Lone Star EP Amy Lippman & Star James Wolk Talk Texas

In a recent conference call with NiceGirlsTV, Executive Producer Amy Lippman and star James Wolk shared a few insights about one of this fall’s most anticipated new series Lone Star. The series about a con man living two lives with two different women and attempting to pull-off a double con is set to captivate the imagination of the television audience.

James Wolk will charm you in Lone Star / FOX

Amy explained that Kyle Killen created Lone Star based on his experiences growing up in Texas where he studied Texas history, reading about the oilmen profiled in books like “The Big Rich,” as well as studying H.L. Hunt, the infamous con man who had three families. Killen was fascinated by Hunt’s confident attitude that he could take from life carte blanche what he wanted. This was the gestation point for creating Lone Star, in which Killen could simultaneously tell the story of big oil and all the rich characters that rose out of that era and those which may seek to prey upon them. Thus, for Amy and Chris Keyser, as writers and producers, it became their goal to portray characters who were very rich and yet find a way to make them sympathetic. An added challenge became: how can you root for someone who’s doing these things – scamming the rich as well as the poor?

“That was the trick of it,” said Amy. “I think it’s what [James] handled really, really well in the pilot is that you are on the side of someone who is doing something that’s really amoral.”

To make it believable and engaging, it was essential to find the right actor. Amy revealed that the part had originally been conceived for an older actor, but once they met James they had to re-think the character because he has so many qualities that they thought were really important to the story they wanted to tell.

Amy said, “[James] had a warmth and a directness and a charm and a charisma that made us rethink what it meant to have an older actor in the role.” She also is thankful to have an unknown actor, which she believes is an advantage. She explained, “The fact that people will discover him that they don’t bring other roles that he’s done into the mix. He’s a new face. He’s a new talent, and he can inhabit this character without other people thinking, I’ve seen him do this or I’ve seen him do that. So I think it’s actually there’ll never be this moment in time for him again where people don’t know who he is.”

Sharing a bit of the challenges of playing two different characters, James said that to him, Bob/Robert are essentially the same guy. He explained, “I think the most challenging thing for Bob is of course being everything to everyone, and we touch on that. It’s more difficult than one would imagine to fully live two lives. I think that’s Bob’s greatest challenge . . . to give his all to these people and really, he can’t. He’s in two different worlds.”

Two women think he's their one man.

Amy added, “I see how conflicted [James] is about hurting people just as a person — not just as an actor — but as a person. So what I see as being a challenge for him is to actually inhabit the role of someone who is selfish or deluded or has put his own need to have a real life ahead of the people who sort of comprise that life in some way. And it’s an interesting struggle that all of us have in sort of conceiving the show – what is that balance? What is that balance between him truly being a sympathetic character and wanting the best for the people around him and at the same time having, really being responsible for putting himself in a position where everyone could potentially lose?”

The ultimate challenge of the series is not keeping Bob/Robert’s lives separate, but how can James portray him in a compelling and appealing way that will not alienate viewers. What Bob is doing, conning everyday people, may rub people the wrong way – if not delicately handled. It is thus up to James to make the character sympathetic and interesting enough that the viewers want to see how it all works out. To keep the audience engaged and entertained enough to tune in each week.

One way of approaching that monumental task is to ensure that the audience understands and believes that Bob/Robert truly loves both of the women in his life. It is not enough that they are beautiful and desirable; James has to convince us that Bob is genuinely in love.

In addition, James said, “while he does believe that he’s in love with [Cat and Lindsay], he never had wealth as a child growing up and the Thatcher family and Cat are this luxurious posh lifestyle . . and so in some respect, even if he doesn’t know it, it certainly is filling something that he never had . . . . [similarly] with Lindsey and her family in Midland. That is an American family . . . [and] Bob didn’t have that growing up either.” Both lives offer something that Bob did not have growing up and desperately wants and craves.

Thus, James explained, “There are voids in him that he’s trying to fill, and that is, while he does have a big heart . . . he is flawed in some respects — there are screws that are a little loose, and I think he is certainly somewhere deep down trying to fill these voids as well.”

David Keith / FOX

While Bob/Robert may be the same man pretending to be two different men, for James, he works hard to keep all the different personas distinctly separate. To demonstrate how he sees the different personas, James shared a bit of advice he received from his co-star David Keith, who plays Bob’s father, “[If] you’ve made the mistake of playing yourself, that means that you’ve exposed yourself.” James elaborated by explaining that Bob has opened himself up to these people and that it is hard to con people and just walk away once a real emotional connection has been made. Bob’s father always made a point of keeping an emotional distance and could walk away in the end.

