Premiering on Apple TV October 10th is the new thriller series ‘The Last Frontier’, which was created by Jon Bokenkamp (‘The Blacklist’) and Richard D’Ovidio, and stars Jason Clarke (‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’), Dominic Cooper (‘Captain America: The First Avenger’), Haley Bennett (‘The Magnificent Seven’), Simone Kessell (‘Yellowjackets’), and Alfre Woodard (‘Captain America: Civil War’).
PYpbQJojlcds46XYAdM183Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Haley Bennett and Dominic Cooper about their work on ‘The Last Frontier’, Their first reaction to the screenplay for the pilot, their approach to their characters, and working with actor and executive producer Jason Clarke.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Cooper, Bennett, Jason Clarke, Simone Kessell, and Jon Bokenkamp.
Related Article: Jason Clarke Talks Apple TV+’s New Thriller Series ‘The Last Frontier’
Moviefone: To begin with, Haley, this is a fantastic series! Can you talk about your first reaction to reading the screenplay for the pilot?
Haley Bennett: Thank you. That just attributes to our incredible writer, Jon Bokenkamp and we were just in such good hands with Jon Bokenkamp, Apple TV and with Jason Clarke producing this show. We feel so grateful and so privileged to be getting the feedback we’ve been getting for the show. What I love about the show is that it has this epic scope and this incredible budget and it’s such elevated television. But at the same time, I’m used to just doing little independent films and getting to explore characters on a much smaller scale, but we were able to explore both with our scenes between us and to be able to create incredibly real and fleshed out characters. Which is what Apple, I think, is so genius and brilliant at creating. It’s like the balance of both of those things.
MF: Haley, can you talk about your approach to playing Sydney and what is it like playing a character with so many secrets?
HB: Sydney is a character who’s someone that obviously has a lot of problems, a lot of demons, she’s been condemned by the CIA. She’s sent to Alaska to help with this crisis of this plane crash, and she knows the person that is that the CIA is looking for better than anybody. I loved her shades of gray. I loved her moral ambiguity and how I felt about her at first glance was very different as I read kind of these later episodes. I realized that what she represented was something far different than what I had originally believed about her. So, I just felt that that was a great opportunity to get to play a character who has this incredible arc and isn’t always what you see is what you get, but that has all these secrets that can destroy and that have catastrophic consequences.
MF: Dominic, so much is said about Havlock in the first episode before we ever see you on screen. How did that help you to create this character?
Dominic Cooper: There’s such a wealth of information in this script. For the first time ever, I don’t think it’s ever happened before, but we all 10 episodes have been handed to you before you begin. So, you have this wealth of information about the person you’re going to play, which is daunting. Just the character when I when I list the things that were presented in front of me, a Navy SEAL, CIA operative, mathematician, lecturer, I couldn’t come up with things that are further from who I am as a person, but it was a wonderful challenge to be presented with. Then a lot of the time you’re having to sit alone and write your history or decide on things that you have no real idea about. You’re not really that confident because you’ve made it up yourself. But with this, I could go backwards and forwards. I could listen to what people say about him. I could find the future and the flashbacks. It gave such a strong flavor of who this guy was. It’s been interesting to hear what people think of him. They keep mentioning devious and villainous and a bit of a murky moral compass. But I just saw him as someone who was trying to be killed and surviving and loved the people he cared about and was trying to do to reveal some truth and honesty about what was happening in the world. So, I had a lot of help and the showrunner who knew the material inside out because he’d had it for a long time. So, there’s no preparation. You still think you’re terrible in it, you still think that you’ve done a bad job, you still don’t believe in anything you do. But all you can do is have trust and utilize the information that’s presented before you.
MF: Finally, Dominic, can you talk about the cat and mouse game that begins between Havlock and Frank, and why Havlock takes an interest in him?
DC: I realize more now in watching it again, another tough thing about playing him in the cat and mouse relationship, I don’t ever get any scenes with him (Jason Clarke). I have one scene with him, essentially, where we’re face to face. I remember thinking, what a relief and how lovely it was to work with him. I was really happy because you get so much from actors, you look in their eyes and you listen, and you absorb and that completely informs your reaction. Nothing else does. Half of my stuff was into a radio without the person there and that was hard. So, it was very nice. But you don’t have that feeling of the day’s work and we got somewhere together, that you reached somewhere together. It was a bit like, “Oh, that’s done” and you don’t know whether it’s right because you also don’t hear the tone of how that person’s going to play it. So, you’re just doing it into a void. It’s still quite interesting. He’s so he’s so ahead of Frank. I just had to think of the bigger picture and go, “Well, actually, it’s so clever this”, you know, he’s there, he’s not there. I felt like I was in safe hands in terms of the guidance from both director and showrunner, but it was sad to have that wonderful cat and mouse, but not be present with the person.
What is the plot of ‘The Last Frontier’?
A U.S. Marshal (Jason Clarke) in the outskirts of Alaska must protect his town while he investigates the plane crash that set free multiple fugitives, now on the loose.
Who is in the cast of ‘The Last Frontier’?
- Jason Clarke as Frank Remnick
- Dominic Cooper as Havlock
- Haley Bennett as Sidney
- Simone Kessell as Sarah Remnick
- Tait Blum as Luke Remnick
- Dallas Goldtooth as Hutch
- Alfre Woodard as Bradford
- Rusty Schwimmer as Kitty Van Horn
List of Jason Clarke Movies and TV Shows:
- ‘Brotherhood‘ (2006 – 2008)
- ‘Public Enemies‘ (2009)
- ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps‘ (2010)
- ‘Texas Killing Fields‘ (2011)
- ‘The Chicago Code‘ (2011)
- ‘Lawless‘ (2012)
- ‘Zero Dark Thirty‘ (2012)
- ‘The Great Gatsby‘ (2013)
- ‘White House Down‘ (2013)
- ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes‘ (2014)
- ‘Terminator Genisys‘ (2015)
- ‘Everest‘ (2015)
- ‘Mudbound‘ (2017)
- ‘Chappaquiddick‘ (2018)
- ‘First Man‘ (2018)
- ‘Serenity‘ (2019)
- ‘The Aftermath‘ (2019)
- ‘Pet Sematary‘ (2019)
- ‘Catherine the Great‘ (2019)
- ‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty‘ (2022- 2023)
- ‘Oppenheimer‘ (2023)
- ‘A House of Dynamite‘ (2025)
- ‘Murdaugh: Death in the Family‘ (2025)
- ‘The Last Frontier‘ (2025)
