[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Bondsman.]

Summary

In the TV series ‘The Bondsman,’ Kevin Bacon plays backwoods bounty hunter Hub Halloran, resurrected for demon-hunting duties by the Devil.

The series blends humor and horror in a small-town Georgia setting, focusing on ordinary people in extraordinary situations.

Bacon reflects on the evolution of horror, the balance of gore, and the potential for future seasons alongside Jennifer Nettles.

The supernatural horror series The Bondsman follows murdered bounty hunter Hub Halloran (Kevin Bacon), resurrected by the Devil with instructions to trap and send back demons that have escaped from Hell. With his mother (Beth Grant) by his side, he tries to reconnect with his ex and former partner in country music, Maryanne (Jennifer Nettles), and their son (Maxwell Jenkins), all while coming to terms with the metaphorical demons of his own life that have brought him to this moment.
During this one-on-one interview, Bacon discussed the show’s blend in tone, his very stubborn character, the fun of a slit throat prosthetic, the humor in the absurdity of the demon-hunting situation that Hub finds himself in, how horror has evolved since he first did Friday the 13th, and the experience of recording a soundtrack with Nettles.
Kevin Bacon Enjoyed Exploring Hub Halloran’s Internal Demons in ‘The Bondsman’

“He’s had a hard time growing up and committing to his family.”

Collider: When you play a character that dies in the beginning of the TV series, how does that shape things? How does that define the character? Does it give you a sense of freedom that you don’t normally have?
KEVIN BACON: It was just such a cool idea to start out with something that was that extreme and that violent. That gives you more of a sense of the tone of the show. Obviously, he’s died and come back. In terms of my focus, I was really interested in the fact that he’s such a manchild that he still has not really grown up. He’s living in his mom’s garage and he’s still in a lot of denial about all kinds of things. He’s not quite taking responsibility for his life, which is part of being a man. He’s a complete badass who will throw himself into danger. He wants to fight and kick ass. But he has a lot of demons that are internal demons, as well as the external ones that he’s just not confronting. He’s had a hard time growing up and committing to his family and his relationship with his son. He was unable to make the marriage work. He’s very stubborn in a lot of ways.
What was it like to shoot the throat-splitting moment, and then to have that slit throat for a bit? Was that a prosthetic that you were wearing?
BACON: Yeah, it was a very good prosthetic. That whole piece of it was just fun. When you start, like I did, when you’re a teenager, and you find yourself in all these different situations from being in space to being out in the desert to going down rivers or getting into gunfights to kissing beautiful girls, it’s all stuff that I’ve gotten the chance to do. And so, when somebody throws something completely new at you, like walking around with a slit throat, and then see it start to heal, but then smoking a cigarette and seeing the smoke come through the hole. I’m so grateful that there’s still new, fun shit for me to play.

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If you’re thinking of someone who deserves a second chance, I don’t know that a bondsman is necessarily the first thing that comes to mind, or even the second or third thing that would come to mine. But when you add in that he’s returning from hell to trap and send back demons, it makes much more sense. Did the humor in that come easily?
BACON: When I talk to people about the show, the elevator pitch is that I’m playing this guy that has been sent to Hell, but now he’s dead and he comes back and he’s a bondsman for the devil because there are some demons that are escaping from Hell. People are like, “What?!” They definitely get tickled by it because it’s just such an outlandish idea. But what’s really fun about the show to me is that, when it comes to the approach of the characters and the way that they’re just regular folks who don’t have superpowers, living in a small town in rural Georgia, I’m often interested, and you see this in many themes of film and storytelling, in taking very ordinary people and putting them in very ordinary situations. I think that’s what we have in this show, and I think that’s part of why it’s funny and also has some heart. Hub’s struggle to hold onto his family and his regret about not having been a better husband and a better father is real. And I tried to play it as real as possible. It’s a funny thing when you’re in a situation like that, as an actor. Part of being in a superhero or horror movie is that, even when things are totally crazy around you, you have to keep trying to figure out a way to keep the character as grounded and as real as you possibly can. That’s what the challenge is for something like this.
‘The Bondsman’ Didn’t Hold Back on the Blood and Gore

“I don’t have a problem embracing the gore.”

Image via Prime

Were there conversations about how gory and bloody to make this? Were there moments that you decided to push things further because they weren’t reading enough, or did it feel necessary to pull back on stuff because something just got too gross?
BACON: I don’t think we really pulled back, honestly. From my standpoint, I was like, “Yeah, let’s go for it.” Sometimes we would even add a little bit more in post. I don’t have a problem embracing the gore. I think it’s fun. There’s a great moment that sets a lot of the tone of the show, in the cabin when the guys are there and I shoot the guy’s hand off.

