, as I was sending him cuts of the show. I knew he was a huge fan, but then, at a certain point, he wrote me and said, “When I see the stuff you guys are doing with the show, I wish I did some of those things in the book.” Needless to say, that was a huge compliment. He’s not a guy who lays the praise on. There are not a lot of bouquets or flowery descriptions about how wonderful something is. But I sent him one of the last few episodes, and he wrote me recently and said, “Do you have any fucking idea how great this is?” I took that as the Nobel Prize from Stephen King. It was very, very, very gratifying.

That’s awesome! You don’t write this series, but you’re the showrunner, an executive producer, and a director on it, so you still have a strong hand in the final product, which I would imagine means that you want to be on the same page as David E. Kelley and the writers. Have you always been on the same page, throughout this process, or have you found yourself having to fight for anything that you felt wasn’t quite how you thought it should be?

BENDER:  Sure. Because I am the showrunner on the show, the creative buck stops with me, which in this case, is a wonderful experience because I so love the show and I was the one who initiated it. There have been times where there have been disagreements, in Season 1 and Season 2, but never to the point where I’ve said, “Sorry, guys, I’m doing it this way.” I don’t want to sound Pollyanna about it, but Stephen King really is very gracious and doesn’t send back a lot of thoughts on the cuts. He really lets me run with the show and is very complimentary about what we’re doing. All of Season 2, he only had one suggestion, if you can believe it, which I did because it was smart. With David Kelley, it’s very similar. David writes the scripts and, in the case of Season 2, it was a little more complicated, mainly because we weren’t following the architecture of the book like we did with Season 1. The second book, Finders Keepers, is a brilliant book, but our heroes don’t come into it until half-way through, so we couldn’t do that. We were on our own and in the dark forest, trying to figure out our way through it, so at times, there were disagreements, mainly plot-wise, over what choices we were making. It was tricky, but I think we walked that tightrope brilliantly. It was my focus and commitment, this year, that even though we go more into Stephen Kingdom and what you described as being a little more creeping you out, I still believed and wanted it to be, first and foremost, grounded in the world of these characters, and have that be a believable world. What if I was going through what they’re going through? Starting with the car massacre in Season 1, I wanted it always to be based on the reality of what it would be like for those characters to be going through something as horrific as that. That really was the tightrope we were walking in Season 2.

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You mentioned getting one suggestion for Season 2 that you took. What was the suggestion that you got?

BENDER:  It was a sequence where Stephen felt that a newscaster in a scene should have been a little less jovial, and he was absolutely right and we were able to achieve it. That’s just an indication of how he rarely would make suggestions because he was so pleased.

If we thought that things were crazy and terrifying, last season, which they were, how much more prepared should audiences be for how much crazier and more terrifying it will be, this season?

BENDER:  When I was a kid, growing up with those Edgar Allan Poe movies, and the stand up in the theater for the coming attractions would say, “If you have a faint heart, or if you’ve ever suffered a heart attack, do not watch this movie.” They would use that as a promo to get people to want to come see the movie. I remember with Psycho, there was a disclaimer that Hitchcock did that said, “If you are the faint of heart, do not see Psycho,” and of course, people lined up around the block to see it. People love being scared. It’s that aspect of all of us humans, who want to get near the flame. It’s scarier than last season, and I think it begs certain questions that are more frightening because they deal with the potential of the human mind and certain things that most of us, in our daily lives, don’t have to deal with and don’t need to question. Hodges and the rest of our supporting characters definitely need to ask those questions.

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What’s it been like to watch what Brendan Gleeson and Harry Treadaway have both done with their roles?

