Loading

Getting Bridges to commit to a television series was no small matter. His late father, Lloyd Bridges, had enjoyed a long Hollywood career, which included a run of successful series in the 1950s and 1960s. The most notable was Sea Hunt, an action-adventure series on which Jeff made his screen debut as a nine-year-old guest star.

Bridges remembered the grind shooting episodic television placed on his father, while also being aware of a more contemporary trend.

“There’s so much content coming out on the tube these days, but the tone to me is so important,” Bridges says. “You’ve got to get it right, but that’s a tricky thing. It’s rare.”

Bridges was won over by The Old Man’s writing. Adapted from the 2017 Thomas Perry novel of the same name by Jonathan Steinberg (Jericho) and Robert Levine (Black Sails), the episodes have an elegiac structure and richly crafted dialogue.

Even as Bridges’ character goes on the run, drawing on the lessons of his life’s work, he’s engaged in long-distance communication with a former friend and colleague, John Lithgow’s FBI agent Harold Harper, while forging an uncertain bond with a woman he meets, Amy Brenneman’s Zoe McDonald.

“You can tell any story from any genre, and if you get the right team together, you can make it fascinating,” says Bridges.

“I was attracted by how this was executed. John [Lithgow] and I have a scene that is measuring in at about 20 minutes. Now that they use digital cameras, without film, we could do two takes back-to-back. We’d be acting for like 40 minutes.”

The bruising counterpoint to the deception-laden narrative, which unfolds with flashbacks to Chase’s CIA service in the 1980 (where he’s played by Bill Heck), are the masterful fight scenes.

Spider-Man: No Way Home filmmaker Jon Watts directs the first two episodes, and he creates a template of physically expressive struggle. Adversaries go through tactics and holds, trying to gain the upper hand as they hurt each other – and Bridges is clearly in most of the shots, taking shots.

“I enjoy doing fight scenes, and I’ve done several in movies I’ve done, but I hadn’t done one in a while, so I asked our stunt co-ordinator, Tim Connolly, ‘What’s the state-of-the-art fight scene I can check out?’” Bridges says. “Tim said, ‘I don’t want to appear immodest, but it’s a film I worked on with the actors: Atomic Blonde.’ You ever seen that? Oh my god, when they go down the stairs! I knew I was in good hands.”

As is his wont, Bridges affixes an affirming “wow” to his answer, a suitably cosmic postscript. Having met the many goals of his recovery, he’s happy enough with The Old Man to commit to a recently commissioned second season. Jeff Bridges has plenty more he wants to leave with us.

WHAT The Old Man
WHEN Disney+, from Wednesday