Jeff Bridges: “Going back to work after nearly dying was a dream””

His last job was Bad times at the El Royale (2018). And when the series began to shoot, the problems began, recalls the 72-year-old actor, happy to be back, in a meeting with a small group of media, including EFE.

«At first we shot just a couple of months and because of the pandemic we stopped, and then because of my cancer it lasted longer, and coming back two years later already recovered, seeing the same faces, the whole team, the truth is that it was a dream. Also, I am very grateful that you waited for me“, it states.

In October 2020, in the midst of a pandemic and with the filming of the series stopped due to the pandemic, the actor from the big lebowski announced that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma. This break had to be prolonged longer than usual because the interpreter also tested positive for covid-19 coinciding with his chemotherapy sessions, for which he was very weakened and had to spend five months in the hospital.

Once recovered, he returned to filming The Old Manthe fiction of eight chapters that follows the story of Dan Chase, a lonely retired CIA officer and widower whose memory and body begin to fail hima series based on the homonymous book by Thomas Perry.

Between Dan’s remorse and survival instinct, and his eventual pursuer’s (played by John Lithgow) fixation on resolving old disputes, the plot blends family drama with action scenes that required Bridges to have a certain level of fitness. .

“Luckily we shot most of the fight scenes before I had the health problems I had, because if not, I don’t know if I would have been able to do them. It was really fun preparing and choreographing them with state-of-the-art stuntmen like Henry Kingi and Tim Connolly. It is the project in which I have had to fight the most in my life », he assures with a laugh.

But his health problems were not only something negative, acknowledges the actor, who confesses that his situation helped him interpret the onset of Alzheimer’s that his character has.

«In moments like that, it seemed that all your philosophy and spirituality and everything that comes to you, puts you to the test (…) All of that has been made more mature by that experience. I have always approached life in the same way », he explains.

For the actor in movies like Value of law (2010) or Rebel Heart (2009), this series marks his return to the small screen after decades focused on cinema. He admits that the project attracted him so much that he couldn’t turn it down.

“My friend Tim Stack recommended this book to me about five years ago and I didn’t read it at the time. And then when the script came, I said to my wife: This title seems very familiar to me. She said: That’s the book Tim’s been telling you about.and me: are you kidding. I read the script and it was interesting. And I read the book and it was interesting. Little by little I began to feel more deeply attracted to this project », she recalls.

The series, which premiered this summer on the FX channel in the United States, was so popular that it already has a second season, which is scheduled to arrive in mid- or late 2023.