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‘Mayor of Kingstown’ Boss, Star on Jeremy Renner’s Return, Finale Deaths

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SPOILER ALERT: The following interview contains spoilers from “Comeuppance,” the Season 3 finale of “Mayor of Kingstown,” now streaming on Paramount+.

Wrapping up its season quietly in a tidy fashion is just not the “Mayor of Kingstown” way, which it proved once more on Sunday with the conclusion of its gripping third season. As is par for the course with the dark world of the fictional Michigan city, there was a lot of bloodshed and death as well as characters questioning their respective futures. Not too shabby for a show that found itself in a very real, fragile position last year when star Jeremy Renner, who plays beleaguered Mike McLusky, was injured in a snowplow accident that left him with blunt chest trauma and 38 broken bones.

But, like the heroes he’s known for playing in much of his career, Renner was determined to recover and get back to his “Mayor of Kingstown” character, who is the center of the corrupt and dangerous world in the Paramount+ series created by Taylor Sheridan (“Yellowstone”) and Hugh Dillon, who also stars in the series as morally challenged detective Ian Ferguson.

Following the finale (with no word yet on a fourth season pick-up) Dillon talked to us about what he did to get the recovering Renner excited to return to work, as well as Dillon’s own connection to the world portrayed in the series. Also, since the episode saw the deaths of the villainous Milo Sunter (Aiden Gillen), as well as more tragic ends for long-time characters Iris (Emma Laird) and Capt. Kareem Moore (Michael Beach), the question is: Are these characters gone for good? Dillon clued us in on that, and a potential fourth season.

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You really packed a lot into the finale, with so many big moments and threads left dangling for a potential next season. How was it to pull together, especially after the past year or so for Jeremy Renner?

You know, it isn’t just a show, and Taylor has given us all this opportunity to tell these stories. This season was really just about empowering Jeremy from what he was coming back from. I talked to his mom, and it really drove us to say “OK, you’re going to go from wheelchair to walkers, and we hope we get there.” Then we realize we’re shooting in winter in Pittsburgh, and he’s got two tons of titanium in him, so now that’s a bit of a problem. It was just dodging all these bullets. I wanted Jeremy and his mom to read these scripts so they aren’t thinking about their problems, but thinking, “I want to get going!” We all had a common call, which was support Jeremy.

And with these actors, you want them to have something that is real and not just pedestrian. so they bring it and they leave everything on the field. There is something that is just beautiful about the human experience, and to watch Jeremy — in the beginning, he was worried. His mom was worried. You know, if you want to do this, commit. We’re going to dig in. And [Jeremy] was like, “I think I’ll get there.” He had mobility issues, but he worked every single day after we shot. We had a gym put in for him. He worked so fucking hard.

Jeremy Renner as Mike McLusky
Courtesy of Dennis P. Mong Jr./Paramount+

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Let’s talk about some of the big moments in the finale starting with your character, Ian. After he killed Charlie (Kenny Johnson) in last week’s episode, there are questions coming up now about what happened. Will this haunt him moving forward?

It’s a thing! There’s no doubt about it. I have a friend of mine who is a prison guard, and sometimes you take [a prisoner] out to look for stuff and sometimes you bond with them. I will say that to get Kenny Johnson to work on this show it’s, again, one of those things I am just so grateful to be a part of that — and then to have that twist.

It wasn’t “Oh, we’re going to do this” — the setup was two years coming, and that’s what Taylor taught me. These are movies, they’re films. Let them breathe, let them play out. They don’t have to be tied up in one episode. Christoph Schrewe, our director, is so dialed in, and he really helped shape that scene cinematically.

And then there are a number of big deaths in the episode. Kareem walking into the prison yard knowing he’ll be killed, and then Iris committing suicide by taking those pills on the bus. Are we saying goodbye to these characters for good? It’s a season finale, so you never know.

You should say goodbye. Taylor taught me this, and this is how we operate. This is about life. The opium epidemic. I grew up in a prison town, and no one is safe and nothing is sacred. And if you grasp that, it can be a grief-driven experience, but you have to put those real-life markers in, or else it’s just a show. Those are real things that people deal with. I’m from a prison town, so I’ve been dealing with these things for years. And I’ve had a very close relationship with suicide — like friends who have committed suicide, and opiates. And you’ve got to mine those experiences. You can’t just gloss over them, and that’s what I bring. I understand this world and these people, and it’s our job to go deep and hit hard and not gloss over it.

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So, just to confirm, we’re saying goodbye to those characters?

Yes. If we did anything else, that would be corruption. Creative corruption. Because that is the end. So to come back and say, “Oh, she was just sleeping…” They are dead. This is what happens. It’s a tragedy. We know these people, and we understand. To pretend it didn’t happen would be a disservice to all of us.

Let me ask you about shooting that massive shootout on the bridge at night. How long did that take to shoot?

Well, we prepped and prepped for that. We thought about that [scene] long ago. Taylor Sheridan dropped that in early. Taylor just knows. Last year, he called me: “You know, the Kenny Johnson thing? Yeah, I like that. I got some great ideas. Here’s what I’m thinking, then if you can get us there, we’ll retrofit the bridge.” And then we figured out the Kyle and the Robert thing [where Kyle shoots Robert on the bridge].

MayorofKingstown finale JeremyRenner solo.2

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Courtesy of Dennis P. Mong Jr./Paramount+

Taylor also knew Christoph Schrewe, the German filmmaker, who killed it, and shot [the scenes] like “Apocalypse Now.” He can dial in emotion and action, and is just a great human being. And then we got this great team in Pittsburgh and people said, “This is too ambitious’ or “You can’t do that.” Ambition is a code for “We don’t think we can do it.”

But this is Jeremy Renner and Taylor Sheridan. You want them to look at their work and what their names are on, and how they’ve enabled us to succeed.

Not everything is tied up in a nice bow at the end of the season. Will we get answers to all the stories left dangling? A fourth season hasn’t officially been announced, but I can’t imagine it wouldn’t happen, right?

It’s a bit cliché, but from your mouth to God’s ears.

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Assuming the stories continues, what does the future hold for Mike? He talks a lot in the finale about evil and forgiveness, and returning to himself. Is that anything that’s possible in this world?

I think it’s a thing that we all hold onto, so we don’t just give up. So many of us and the characters are predisposed to their darker impulses, and they’re very desensitized. But you’ve got to have hope. That’s what it is. It’s going back to hoping that Iris can make it out. And hoping that Kyle [Taylor Handley] can have a better life than [his brother] Mike has. It’s all those family issues, and how do you absorb loss and defeat and compromise? That is the crux.  

It makes for good TV, right?

Makes for a great life!

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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