Yet, that is perhaps Bob’s greatest fault and weakness – he has opened himself up to these two girls in these two worlds and has, in essence, been playing himself in both lives. While the character may be living in both places, he does not really distinguish himself as a different person in either place. He is himself in both places. Therefore, Bob is himself in Midland, and he is himself in Houston; just tailoring the way he interacts with people in Houston.

James explained, “[Bob] has to demand the respect of an oil company. He has to demand the respect of a man like Clint Thatcher, played by Jon Voight, and as anyone knows to demand respect . . . you’ve got to hold yourself up high. So he has to carry himself with a certain self-respect as he walks through the office of Thatcher Oil.”

However, that all changes when Bob is in Midland, that is when he can take a breath. James said, “[Bob] can relax, or so he thinks at this point, but he is himself altered a little bit in each place in order to get what he wants, in order to make these people believe in him and go with him on this journey.” It is only in Midland that Bob feels safe and secure.

Trying to explain why on earth Bob would even want to maintain his life with Lindsay in Midland when he has a bigger con running in Houston with the Thatchers, Amy explained that Bob’s life in Midland is purely a fluke. He was not supposed to fall in love with either woman. Bob’s sights were clearly on the Thatchers as his mark, but then he fell in love with Cat. The same thing happened when he was in Midland. It was supposed to be a routine con, but then he met Lindsay. Because Bob was not initially working for Thatcher Oil, which was part of his long con, he needed a way to make himself look credible to the Thatchers and going around doing the smaller cons made him appear like a legitimate businessman. Thus, Midland was not intended to be a stopping point – it was supposed to be a stepping-stone.

Jon Voight / FOX

In fact, Lindsay was a glitch in his master plan to establish his identity to impress the Thatchers. Amy elaborated by sharing, “I think it speaks to how vulnerable he was to the life that Lindsay had to offer him, which was simple and uncomplicated, far less citified if that’s a word — and he was drawn into it and then couldn’t extricate himself.” Bob was supposed to come out clean from his con in Midland, but got caught up in his life with Lindsay which is now creating a wrinkle in his long-term plans with the Thatcher con.

Revealing a bit of his personal background and how that helped him in creating this incredibly complex character, James said that his prior experience in selling shoes and being a DJ helped him connect with people — to make them feel comfortable and to believe in him; as both professions demanded that the consumer feel very comfortable and trusting the person they are buying from or talking to. That is exactly the key to portraying Bob Allen – he makes people feel comfortable. James summed it up nicely with, “[Bob’s] greatest tool as a conman . . . is to make people believe in him.”

Touching upon some of the creative challenges in writing for such a complex, richly drawn show, Amy said that the primary challenge is to tell really dynamic, intriguing, kind of fantastic stories while not getting too far away from reality.

She shared, “There’s a certain degree of realism to it. [Bob’s] not all bad, and he’s not all good. And for us, the challenge has been to sort of walk that fine line as we move through stories; that he is not all sympathetic and he’s not all evil. That he is human and flawed and to find a way that you can continue to root for him even when he does things that are kind of despicable, but with good intentions.” Thus, it is Amy and Chris’ job to figure out how to walk that fine line of a character who is both good and evil.

As for how long they think they can sustain such a heavily serialized story that is based on the double-con, Amy laughed saying, “That’s what’s giving us grey hairs and keeping us in the story room very, very late at night!” She then added that they felt the show had lots of inherent intrigue. It will offer both over-arching cons lasting the entire season, as well as smaller cons that Bob is forced to participate in order to keep his two lives separate. Then intertwined will be issues involving Bob’s marriages that keep him busy juggling his personal life as well as the numerous cons.

Additionally, Bob is torn between his loyalties to two father-figures. Bob has a lot of demons and comes from a dysfunctional past. He may want to be an honest, upright guy, but he must first extricate himself from the complex web of lies for which he finds himself entangled. As Amy happily shared, “The good news is it’s really dramatic and emotional. Hopefully, that is what will bring an audience in is they will like him and both want him to succeed at this and feel for his conflict because it’s a genuine conflict about what he’s doing.”

Whether or not the audience can keep Bob’s double identities and multiple cons straight is another question. The labyrinthine stories may require a cheat sheet!

Lone Star premieres Monday, September 20th, at 9 p.m. on Fox.