‘Mayor of Kingstown’ Stars Talk Power, Trust & Family in Taylor Sheridan’s New Drama

You’re about to be introduced to a new gritty world from Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone) and Hugh Dillon (who is also a star) in the new Paramount+ drama, Mayor of Kingstown, with a stellar cast led by Jeremy Renner in the titular role.

The McLusky family (including Renner’s Mike) are the power brokers in Kingstown, Michigan, where the only thriving industry is the business of incarceration. And in this world — one in which members of the McLusky family meet with the head of a gang organization — it’s hard to know who can be trusted. In other words, everything is very complicated.

Power, Control & Pressure

We already have an idea of the power Mike holds over Kingstown just from the trailers. But what about within the family? Is it matriarch Mariam (Dianne Wiest) over sons Mike, Mitch (Kyle Chandler), and Kyle (Taylor Handley)? She “would like to think it’s her, but she knows she has no power whatsoever over her sons,” Wiest says, though “that gives her a strange kind of power in a way. If you know that you’re powerless, you’re kind of a loose cannon.” (At work, teaching at the women’s prison, “she feels great power.”)

With that power seems to come control for Mike, so what would it take for him to lose that? “You have to watch Episode 7 or 8. It’d be a very principled thing,” says Renner. “That’s a chink in the armor. When you become a puppet, when you can be manipulated by caring for somebody or protecting somebody, that would be the reason he gets out of control.”

You will see moments of vulnerability for Mike, such as when he’s sharing scenes with Crips leader Bunny (Tobi Bamtefa), “the closest thing to a friend that Mike McLusky ever gets to, even though at any given moment, they’d probably kill each other,” according to Renner. “They share their own self-awareness of the bleakness of their lives. There’s something beautiful thematically to share with audiences in that about how to understand one another, and the best way to do that is just shut up and f**king listen.”

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Bamtefa adds, “outside of Mike’s family, Bunny understands Mike more than anybody else. He understands the pressure that Mike is under.” For these two men, “in this world where it’s very dark and you’re put in a position where you need to survive, because there’s so much violence in it, they’re able to have moments of vulnerability between themselves that allow them to cross that line into the realm of trust. That trust albeit is very tenuous because of the environment they live in, which makes the relationship all the more special because anything could happen and either party would suddenly be distrustful of the other.”

Complicated Family Dynamics

For Mariam, “her family troubles began and ended with the death of her husband and her sons’ father,” Wiest explains. “They worshipped him. And no matter what I’ve said, no matter how I have pleaded or threatened, they are following in his footsteps and that’s just the road paved to hell.” But can she trust her sons? “I trust no one,” she says of her character.

Kyle wants to trust his brothers, which is where his loyalty lies, but “it’s a little difficult because they do, in essence, use Kyle to do things in the gray area. They kind of hide behind Kyle’s shield,” Handley says, adding, “However, there’s not much to really hide behind because everyone in this town — the corrections officers, the local officers and the people who hold office — they’re all kind of in bed with one another.”

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Like Mike, Bunny is a family man, Bamtefa says. “It wouldn’t be too farfetched to assume that he has other family members within the organization and he suffered a significant amount of loss within that because this is the world that we live in. Everybody has suffered some kind of loss.”

And like Mariam, “he trusts no one,” Bamtefa continues. Rather, “what he trusts is that everybody will do something to snake someone or backstab. He trusts humans to be human.”

Why They Don’t Leave

With everything going on in Kingstown, what’s keeping everyone from just getting out of there? Mike “doesn’t want to f**king be there, but when it’s all you know, there’s a bleakness to the thing and you don’t know what else to do,” Renner says. “What drives Mike and a lot of characters is just trying to keep the peace.” But while he “wants to do good for other people” and may be “a selfless guy,” Renner wouldn’t necessarily call his character a hero.

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Kyle is faced with a choice that could take him from Kingstown — working for the troopers in another part of the state — but he’s conflicted. “Any right person in their mind would leave Kingstown, but just picking up and leaving everything you’ve ever known and going off into the unknown and starting something new, there’s a lot of fear behind all that,” says Handley.

That aspect of the series reminds Wiest of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. “I’m telling my boys, ‘go to Moscow, go, go, go,’ and who isn’t in Moscow? Me,” she explains. “I didn’t have the courage to leave, but I am in a rage to get my boys out.”

Adds Handley, pointing to the name of the town, “you have to believe that we came here and we settled in this town with the ideal that we were all going to be Kings of this town and it’s gone incredibly downhill, but I think we’re still there trying to hold onto this ideal or hold onto something.”

Mayor of Kingstown, Series Premiere, Sunday, November 14, Paramount+