BENDER:  First of all, when I first read the book and I told Stephen King that I wanted to do it, I said, “You know who should play Hodges?” And he said, “Who?” And I said, “He’s an actor that you may not know. He’s Irish, and his name is Brendan Gleeson.” and he said, “Oh, my god, Brendan Gleeson is brilliant in In Bruges,” and then he listed all of Brendan’s movies. As fate would have it, even though originally his representation said no because Brendan had never done a series, he loved David Kelley’s pilot script, based on the book, and we started talking. As fate would have it, Brendan jumped in, and I’m grateful every day that he did jump in. [Hodges and Brady] are the North and South Pole of the show, and which is which depends on your point of view. In many ways, it’s a love/hate affair with those two figures, who need each other. That’s why there’s a montage in the opening sequence in Season 2. The show is very much about these two guys. In Season 2, one is in a hospital bed and one is in a chair looking at the guy in a hospital bed. That, to me, was very much a visual key and a metaphor for what the season was going to be. With Harry Treadaway, and the places he takes Brady – some of which is written, and some of which is improvised – and Brendan Gleeson, who takes it slightly elsewhere, you can’t go wrong. I’m in the enviable position of working with a remarkable cast and being able to guide them, as a director, but there are many times where their work is so brilliant that I just say, “Thank you,” which is actually what good directing should be. It’s a real gift.

How has it been to actually get to watch them in scenes together, this season?

BENDER:  They do have some scenes together, as twisted as they are. It’s very interesting because, when you talk about scenes that they do together, with the acting and the approach that I take, whether it’s real or it’s a dream or it’s just a fucked up fantasy, the fact is that the more grounded and real the approach is to that stuff, the more frightening it becomes. That’s always been my MO with the show, to play it real. We look at what it would really be, in the real world, if this was happening, and then, if we have to twist it a little bit because we’re doing a show and not a documentary, we’ll twist and turn it, but the grounding of it and the reality base always has to be there for me.

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Do you already have a plan in place for what Season 3 would be?

BENDER:  Well, we are very hopeful that there will be one, and David Kelley and I are in the process of discussing it. So, we do know where things are heading. The wonderful thing about a series, is that David writes and follows his muse, and he has an idea of where the overall season is going, but it’s like being at the top of a mountain. It’s also the way we approached Lost, with Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse] being the showrunners and with me, as the director/executive producer in charge of making the show in Hawaii, and looking at the top of a mountain. I’m not a skier. I’m terrible at it. But using that metaphor, you start the season at the top of the mountain, and then there is the warm lodge down below, where it’s the end of the season.

In the case of Lost, there were 22 or 24 episodes. Thankfully, now you have the new paradigm of 8 to 10 episodes, which is a merciful and really brilliant way to tell a story. That’s why I wanted Mr. Mercedes to be a really classy cable series, and not a feature. When I first got it, we were talking about do we do it as a feature, but in order to really delve into the characters and really tell great stories, we had to do it for TV. So, you know where the season starts and where it ends, but as you’re going down that mountain, you may veer off into the woods, occasionally. The classic example of that was when Michael Emerson joined us on Lost, and he was so brilliant. He was hired for, I think, four episodes. I directed the episode where he first appears, and he was sitting there, in the hatch, eating cookies and he said, “You got any milk?” When Damon and Carlton saw that, they said, “That is so damn brilliant. We’ve gotta write more for this guy.” And then, he became a vital part of the storytelling. That’s the wonderful thing about episodic writing. You’re allowed those creative twists and turns you’re restricted from doing in a movie, where the structure is essential.

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You’re also developing a TV series based on Stephen King’s The Outsider, correct?

BENDER:  Yes, we are. We’re developing The Outsider, which is his new bestseller and it’s exceptional. One of the things that I loved about it, even though it starts off as a procedural and is very grounded in reality, is that it takes us, much more than the Hodges trilogy, into corners that are going to make you really uncomfortable. It goes much more into some horror aspects, and yet they’re very, very believable and credible. It’s scary as shit, and I’m very excited to be developing it. Where we’re going to do it, we’re not sure yet.

Is that something that you’re also looking to direct?

BENDER:  Yeah, I will. I’m going to executive produce it, be the showrunner and direct it.  yeah.

Are you going to have to juggle that with Mr. Mercedes, or will you do that after?

BENDER:  You always plan on things happening faster than they do, but juggling is the right word. I can’t imagine not finishing Mr. Mercedes, so hopefully, it all works out.

Mr. Mercedes airs on Wednesday nights on the AT&T Audience Network on DirecTV.

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