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Erik Oleson also talks about the family dynamic at the heart of the story, and the soundtrack of original songs from Kevin Bacon and Jennifer Nettles.

You dipped a toe into the horror genre early in your career with Friday the 13th. How different did it feel to do something in this genre? Does it feel like it plays less by those rules now than it used to?
BACON: Horror certainly has evolved. I’ve always been a fan. Some of my favorite early movies are Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Exorcist, and Don’t Look Now, but those are very much more what I would call psychological horror. By the time we came around, there were horror movies that were made by non-horror directors that were auteurs. When Friday the 13th rolled around, that was its own genre of teen slasher. It was really more about, how are we going to kill all these teenagers and who are we going to kill first? Definitely the ones that do drugs and the ones that have sex. It’s always the topless girl. That was its own kind of horror movie. But now, it really has taken another turn to being about something else, like with Jordan Peele’s films and a lot of stuff that’s coming out in the horror space. The thing that The Bondsman has, that has been done successfully, but is a very, very interesting needle to thread, is that it’s both funny and scary at the same time, like Shaun of the Dead or Cocaine Bear. I love that stuff. I made a movie in the early ‘90s, called Tremors, that was in that world. It was not a totally serious movie, but it had monsters and it was scary. I love trying to thread that needle, and I love that The Bondsman is trying to thread that needle.
Kevin Bacon Hopes to Return for Season 2 of His Demon-Slaying Love Story ‘The Bondsman’

“An escaped demon has now possessed my ex-wife.”

Image via Prime

How did you feel about the ending for this? This is left in a way where obviously there is much more that you could do with this. How did you feel about where this season is left? How did you feel about this spot that he’s left in with Lilith telling him that he has to follow her if he wants to keep Maryanne alive?
BACON: The dream is to do another season. I would love to do another season. When it comes to building an ending, you want to have something that’s going to make people say, “Come on, we got to find out what happens here.” With everything that’s going on, one of the main things that is driving Hub is how much he still loves Maryanne and misses their relationship and their love affair, but also the music that they made together and how those two things overlapped. So, to be left with the idea that an escaped demon has now possessed my ex-wife and that I have to continue to be around her and I can’t kill her because she’s inside this woman that I love so dearly, it’s a great dilemma for Hub. It’s a really good, cool way to end the show.

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“I Love That They’ve Left Us Open and Set Us Up for a Season 2”: Jennifer Nettles Is Excited About That Shocking ‘The Bondsman’ Finale Reveal

Nettles also compares ‘The Bondsman’ with ‘The Righteous Gemstones,” where she plays Aimee-Leigh Gemstone.

At the same time, how awesome to get Jennifer Nettles in that role, so that you can also have a soundtrack.
BACON: I knew that there was going to have to be some original songs, and somebody suggested that I could write some of them. I’m a songwriter and I’ve written tons of songs in my life with my brother, by myself, and with other Nashville writers. Michael and I have written three or four songs with other writers in Nashville. So initially, the idea was that I would pair up with some Nashville writers. The interesting challenge for me, as a songwriter, was to write from the point of view of the character, and not from the point of view of me. And it was not only from the point of view of the character, but the point of view of a character from many years ago. Hub hasn’t picked up a guitar since the marriage ended, which was 15 years ago or something like that. We’re talking about songs that maybe he wrote when they first got together or that they wrote together. It was a very, very interesting exercise, as both an actor and as a songwriter.
So, I was starting to think about song ideas, and then Jen was cast, not because she was a singer/songwriter, but because she was the best person to play the part. We started talking about writing together because she’s an amazing singer and a great writer. We got together and wrote one song in three hours in the studio. And then, we got down to Georgia and wrote another one. I wrote a couple, and I wrote one with my brother. And then, she wrote one. We just ended up with all this music, not all of which made it into the show. Some of them got rejected or we didn’t have time for them in the season. There’s a song in there that we do together and that we wrote together, and one that she does with our son that Jen and I wrote, and one that Jen wrote by herself. And then, there’s the arrangement of a traditional song, with “The Circle Be Unbroken.” I came up with the idea to do that as a family, and the guy who plays my son is actually a musician that plays mandolin, so it was perfect to have that.
So, the whole musical piece of it was really fun. When Hub goes over, picks up the guitar, and starts playing the guitar, I was like, “I’ve got three broken fingers, so I don’t know how he’s going to play the guitar.” But then I went, “Wait a second, if I put a slide on this finger and do open tuning on the guitar, I could just play slide.” And so, we added that slide part to the arrangement. There’s a lot of really fun stuff in there. And then, when we were finishing the show, Jennifer said, “We’ve got all these tunes. How about if we record them for ourselves.” And then, we decided to put them out and have an “inspired by” record.

The Bondsman is available to stream on Prime Video. Check out the trailer: