The Old Man’s Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow Talk Their ‘New Old Friends’ Bond, Set Up an ‘Exciting’ Season 2

Amazingly, before they co-starred together in the FX thriller The Old Man , Hollywood veterans Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow had never acted together before. And in the first season, they didn’t act together much either.

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“We barely worked together in the first season,” Lithgow points out to TVLine, with his former FBI assistant director Harold Harper and Bridges’ former CIA agent Dan Chase only speaking over the phone for most of Season 1. (“And even then, the script supervisor was on the phone.”) But despite only having “one afternoon of rehearsal” with Bridges, Lithgow recalls, “we knew it was gonna work… That was part of the real power of the first season: You knew these two parallel lines would come together, and they did.”

And in Season 2 — premiering Thursday at 10/9c on FX — Chase and Harper come together in a big way, traveling to Afghanistan to rescue Chase’s daughter Emily (a budding CIA agent mentored by Harper and played by Alia Shawkat) from feared Afghan warlord Faraz Hamzad ( Homeland’ s Navid Negahban). It’s a more dynamic, propulsive season, Lithgow teases: “Chase has been leading a sedentary life in Vermont, and [Harper has] been a desk jockey in Washington. And so we’re hurled into the wilderness on this crazy mission to find this kidnapped young woman, a needle in a haystack. It throws us into that maelstrom, and I think it’s extremely exciting.”

Chase and Harper aren’t exactly pals, though: They’ve known each other for decades, but they’re still highly wary of each other, which is understandable, since Harper attempted to have Chase killed last season. “They know each other [enough] to mistrust each other,” Lithgow explains. “The hard fact of the matter is that for various reasons, one of us tried to assassinate the other, and the other one knows it, acknowledges it, and they move on. They still collaborate, even though they know that this is something the other is capable of. I mean, that’s powerful stuff.”

But on the set, it was much more friendly, Bridges remembers. He and Lithgow shot their first scene together for the Season 1 finale, with Harper and Chase finally teaming up in person, and “it was a ball. Just six days in a car, hanging out.” Lithgow compares it “to a cross-country car trip with your brand new roommate, where you just simply have to get to know each other and like each other. We ended up adoring each other. It was so much fun.”

For Bridges, “the phrase ‘new old friends’ comes to mind,” he says. His acting style and Lithgow’s meshed right away, he notes: “Different actors approach the work in a different way, and we approach it similarly, where if you want to be old friends, you open [up] to each other, you start to get intimate with each other and do it intensely. And then finally, you forget about the intention, and it just becomes wonderful and fun.”

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Lithgow agrees: “We love breaking scenes down, finding the beats, figuring out new ways and what’s really going on. Because at any given time, there are three or four or five or six things going on… It takes a lot of smart acting, and Jeff is such a smart actor.”

He’s a tough actor, too, with Chase getting into more rough-and-tumble fights with men half his age in Season 2. So does Bridges still like shooting fight scenes at 74 years old? “I do enjoy it,” he admits, giving ample credit to the show’s stunt coordinator Tim Connolly ( John Wick , Gangs of London ). “Basically, we’re pulling off a magic trick. It’s an illusion. So how do you make it look real? And interesting?”

Lithgow is a fan, too: “The great thing about Jeff’s fight scenes in a lot of movies is they’re such a f–king mess” — that is, “the way fight scenes are” in real life. Lithgow recalls a fight he witnessed once at a restaurant, with diners at the next table throwing punches, “and it was the messiest, most chaotic thing I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s what fights are. And that’s what Tim and Jeff do.”

Let us know what you’re hoping to see in Season 2 of The Old Man in the comments.

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