The NBC seriesTakenis back for Season 2, with a new team and a new focus. From executive producerLuc Besson, the thriller follows a young but deadly Bryan Mills (Clive Standen), a covert operative who goes on rescue missions that require his very particular and very dangerous set of skills, along with the help of his team – made up of former CIA spy Christina Hart (Jennifer Beals), Santana (Jessica Camacho), a rule breaker who believes that bigger is better, and Kilroy (Adam Goldberg), a black hat hacker.
While at the TCA Press Tour for the NBC presentation, Collider got the opportunity to sit down with actor Clive Standen for this 1-on-1 interview about what they learned from Season 1, why they wanted to shift the focus of Season 2, why the physical demands of the series never get any easier, how the dynamic of the team has evolved and changed, and the journey that Bryan Mills goes on this season. He also talked about the graphic novel that he’s writing and hoping to develop into a TV series.
Collider: Looking back on Season 1, when do you think the show was at its best and what did you want to build on for Season 2?
CLIVE STANDEN: That’s a good question. With Season 1, when you take a film franchise and turn it into a TV show, the big thing that’s tough and that’s very important is that you have to acknowledge that the film is two hours and has a beginning, middle and end. Whereas with a TV show, you hopefully will have 50 hours and you don’t have to worry about the end until you’re in the last season. We all know that season to season, you never know if something is going to get dropped or if it’s going to find its natural conclusion, but you don’t want to rush. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
What we got right in Season 1 is that you may’t give the audience the finished product, especially when that finished product is a 60-year-old man who’s a griseled veteran of the CIA, so Bryan Mills needed to be a little bit reckless. He needed to come out of one world, which is the Green Berets, into an entire different world, which is the CIA and black ops. They set a team around him to teach him the rules, so that he knew there was a sacrifice and that sometimes it’s all right to go on instinct and smash down doors, but other people can get hurt in that. If it doesn’t go right, there is collaborative damage. That’s what I think Christina Hart (Jennifer Beals) teaches him. She almost Mr. Miyagis him. But in doing that, in Season 1, you have a man who’s very famous in a film for having a particular set of skills and you surround him with six guys who have the same skill set, which doesn’t make him very special. That’s what frustrated me in Season 1.
Thankfully, the people who invested in the show and NBC gave it Season 2. Now, with a new showrunner (Greg Plageman) and a new dynamic to the team, it allows us to start picking away at the Liam Neeson character from the films, which is a man who is unstoppable, relentless and selfless. He’ll stop at nothing until he gets his objective. He thinks outside the box and he’s a master chess player who is always thinking six steps ahead of his opponents. Because his opponents are meatheads who are driven by one thing, which is usually greed or money or power, he is vulnerable and is emotionally connected to each and every one of his missions. We’re going back to that character now. It’s all about Bryan Mills, which is why we tune in. We want to watch this guy kick down doors and save his daughter. That’s what the film is about.
Now that Christina Hart has left the faction she had within the CIA, now it’s a small team that’s just Bryan, Christina, and the two new characters, Kilroy (Adam Goldberg) and Santana (Jessica Camacho). Not every mission is going to be a big nuclear warhead that’s stolen or about a terrorist organization in Afghanistan. There are a lot of personal missions for Bryan, that will be about a family or just one person that society or the government seems to have forgotten about, but who’s been wronged, or they’re involved in something that’s much bigger and yet they still have so much to lose. Bryan Mills will sock it to the man for them because he has that particular set of skills that they don’t have.
It reminds me, at times, of a show I used to love growing up, which isThe Equalizer. That’s the show I wanted to make, and that’s the show they told me I was gonna make, and now we’re making it. That’s why I’m really excited. It just means that I’m in every scene now and I’m getting my ass kicked. I’m doing 17-18 hour days usually, and I have nothing left in the gas tank, at the end of the week.
Does it get any easier, the more that you do it?
STANDEN: No, because every time you do it easily, you set a precedent and they just make it harder on you for the next episode. They write bigger, and at the end of the day, you just want to strangle them, but I love it. When I broke down the character, and I saw the film and saw Liam do it, I thought, “This is a character that’s got a lot of heart, but I also see a man who never leaves anything for the way back.” That’s what I love about him. He’s all in. He doesn’t worry about backwards because he’s not going that way, and that’s how I get through the day’s filming. Everyone gets tired. Mentally, sometimes you just hit a wall. Every character I play, I’m always interested in what they do when they get back up. When I find myself falling, as Clive Standen, I just look forward and keep going. If that energy and enthusiasm carries me through the day, then the crew sees it, as well, and it keeps them going. I get through the end of the day, go home to my wife, and then just let it all out on her. I get into a bath of Epsom salts. I think the first episode of Season 3 should just be a chess game, and Bryan has to beat this guy at chess or the world will explode. It will be the most intense episode, but with no action.
What do you want to do with the action on this series?
