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Dec 03, 2024 Web Exclusive By Kyle Mullin

The show may be called The Old Man. But its future is female. The hit spy series — whose entire second season is streaming on FX on Hulu — spent much of its first season focused on Dan Chase, an ex-CIA operative notorious for his prowess in Afghanistan. Oscar winner Jeff Bridges stars in this eponymous role, and earned raves for his realistically grisly fight scenes. And yet, co-star Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development, Search Party) stepped to the fore in more recent episodes, both braving crossfire to save a young boy, and facing down a foe by pressing her forehead into the muzzle of his pistol and daring him to shoot. During a recent interview with Under the Radar, Shawkat eagerly recalled just how excited she was to add those layers to her character.

Shawkat plays Emily Chase aka Abigail Adams aka Parwana Hamzad, who was raised by Dan and her mother Belour Hamzad (Hiam Abbass, Logan Roy’s wife on Succession). Belour is the former wife of Afghani warlord Faraz Hamzad (Navid Negahban; 24, Legion). After she and Dan had an affair while he was on a mission in Afghanistan, she left Faraz. But (spoiler alert!), the first season’s big twist revealed Emily (which is how we will refer to her character) was in fact Faraz’s biological child, even though earlier episodes implied Dan was her father. Throughout the eight new episodes that aired this fall, Emily learned her birth name was Parwana as she ventured to Afghanistan to reconnect with her extended family. Her father was the aforementioned foe who drew a pistol on her. But her unflinching response helped bridge a gulf between them, and in a few mere episodes — and much to Dan’s resignation as he arrived for what he assumed was a rescue mission — Emily rapidly embraced her long lost Afghani identity.

Shawkat — whose father was born in Baghdad, Iraq — was grateful indeed to showrunner and head writer Jonathan E. Steinberg (Jericho, Black Sails) for hiring Afghan consultants and conducting deep research, so that Muslim characters in this season had the nuance so often lacking in Hollywood depictions.

“My Dad is from a very different region than Afghanistan. But Jacqueline Antaramian, who plays my aunt here, has played my mother before. And Navid played my father before. So if you’re even Arab-ish, you end up working together a lot,” Shawkat told Under the Radar over Zoom ahead of the Season Two finale. “But what makes the show stand out is it’s showing what’s happening in Afghanistan, like how the Taliban is treating young women. It’s so horrific.”

For Shawkat, it was not only meaningful but also personal “to be able to depict from the inside, and show the consequences that would happen, and just humanize people in that area. Women and children and men. Rather than just looking at them as terrorists.”

In a separate Zoom interview, Steinberg called that aspect of the show “really important.” Aside from the cultural benefits of giving a too often overlooked demographic more grace and depth onscreen, his reasoning was also pragmatic. He said: “If we were going to tell a family story of this weight and complexity, that was set in Afghanistan, then it needed the same amount of attention as any other part of the show. And the same amount of emotional twists and turns.”

As a writer, Steinberg also challenges himself to layer each character as a protagonist in their own right. His aim: allow audiences to watch The Old Man from the perspective of Dan, Emily, and even supposed antagonist Faraz.

One of Steinberg’s key influences in that regard is, surprisingly, The Godfather. Though the parallels may not be immediately apparent, Steinberg points out how that gangster classic inspired him to write about “a person who needs to go away from home to find their roots, in order to be able to come back and to deal with a sudden onset of violence and complicated emotional relationships. There were moments, especially in Alia’s story in Season Two, where that felt helpful.” On the other hand, Steinberg says: “We’re trying to make sure that this story is always something you haven’t quite seen before. And whatever its references are, that the combination is something new. That’s the bar I’m trying to make sure we’re clearing as much as possible.”

For Shawkat, what is key in clearing that bar is The Old Man’s treatment of its Afghan characters is: “Humanizing everybody is the only way for storytelling to be healing.”

Of Dan Chase, Shawkat says: “This American went into this region, thought he was helping, and did something that was scarring. And now, who he thought was his daughter, is being like: ‘No, you can’t get away with what you did.’ She actually has to pay for it with her own identity. So it is a really interesting, layered way of showing what the damage is when you do something dangerous.”

That gave Shawkat’s scenes with Bridges more emotional heft. For instance: Emily argues with Dan about whether or not to save Faraz during Season Two. When she explains just how important doing so is to her, her father figure empathizes and reluctantly agrees. In the next scene, Dan tells her to stay back, only to later look up in dismay when he realizes she has followed and witnessed him using his notorious CIA training to brutalize a man with his bare hands.

Extreme as all that may be, the writing — and Shawkat’s and Bridges’ handling of it — make The Old Man’s deadliest Afghanistan-set scenes metaphors for more everyday familial ties, along with universal themes like lost innocence. Although much of the audience doesn’t “identify with war torn countries, the best way for that to happen is realizing these are all parents and children,” says Shawkat. “These are families getting ripped apart. That’s the way you kind of connect to people through storytelling. You care about these characters and about this family reconnecting.”

Such understated, dialogue-heavy stretches of the screenplay follow brutally violent scenes where Dan fights tooth and nail, quite literally, to fend off foes in his effort to rescue Emily. The realistic and gruesome fight scenes immediately caught audiences’ and critics’ attention from The Old Man’s first episode. That’s partly because it was obvious Bridges was rarely relying on a stuntman in those viciously violent closeups and long takes. Steinberg confirms: “A lot of that is him. It’s really important to Jeff to be in it, to do it, to feel it, to be there for the other actors. There are times when, if I had my way, I would lighten the load a bit more on him. But he wants to do the work. So it’s pretty brave.”

It may not have occurred to fans of the first season that Shawkat’s comparatively minor character would step into that fray. But as she morphs into Faraz’s successor, she not only begins risking her life but taking lives of her own, much to Dan’s dismay. “I’m not one for violence in my own life, so holding a gun and all that was quite foreign to me. But I just use it as an extension of her protectiveness. She really has to defend these people,” says Shawkat of Emily’s urge to stand up for the Afghan villagers her mother grew up with in Season Two. She adds: “I think it’s, sadly, a mirror of what’s happening in the world right now. To pretend to be someone who can protect people who can’t defend themselves is a cool thing to play, though it is make believe.”

Memorable as the action may be, one of The Old Man’s most moving and aesthetically dazzling scenes hinges on Emily’s internal life. When she arrives in Afghanistan and doubts Faraz is her biological father, some of the locals switch on a projector to show an old family movie. Soon the flickering light glows on Shawkat’s face, illuminating her tears, as she watches Faraz bounce her on his knee when she was a toddler.

“I think a part of her always thought it could be true, but watching that really solidified this kind of hole she’s had her whole life, in wondering who she is,” Shawkat says of performing that moving scene under the light of a projector. “So she finally embraces her real truth, which can be an intense moment. It’s a beautiful scene. And I love the way the light looks.”

This dramatic turn has even greater resonance for longtime fans of Shawkat and her work on comedies like Arrested Development and Search Party. Seeing her range as she becomes a dramatic lead on The Old Man was also impressive for colleagues like Steinberg, who says: “A lot of Season Two story for her character was stuff I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. During Season One, getting to know her and seeing what she could do, just made me want to write more and write bigger and really run her through the wringer. Make it as tragic and difficult a road to go down as Jeff’s or John’s [Lithgow] or anybody else in the show. And she rose to it. Her performance in Season Two is really stunning.”

Lithgow — an Emmy winner and Oscar nominee — plays yet another father figure of Emily’s, as her boss at the F.B.I. Emily worked as an agent under the alias Abigail Adams to feed Dan intelligence while he was on the lam. Lithgow’s Harold Harper took her under his wing, all the while was oblivious of her ties to Dan, with whom Harold served on Afghanistan missions decades prior. Harold’s and Dan’s journey to Afghanistan to rescue Emily from Faraz finally provides Shawkat, Lithgow, and Bridges shared screentime after much of their Season One interactions took place over the phone. It’s an added delight for sitcom fans to see one of Arrested Development’s stars alongside Lithgow, who camped it up for years as a fish out of water alien on the Emmy winning 3rd Rock from the Sun.

Such moments of course recalled the age old showbiz debate: which is tougher, comedy or drama?

Says Shawkat: “Comedy is a little easier on set for me because you’re keeping a high energy all the time. Whereas with drama, sometimes it’s harder to keep a higher energy because the scenes can bring you a little low. It becomes about maintaining the energy in those spaces. It’s stretching slightly different muscles. But I think they both come from the same place: it’s about connecting to something that feels truthful.”