From executive producer/showrunner Tom Fontana, the second season of the Showtime drama series City on a Hill is focused on a housing project in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston in the 1990s, where the problems are stacking up. Overrun with gangs and drug-related violence, having to face a healthy distrust in law enforcement, and dealing with a less than stellar criminal justice system pushes principled Assistant District Attorney Decourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge) to question just how far he’ll go, as he’s forced to co-exist alongside corrupt FBI agent Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon).
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Bacon talked about the natural evolution of the relationship dynamic between Jackie Rohr and Decourcy Ward, the deeper understanding he has of co-star Hodge, what initially drew him to City on a Hill, moving from one neighborhood in Boston to another with each season, the experience of shooting with the COVID safety protocols, and whether there’s any hope left for Jackie’s soul.
Collider: With any TV show, you learn a lot while making the first season, working out all of the relationship dynamics. How has it been to make the second season compared to the first season? Are there things you specifically learned on Season 1 that you took into Season 2?
KEVIN BACON: There’s a natural evolution between the characters of Jackie and DeCourcy. In the first season, Aldis Hodge and I didn’t know each other. When we first meet in the pilot, I think it was the first scene that we played, meeting each other for the first time. In this second season, not only do these two men have a deeper understanding of each other, we have a deeper understanding of the way that both of us work and of who we are as people. That familiarity gets amplified in the scenes that we’re playing. I feel like any moment that you can spend more time walking in the shoes of a character is going to give you a better, stronger facility for doing that. It’s gotten to the point with Jackie where it’s not a struggle for me to step into his shoes. I feel like, if you really know somebody, you can throw any kind of scene at them. If Jackie is going to take a cooking class now, or whatever it happens to be, I know who he would be, in that situation. So, it’s really just a question of hoping that the writers deliver cool, interesting, new and fresh stuff for us to play.
What was it about this show that initially won you over and made you want to sign on for it, and how has that evolved throughout the first season and into the second season? Has it been evolving in a way that you had hoped it would, or has it also surprised you?
BACON: It definitely has surprised me. With television, sometimes the writers have a really, really clear idea over multiple seasons where something is going to go, but even when they do, things happen that affect the tone and the direction of the story. We’ve talked a lot about the Black Lives Matter movement, and certainly that had an impact on the writers and on the way that this story was told this year. What really drew me, and what generally is my first foot in the door, is character. I got the pilot and the first thing that you see is this long monologue of this guy going off, just full of really interesting language and history, and piles and piles of bullshit. I was like, “That’s a really interesting guy to play.” I was coming off of a string of really underspoken, strong, silent types, which is fun to play, in its own way, to really just figure out how you’re gonna develop a performance without words. So, to be able to switch it up a bit and do a guy that just can’t shut up is something that I was really drawn to.
You’ve been in the business for a while and I would imagine, in that time, you’ve read quite a few scripts. Are you someone that feels like you can see potential in something that you’re reading, even if it’s not fully on the page? Do you feel like you have an instinct for knowing whether or not something will work out?
BACON: I’ve probably made about a hundred movies, and three of them are good. Having an instinct to know what is really going to work or not work, I wouldn’t say that I’m necessarily all that great at it. Yes, I can tell if something is really just garbage, and I can also really tell if it’s something that I don’t really wanna be a part of because I can’t do my stuff. I can read something and go, “Maybe this is gonna be a big hit or a great movie for this actor, but I wouldn’t really get a chance to do anything, so why would I waste my time with it, at this point?” It’s always a crap shoot. It really is. Between what’s on the page and what ends up on the screen, there are so many factors that are completely out of your control, having to do with other casting and the camera moves and the director and the editing, and on and on and on. There are so many things that can either go right or go wrong. And I have read some scripts that I didn’t think were necessarily amazing, but that they had potential, and they ended up being cool. On the flip side, I’ve read things where I would say, “Wow, this is a director proof script. This is just gonna be amazing,” and it just doesn’t work.
As a producer, do you have any idea where the series will go, in possible future seasons? Are you a part of those conversations, or do you not want to know past what you’re doing, at the moment?
BACON: I would like to know. I haven’t had conversations about next season. I feel like we’ll start to have those conversations if we get another season. I do know that the idea always was to move from one neighborhood in Boston to another. We were in Charlestown in the first season, very specifically and really dealt a lot with that world. This year, we’re at a housing project in Roxbury. Next season, I’m assuming we’ll be moving someplace else. For me, it’s also a lot about, what do I wanna see happen to Jackie? What are some things that I’d like to play? Tom Fontana is very open to suggestions. He’ll say, “What do you wanna see him do?” That’s a really interesting and fascinating question, so I’ll have to start thinking about that, if we get another season.
What has been the most challenging aspect of working in a COVID world? Has it felt very different to shoot with all of the new safety protocols?
BACON: Oh, yeah. It’s interesting because we shot two episodes, and then we shut down, not really knowing how long we were shutting down, I’m sure like everyone else, back then, we thought this thing was gonna last a few months or whatever, and then we’d all just be back at work. So, we turned around and we went from March to May, and then went back to work with the world having changed. The first feeling of getting there was having your temperature taken, getting tested, and seeing the crew. There were new crew members whose faces, I still haven’t seen, and there were all of the crew members who I could only really recognize from their body language or they’d say what their job was specifically. There are masks and gloves and shields, and there are designated areas.
It’s pretty bizarre, at first. And then, what happens is that you rehearse, and trust me, doing so with a mask on is one of the strangest things for an actor because we really do look at each other and react off of each other. And then, you take off the mask and the camera is rolling, and all of a sudden you go, “Okay, this is this part of it that’s still the same. This is the thing that I have spent my whole life wanting to do, training to do, and learning to do, and this feels right.” The crew was so happy to be back at work. What we realized, when we got to the end of the season, is that the fact that we were able to accomplish this whole season with only a one-day shutdown, is really a testament to the fact that we were truly taking care of each other and being as careful as we possibly could. Even on the weekends, trying to keep everybody working was really inspirational. We had been down in the foxholes with each other and had been through this battle, and had come out of the other side of it victorious. Everybody felt a sense of pride in themselves, for having gotten this done. It was expensive and it was time-consuming and it had a lot of challenges, but we did it.
Do you think that Jackie can actually change, or do you feel that he’s been corrupted to his soul?
BACON: I think Jackie would say that he’s corrupted to his soul. He would be the first one to tell you that there’s no hope for his soul. But you’ll see in this season that there is some definite deep sharing about why Jackie is the way he is. There’s an interesting dynamic because his daughter and his wife formed a really deep bond based on what happened to her last year, and they’ve been through 12-step programs together. Jackie feels a little bit like on the outside of that relationship that seems to be growing and budding. He actually finally gets real. So, to see a character that is so prone to lying exhibit some honesty, is a fascinating thing. I hope people like it.
City on a Hill airs on Sunday nights on Showtime.
