[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of Leverage: Redemption, “The Harry Wilson Job.”]

Now that the Leverage crew is back for Leverage: Redemption, in a world where it’s become even easier for the rich to become richer and the powerful to continue to build their power, grifter Sophie Deveraux (Gina Bellman), thief Parker (Beth Riesgraf), hitter Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane) and hacker Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge), along with the latest additions of corporate lawyer Harry Wilson (Noah Wyle) and Hardison’s foster sister Breanna (Aleyse Shannon), are taking on jobs that are sure to get them into all sorts of mischief. In the second half of the season, which even includes a Christmas episode, the team is really hitting their stride and figuring out how they work best together while they continue to help those who are being taken advantage of.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Wyle talked about the impression executive producer Dean Devlin made on him the first time they met, why they’ve worked together for so many years, what made him want to be a part of the return of Leverage, the experience of also directing an episode, what he most enjoyed about digging deeper into Harry Wilson, and his hopes for returning for another season. He also talked about why he didn’t direct an episode of ER, and whether he’d ever be interested in revisiting that series.

Collider: It was really fun to watch the second half of the season because it felt like we really got to learn some things, especially about your character, that we didn’t necessarily learn in the first half of the season. You’ve been working with Dean Devlin for awhile now. When did you first meet him? What were your initial impressions of him? Did you have any idea that you would still be working with him, all this time later?

NOAH WYLE: I had a feeling because he said something to me that really meant a lot to me, when we first met. We had lunch at a restaurant in Los Angeles because he wanted to talk to me about the first Librarians movie and he sat down across from me and said, “I hear you’re a really nice guy, but I want you to know that I’m not one of those people that mistake nice for weak.” And I said, “If that’s true, then we’re gonna get along great,” because nice is a choice. It’s a choice to be pleasant. It’s a choice to be collegiate. It’s a choice to be creative. You never want to feel taken advantage of because you’re being nice, especially in this town. Dean is that same way. He’s really, really nice, but he’s also really, really tough. Right off the bat, we’ve got on great, with both an affinity for each other, but also a mutual respect for the fact that we were gonna respect each other.

Did you also find that your work ethic lined up with his?

WYLE: Yeah, we both have the ability to go into a fugue state when we’re working, where there is no time and there’s no need for food. All there is, is story and execution of story. It’s probably a flaw in our characters, but it’s a nice vocational habit.

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Image via IMDB TV

When you worked together on Librarians and you finished playing that character, had you talked then about the possibility of working together again, or were you surprised when Leverage: Redemption came your way?

WYLE: He talked to me about Leverage as a show, the first time it came around, when he was first setting it up. I thought it was a really intriguing concept and I really was a fan of the show when it started. We’d always talked about franchising The Librarian and serializing the movies in perpetuity, so the idea of us working together in a partnership on that franchise was there. I remember he called me after he shot the pilot for Leverage and paid me a very nice compliment about how much he missed working with me, as an actor. He’s always paid me that compliment, that I’m one of his favorite to work with and that I bring a lot to the table and the set when he hires me.

Along with returning to work with him again, what made you want to and decide to do Leverage? Was it the team? Was it the character, specifically? Was it the opportunity to direct? Was it all of those things?

WYLE: It was all of those things. First of all, I was going to stir crazy during the pandemic and really needed to do something creative and now, but the chance to work with people that I know that well and have that kind of history with, going back 17 years now, was certainly another incentive. The fact that I liked the show and was friends with a couple of the cast members was another incentive. The money was good. And the directing was a huge part of it. He’s been a huge champion of mine, in that regard. Going back to the second episode of TV I ever did, which was an episode of Librarians, he then let me do four or five more after that. He’s allowed me to go to film school on his dime, and the fact that he has that kind of faith in my ability to be a storyteller, in the vein of storytelling that he likes, means a lot to me. So, all of that together got me down there.

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Image via IMDB TV

You directed an episode of Falling Skies, which is a show that’s pretty big in scope and has a good size ensemble. The Librarians was a mix of genres and was another ensemble. Did Leverage feel like a project that really could benefit from all of the things you had learned directing those shows?

WYLE: Absolutely. And I felt like I could learn a lot from directing a show like Leverage because the tone is very specific. It goes sometimes towards the broad humor, but also, it has to always stay grounded in the stakes of the storyline, which are usually horrific. Human trafficking and opioid addiction are really heavy stuff. So, tonally, it’s about trying to figure out what’s too broad that will undercut the stakes of the storyline you’re doing, and what’s not light enough where fans can’t get out of the heaviness of the storyline. That’s a particularly difficult recipe to maintain in the kitchen, and I was really up for the challenge. I learned a lot this season.

Do you ever wish that you had directed an episode of ER, or is that something you weren’t even considering doing, at that point?

WYLE: I could have done it. Other actors did it back then. Anthony Edwards directed. Laura Innes directed. There may have been a couple of others. I just felt, at the time, that I probably wasn’t up to the task and I was intimidated.

With all of the reboots, reimaginings, returns, and reunions that have happened, are you surprised that ER hasn’t really made its back, in some way?

WYLE: No, because I know John Wells’ mind on the subject, and it’s a really closed subject, as far as he’s concerned. He never wanted to franchise the show into Miami ER or L.A. ER, and he never really wanted to trot to us back out for reunion shows. He wanted the show’s legacy to stay intact. That said, there’s a version of that universe that I would love to explore, one day. I have talked to him about that. Maybe we’ll keep talking about it.

Did you ever shadow any directors along the way, or did you just absorb everything you could while you were on sets working with so many different people?

WYLE: I never did an official shadow. When you’re on set, it’s the difference between standing behind the director’s chair and going back to your chair and asking a lot more questions. The first time I directed, I remember I called Eriq La Salle up, who’s a beautiful director and I said, “Tomorrow’s my first day, what do I do?” And he said, “There’s two things you need to know. The first is that you know way more than you think you do. And the second thing is that there will be a point in time where you won’t know what to do. Just do something. Film a chair. Film the sun. You’ll say to yourself, ‘What am I doing? Why am I doing this?’ And then, you’ll fix the problem, as you’re doing it. But if you don’t do anything, this inertia sets in and it becomes infectious, and suddenly the whole set will go down the toilet.” So, armed with those two things on my first day – you know more than you think you do, and just produce something when you don’t know what to do – I was okay.

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In this half of the season, we see Harry become more confident in his place in the team. He’s learning what he can bring to specific jobs. What did you most enjoy about his journey in this portion of the season and getting to really expand him?

WYLE: Well, he’s a very slick guy, so it took a few episodes to really understand what was making this guy tick. Why did he wanna be on this team and what’s he looking for, out of all of this? Where is his need for redemption coming from? He can’t be the guy that he used to be, but why? Why is his moral center being recalibrated? In the second half of the season, you dig a little bit more into his family and you get a little more of a sense of how uncomfortable he is with the estrangement he has with his daughter and how he really wants her to view him as a better man than he’s been. That is a huge engine under all of this. Also, he fits in with this team, but he doesn’t fit in with his team, s it’s a question of how long he’s gonna play at this and whether or not his allegiances are temporary, if this is a phase or if this is something that he’s really committed to. I think the second half of the season deals a little bit more with the complexity of what he’s going through than the first half. It was fun to do.

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Image via IMDB TV

I love that we get an episode entitled “The Harry Wilson Job.” What was your reaction to learning that he would be going undercover and that we wouldn’t know what he was up to? Was it fun to get to play a character where you don’t really always know what to make of him?

WYLE: Yes, that is fun. This particular season, it was true for all of us because we were writing and course-correcting on the fly. They had a concept for the reboot, but it didn’t involve Harry Wilson, initially. And then, suddenly, Harry became part of the narrative, and then it became the narrative. I don’t think a lot of that was crystallized, on day one. We had a Christmas break where there was a lot of brainstorming going on and came back to suddenly these gigantic memos. And we shot the finale, not at the end, but second, and then had to figure out how to get there. There was a little bit of craziness making it, but in terms of how I felt about being a part of the whole thing, it’s what you hope for. You wanna be a part of the engine of the narrative, if you can be.

How much fun was it to get your own little Hardison team up, especially with him not being present the whole season? Was it fun to be so involved with him, when he does show back up?

WYLE: As a character, he’s incredibly electric and kinetic. As an actor, he’s that and more. It was really fascinating to see the dynamics of how they all relate to each other. In the old days, Aldis [Hodge] was very much the kid on this show and everybody else were grown-ups. Now, everybody’s a grown-up, but in so many ways, Aldis was doing us a favor by coming back and doing the episodes that he did because his career is blowing up right now. His sense of loyalty to the show and his love for the character brought him back. But on set, the energy was very different than I would imagine it used to be in the old days. We got along great. I wish he had done more. I hope, if this all comes back, we get to play some more together. He’s terrific.

It seems like, in every episode, you get to do something fun and different because every job is different and they don’t quite know what they’re going to encounter. Was there a job that you most enjoyed, out of these episodes? Was there something where you got to do things that were particularly fun, that you hadn’t done before? Are there any that most stand out for you?

WYLE: If you’re just talking about me, as an actor, yeah, because I’m such a ham, I absolutely love playing dress up. Anytime that Harry got to go incognito and unleash his unbridled enthusiasm for performance, I was a kid in a candy store. In particular, in the Christmas episode with LeVar Burton, there’s a sequence in the diner where Harry gets to come in and try to play spy that I channeled my inner Clouseau for.

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Image via IMDB TV

I love that the show gets a Halloween episode and a Christmas episode. We don’t get very much of that in shows anymore, so I love that we get the holiday episodes of Leverage.

WYLE: It means a lot to people to be able to watch a show that feels like a bowl of chicken soup, and Dean Devlin understands that and wants to deliver that. That’s why I love working with him. He knows exactly what he’s making and he knows exactly who he’s making it for, and the whole thing has a really positive energy around it. I love being associated with it.

You’ve directed other shows, you’ve directed this show, and you’ve been directed by a lot of other people. What was it like to also be directed by Beth Riesgraf and see how she handled it?

WYLE: To me, the biggest treasure chest of the season that was discovered was that Beth Riesgraf is a great director. As you’re trying to bring in new talents to tell your story, you’re always nervous. Are they gonna get it? Are they gonna understand the tone? Are they gonna have a rapport with the actors? If you can promote from within, it’s usually better because there’s a shorthand, but it’s a gamble to redefine somebody into a different role. Sometimes it’s tricky for people to see them that way and sometimes it’s difficult for them to embrace that. But she is such a pure artist and she’s such a natural. She started, day one, both with the support of the crew and the cast, but also with the confidence of somebody who’s already done it before. She was playing elevated ball, early on, and everybody saw it. She wasn’t supposed to direct the second one, but the strength of her work in the first one made it a no-brainer that we suddenly had somebody in-house that we can put it in rotation, every four or five episodes. If they pick it up again, my guess is she’ll do two or three next year.

By the end of this season, how changed is Harry by this team? Who do you think he feels closest to, or do they each feel like a piece of this bigger puzzle for him?

WYLE: If we’re successful, you’ll come away believing that he and Sophie were really good for each other. She needed to get over grief and come back to the team and get back to her roots, and Harry was her catalyst for doing that, both because he dropped into her life on the day that this all happened, but also because his road to redemption and his searching, in a way, allowed her a chance to be self-reflective on her own journey. In some ways, I think Harry and Sophie are very aligned together. But we tried to have moments with all of them. Hardison is very instrumental in helping Harry walk this road of redemption. Eliot was a very good mentor to him, along the way, about moving on from things that you’re not so proud about in your past and how to pick yourself up and reinvent yourself. And Parker taught him the skills of how to crack safes and pick locks and put his body on the line. And then, Breanna was also, in a lot of ways, trying to audition for this team. The two of them were very competitive with each other, for the validation and approval of the grown-ups. In doing so, they got to match each other and pace each other and graduate together.

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Image via IMDB TV

This season ends in such a way that Harry could go off and do his own thing, but I’m sure there’s also a way that he could easily be reeled back into things for another season. Do you want to come back? Have you had conversations about returning for more episodes, even if it isn’t every episode?

WYLE: Sure. I had such a good time. I told them that I would love to come back, as a director. I would love to come back, as an actor. I would love to come back as a team member or just as a legal advisor that they go to every once in a while. I had a ball. These are all my friends. I’m just hopeful that they pick the show up again and allow them to make more. As mentioned in the beginning of the conversation, in some ways, the second half of the season is more fun than the first part because we started to figure out how to make it and we started to figure out our rhythms. You wanna build on that momentum because that’s where the episodes start to get really fun.

Leverage: Redemption is available to stream at IMDbTV.

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