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

Summary

‘The Bondsman’ is a wild mix of demons, gore, and country music with Kevin Bacon leading the charge.

The series combines fun, funny, bloody elements with a heartfelt family story at its core.

Showrunner Erik Oleson discusses the show’s development, Bacon’s charisma, and a cliffhanger ending for potential future seasons.

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.
The Bondsman is a wild ride of demons, gore and country music, with Kevin Bacon thrown in. It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s bloody, and it’s somehow a heartfelt family story. During this one-on-one interview with Collider, showrunner Erik Oleson discussed how he got involved with the series, developing the mix of story and tone, the charisma that Bacon brings to the role, having a main character that dies in the first 10 minutes, the family dramedy at the heart of it all, entertaining demons, a soundtrack of original songs from Bacon and Nettles, and the cliffhanger that he hopes will lead to more seasons.

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Collider: This series is a wild combination of things, but it’s a really fun ride.
ERIK OLESON: We set out to create a show that would be fun to write, fun to make, and fun to watch, and hopefully we’ve hit all three.
It’s cool because you have Kevin Bacon, who is a draw, but at the same time, I don’t know that I would automatically have thought of him for this.
OLESON: Kevin Bacon has been in so much. He’s worked with every great filmmaker of the last couple of generations. He’s done Hollow Man. He did Tremors. He’s worked in the horror space. He’s also done comedy with Animal House. He’s done dark drama with Mystic River. The guy can do it all. He’s so charismatic that his version of Hub Halloran, you forgive him for being the character that he is and you’re along for the ride, even though at times you’re like, “Who is this guy, and why do I care so much?” You care because Kevin brings so much of his natural charisma to it.
The Combination of Blumhouse, Kevin Bacon and Demon-Slaying Got Showrunner Erik Oleson Interested in ‘The Bondsman’

“I created the mix of elements that became the show that you watched.”

How did you get involved with this? How did you come to be the showrunner for this when you didn’t create the series?
OLESON: The truth is that there was a terrific original script written by (series creator) Grainger David, that is not the pilot that you watched, but it had the seeds of it. Kevin Bacon had made a movie with Jason Blum, and they were trying to package the show and sell it around town and get it made. Amazon read the script, and they sent it to me. They called me up and said, “Can you take these pieces of Grainger David’s original script and create a new show out of it?” And I said, “Wait, I get to work with Blumhouse and Kevin Bacon, slaying demons? Yes, I’m in!” So, I joined the party. I ended up creating the show with Grainger and writing the pilot. I did that. I created the mix of elements that became the show that you watched.
Was there like one major thing that you added first, and then everything else fall into place?
OLESON: In the very beginning, when you’re conceiving a show, the process for me at least is that I’m looking at a unique genre strategy, or I’m looking at a controlling idea or theme, and the obvious theme for this is redemption. However, it doesn’t quite turn out the way you think it might, if you watch the entire show to the end. All of that goes into the pot. I’m a showrunner who also takes pride in identifying the structure of a season early on, for all the artists that are going to be working on the show, so that I can get the benefit of all the other artists’ great ideas, as opposed to being the secretive showrunner who doesn’t want to tell anybody what I’m doing until the script comes out. I don’t do it that way. I try to involve everybody in the process early on. And so, I laid out a structure for the show, and that is ultimately what we ended up making.

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When your main character dies in the beginning of the series, how does that shape everything else that happens? How does that define the character for you? Does it give you a sense of freedom that you don’t normally have when the character is not already dead?
OLESON: Sure. I wanted to teach the audience what all the flavors of the show would be in that opening sequence, so when I wrote the beginning of the pilot, I’m introducing the Appalachia setting and I’m showing a bounty hunter bondsman on the hunt for a skip. You’re introducing that element of his character, as he’s putting on a bullet-proof vest and he’s got his tools. He’s a bounty hunter, there’s a wanted notice, and it’s Kevin Bacon. Now, he’s going up and knocking on the door at an old motel. And then, he pulls out a hornet’s nest, which teaches you that this guy has a DIY, underhanded way of working. As things escalate and that story ends up twisting and they slit his neck, you’re like, “Woah, they just killed Kevin Bacon in the first couple minutes of the show. What is happening?” And then, he wakes up and you’re introducing the supernatural elements of the show when he’s looking in the mirror. You can watch the opening eight or nine minutes of our show and get a pretty good hint of all the different tastes of what the show will be. It was a strategic way that I laid out that sequence.
‘The Bondsman’ Makes Sure to Balance Its Demon-Hunting Gore With Laughs

“Zigging and zagging the audience’s experience through laughs and horror makes it work.”

