Playing 'The Old Man' is refreshing to the eyes. Just ask Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow

FX's series old manJeff Bridges and John Lithgow play enemies of sorts – who worked together and clashed in the world of intelligence, eventually forced to join forces.

But in real life, watching the two actors sit next to each other and talk and talk, their friendship chemistry is palpable – especially when Bridges describes how a cancer diagnosis and Covid left him wondering if he'd even live long enough to finish shooting the film. . The first season of the show was a few years ago.

“I didn't think I was going to make it,” Bridges says, his trademark, light-hearted attitude momentarily turning serious. “Slowly but surely, I set small goals in front of myself… It was a big goal to get my daughter Hayley to walk. Down the wedding aisle [in 2022]…I trained as if it were almost a sporting event.

Lithgow says Bridge's email updates during that time were not so encouraging. But he always believed that his co-star would find a way.

“Something in me thought, OK, this show is exactly what he needs,” Lithgow added. “He needs that 'hay in the stable.' He really needs something to work on and fight for, because he really loves this show.

Lithgow also admits to a somewhat selfish reason for wanting to see Bridges finish the first season and tackle the second. “If you think about it, he and I barely got to work together [in the first season]” Lithgow said. “I thought, 'Dammit Bridges, you're going to come back here and you're going to play with me. You're the reason I wanted To do this show.'

A buddy drama about fatherhood

Indeed, the show's second season is something of a quirky, buddy drama, in which Bridges' Dan Chase — a retired CIA operative — finds that an old ally-turned-adversary has kidnapped his grown daughter Emily, played by Alia Shawkat.

Chase Lithgow is forced to team up with former FBI Deputy Director Harold Harper, who once mentored Emily – even though Harper chased Chase down and tried to kill him in the first season. These uneasy allies travel to Afghanistan to rescue Emily, forced to confront each other and their own troubled histories with her.

“What comes to my mind is love,” says Setu. “You think fathers love their daughters. Love is not all cupcakes and valentines and stuff. Love has a dark side…interestingly woven into the story.”

Alia Shawkat as Dan Chase's daughter Emily.

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Sounding like the world's biggest theater kid, Lithgow compares Emily's divided loyalties to the story of the musical. Oh mother!While admittedly their show features some of the most dysfunctional dads on television.

“One of them conspired to kill the other, the other found out about it, admitted why it had to happen and basically said … let's move on,” Lithgow says with a laugh. “They both know, because they're in this hair-raising profession, what each of them is capable of.”

Bridge sees it as a balancing act for men devoted to a cause and willing to do whatever it takes to pursue it. “You talk about extreme character…to be a spy and to be in this business you have to have ruthlessness on the one hand, but compassion on the other. And that's something I think we can all relate to. We all have egos and we all have empathy – and how we dance with the two…it's interesting.”

Exploring and redefining the “old man” image

Navigating Battle Scenes Viewing Bridges old manIt's hard to imagine he was ever sick while filming it Chase takes on assassins and spies half his age with skill and ferocity, showing that age does not necessarily equate to weakness or passivity.

That's one reason the show resonates so differently: While each of their characters might be considered the titular “old man” — characters struggling in different ways with regret, aging, fatherhood and family — in real life, Bridges and Lithgow also embody independence and embrace their age in Hollywood. Some performers have found the challenge.

But suggest they might define how to age gracefully in show business, and Lithgow, at 78, is annoyed. “You'd be surprised how little decision-making is involved in an actor's career,” he adds. “You wait for people to want you and…they want you for a very specific reason. Well, they wanted me to play a bunch of old people…turns out they need a lot of old people and there aren't a lot of old people around.”

Over the years, Lithgow has appeared in a wide range of roles: from playing a transgender former football player in Oscar-nominated films The world according to Garp A secret alien inhabits the sitcom 3rd rock from Sun. But recently, he has won acclaim for playing older figures like Winston Churchill CrownRoger Ailes in Fox News photo Bombshell And King Lear on stage

“You spend a lot of your career hoping that people won't notice that you're getting older, or wanting to look younger,” he says. “And now, half the parts I've played, I'm playing men older than me, because I still have the energy to do it.”

Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase.

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At 74, Bridges is a little more philosophical, saying that the challenges with memory that can come with aging also have an upside. “There's a freshness to the old, 'How am I going to do this?'” he says, a hint of wonder in his voice. “You never really know what you're capable of until you're tested. If life calls you to do it, well, let's find out… here I go.”

And did the feeling of testing Bridges extend to survivors of COVID and cancer? “The gift of all the things you fear are going to happen to you…they're gifts, and you don't realize it until you live through it,” he says, noting that he was surprised by his own reaction to the diagnosis. For when it was serious.

“When I was told, 'I don't know if you're going to make it', that kind of thing; I wasn't afraid of that,” Bridges added. “I think I'd be more afraid to do a scene and not pull it off.”