STANDEN: What annoys me on television action shows is that there always seems to be guys and girls, sliding through glass and smashing bad guys, and then they get up and wave their hair through the air, like it’s a L’Oréal commercial. There’s never any loss or sacrifice and everyone looks perfect all the time, and I’m not interested in that. I think it’s far sexier to have people covered in blood and dirty. I think you’re far more emotionally connected to someone who seems more human and fallible and who’s paid a price for something. If you wear your heart on your sleeve, the audience sees it. I’m not interested in watching macho guys. That action heroes aren’t allowed to cry is bullshit. Real men cry. Real men have feelings.
How does having a season behind you change and affect the relationship between Bryan and Christina?
STANDEN: I think we’re very much more on equal footing this year. She’s taught him the rules and now the team has been disbanded, so they have to go into this business as partners now. He’s only back, if it’s on his terms. You can’t make a TV show whose character’s only motivation is the drive from the death of his sister. You can only sustain that for so long. It was a wise move for the writers and myself to go, “He’s dealt with that grief.” It will never leave him, and it comes back to haunt him this season, just for a second, with another character he meets, but for every mission, she lives on in all of these people that he helps. He blames himself, and that’s a healthy thing to have drive you, as an actor, but he has to be able to deal with those demons to move forward. I think that’s why, in Season 2, he has a better relationship with Christina. She’s not having to control this rogue, all the time, and chain him up and put him on a leash. It’s great because it’s a smaller team. It’s just four people now and it feels more like a dysfunctional family.
Will this team have any growing pains, as they figure each other out?
STANDEN: Yeah. There’s no rush for everybody to get along. We like to see this dysfunctional dynamic. Bryan is a lone wolf. He likes working alone, but he doesn’t have a choice that he has to have help, now and again. He definitely has an arrogance about him. He has an ego, and I think that needs to be quashed a little bit by Santana, and it is this year.
Since we know that there’s a bit of a conspiracy happening, will we keep learning about that and what’s going on with the bigger picture?
STANDEN: Yeah. We have our own little social commentary in Season 2, and we have characters not too dissimilar from Erik Prince and Blackwater. There are private military storylines throughout the season, and you’ll see how much power those organizations have, outside of the military. It’s scary. The good thing about acting is that it forces you to do your research and find out about stuff you never knew, and some of the research I did was terrifying. What I love is that there are some episodes that are just so human. There’s one that’s my favorite episode, where Bryan goes and meets a guy who’s lost his job at a factory and the factory is being liquidated, and there’s a billionaire that’s making money out of closing factories in factory towns and ruining whole towns. There’s this one guy who’s lost his job, lost his wife and lost his house, and Bryan has an emotional connection to him. He goes on a vengeance mission to take out every last person involved with this cover-up, and that was a really good one for me. It’s just a really personal story about Bryan going to war for one guy. It’s not for the country or for America. It’s for just one guy that people have forgotten. There’s so many people out there like that. I’m from Britain, but I’ve got people in my family in similar circumstances. Corrupt greed takes over and can ruin a town. All around America, that’s happening now. All we care about are the big corporations. For an action show, there are some powerful episodes in the season. For a network show, we’re taking a few risks this year and I hope they pay off a bit.
When you went fromVikingstoTaken, were you nervous about switching things up, in that way, or was it exciting to jump right in?
STANDEN: Everything is exciting to me. Life is not a dress rehearsal. Every choice you make in life is a chance. You never know how anything is going to turn out. I remember sitting there with Gustaf Skarsgard, when we finished filming Episode 1 ofVikings, and we were both going, “We love it, and that’s what we signed up for, but we don’t think anyone is gonna like this.” We had no idea that it was going to become what it was. Everything is a chance. You’ve just gotta enjoy everything you do. That’s what I try to do. Acting is so full of rejection. You spend so much time losing out on jobs you want or getting jobs you don’t want, but then you meet so many actors who get to set and just complain, the whole time, so why do it? You just have to take the rough with the smooth. Work begets work, but I work really hard. Whatever happens with this show, it won’t be the end of me. I just hope people enjoy it because I put everything into it. At least, I can walk away from something and go, “I couldn’t have done anything more.” That’s what I felt withVikings, and that’s the same mentality I have withTaken.
Because of the physical beating you take by doingTaken, are you looking to take a break, once the season is done?
STANDEN: I’m actually working with a couple of producers, at the moment, on my own TV show, and I’m writing a graphic novel right now, so I’ve got a hundred things going on.
Have you always been a comic book fan?
STANDEN: Yeah, I’m a massive geek. I’ve had an idea in my head for five years. I’d written the treatment for the TV show, and then I thought, “Well, that would actually be a really good graphic novel,” so I’m writing it now. If it turns out as good as I hope it will, we can pitch that and get it turned into a TV show. It’s a post-apocalyptic Western that’s set only five years in the future. I don’t want to talk too much about it yet.