Image via Prime

You have that moment at the mirror that is gorier, where you show Hub’s wound, but then you follow that up with him smoking a cigarette and the smoke coming out of it. Can you make things gorier and bloodier if you then follow them with a laugh?
OLESON: We didn’t want it to feel too bloody and off-putting. One of the things that I very much wanted to do was to enjoy the watch and laugh. I’ve made some dark television shows in the past about some very serious political subjects. I just wanted to have fun, and I wanted the audience to have fun. Yes, you can release tension in an audience with an unexpected laugh. The classic example in horror construction is that you’re building suspense, and then there’s a jump scare but it’s the cat. Everybody laughs, but then the murderer comes in with a knife. Zigging and zagging the audience’s experience through laughs and horror makes it work.
Did that also come into play when you were figuring out who these demons would be? There’s just something so funny about a demon cheerleader.
OLESON: When I was talking with Amazon about the tone and I was pitching an exec ideas for the goofy demons, I knew I wanted to do the pastor, and I knew I wanted to do a demonic cheerleader. I wanted to do this mash-up that you weren’t expecting. To see Kevin Bacon wrestling for his life at the bottom of a pool versus a demonic cheerleader, that’s just fun. I want to watch that.
This could have just been a fun demon-hunting TV series, but then you have all these family layers to it that makes it even more interesting. What do you love about the family element? What was it like to get Beth Grant to play Hub’s mother?
OLESON: The family dramedy of the show is its heart. This guy gets sent back to Earth to hunt demons for the devil, but really, he’s only doing it so he can get a second chance at patching up things with his family and making amends with the loved ones that he’s screwed over. The members of his family don’t necessarily know everything that has happened in the past, including the big mystery of why he got sent to Hell. Beth Grant is one of my favorite people on the planet. She is such a great actress, but she’s also just such a ray of sunlight in everybody’s life, on screen and off screen. She became really good friends with my gal and they’re friends now, off screen. She’s just so thankful to be working. At the beginning, she said to me, “There just aren’t roles like this for women of a certain age,” and she was so thankful that we had created it. Her chemistry with Kevin Bacon is just unbelievable. You will never see anybody on screen take Kevin Bacon down a few pegs the way that she does. It’s just magic.

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I love that not only is Jennifer Nettles playing Maryanne, but that then allows for a soundtrack from her and Kevin Bacon to come about. Hor fun is it to be able to have the stars of your show also writing music for the show and putting out an album?
OLESON: It’s absolutely crazy. It was never intended that way. At the beginning of the casting process, Kevin and I realized we wanted to hire somebody that could sing because Maryanne is a singer, and Blumhouse brought Jen Nettles to our attention because they’d worked with her on The Exorcist. Getting her was this major coup d’état because the minute Jen starts to sing, it blows you out of the water. That is a talented musical artist. What I never predicted, not in a million years, was that Kevin Bacon and Jennifer Nettles would become real-life friends off-screen and spend their few hours of the weekend off from production, coming up with original songs that we might use on the show and then texting me.
I would get random texts from Kevin Bacon and Jen Nettles with music attached to it. They’d be like, “Hey, Erik. We were just riffing. What do you think of this?” And I was like, “Oh, my God, this does not happen in a showrunner’s career, where you have these two talented performers who not only get along as actors, but then they go off and write music together.” It was so great. Some of it is in the show, but there was more than we could even use. They came up with original music and music inspired by The Bondsman and they wrote it from the point of view of their characters. I didn’t expect that to happen. That’s a pinch yourself moment for any showrunner. If I had said that was the plan in the beginning, nobody would have believed it. It just happened organically. This cast and crew created a family atmosphere and everybody just wanted to bring their A-game to be a part of this project. It was a joyous and joyful work experience for everyone.
‘The Bondsman’ Showrunner Erik Oleson Had a Master Plan With That Cliffhanger Ending

“I wanted to make it impossibly difficult on Amazon to not give us a Season 2.”

Image via Prime

How did this season ending come about? Lilith tells Hub that he has to follow her if he wants to keep Maryanne alive. What will that mean for him? If you get to do another season, do you want to dig into and explore that?
OLESON: I wanted to make it impossibly difficult on Amazon to not give us a Season 2. That was my evil, devious plan to get us picked up. Yes, there is future story that I want to tell if we’re lucky enough to get another season. I will answer all of your questions and ask new, even more compelling questions if we get a Season 2. Do you hear that Amazon? Please, with sugar on top, give us more episodes.

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How does this Hell-bound adventure end?

Do you have a rule to never show the devil? Would you do that if you get to Season 10?
OLESON: Let’s make a deal right now. You heard it here first. If they give me a Season 10, I’ll show Hell. But until that, I’m probably going to hold off and let the devil communicate through faxes. One of the more fun aspects of our show, as opposed to some iterations of demon-hunting shows, is that really weird, strange way that the devil has a front company called The Pot of Gold, and he’s got a supervisor from what’s almost a pyramid scheme representing him on Earth. And Jolene Purdy, who plays the character of Midge, is the world’s most unlikely agent of the devil that I’ve ever seen on screen before, which makes me happy. The fun of a show like this is that you take the trope and you flip it upside down and you make it laugh-out-loud. You don’t do the scary Blumhouse witch in the woods. You do a demonic cheerleader. That’s the formula of this particular show.

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