After initially running on DirecTV's Audience Network as an original series, Mr. Mercedes, adapting Stephen King's trilogy of crime thriller novels starring Brendan Gleeson as Detective Bill Hodges, is coming to Peacock. Season 3 joins the previous two seasons on the NBCUniversal streaming platform on March 4, after the first two seasons arrived on Peacock this past October. Season 3 follows Hodges searching for a killer who murdered a celebrated author living on the outskirts of town, with the body count steadily rising in the aftermath.
The series was developed for television by acclaimed filmmaker Jack Bender (Game of Thrones), with David E. Kelley, with Bender serving as executive producer and directing the majority of the episodes across all three seasons. In an exclusive interview with CBR, Bender spoke about bringing King's trilogy of thrillers to television, being able to really push the envelope with the series' graphic content and teased hopes for a future beyond Season 3.
This isn't the first Stephen King adaptation you've developed and directed for television. What was it about Mr. Mercedes that you wanted to bring to television after Under the Dome?
Jack Bender: I did Under the Dome for the first two seasons and it ultimately became somewhat frustrating because the stories weren't as good as the book eventually. For various reasons, I left the show and Stephen and I talked about doing something else because he really was a fan as I was a devotee of Stephen King's for years. And we started communicating during my time on Lost because he was such a huge fan of that show and, one day, the galleys for Mr. Mercedes came to my house and I was shocked.
I emailed him and said "What is this?!" and he said, "See if you want to do it!" I read it and I loved it and loved that Stephen was writing in the detective genre and that it was a stable approach to very interesting characters and that it was the premise of the serial killer that got away who literally comes back to haunt the retired detective who is a trainwreck and it reinvigorates his life. We talked about doing it as a movie and then a TV show, ultimately, because Stephen usually writes 500-700 pages of delicious characters around a brilliant plot and I felt it would eviscerate the characters if we didn't give them time to breathe and live. He agreed and decided to do it as a series and I was lucky enough to get my friend David E. Kelley involved because I said to David, "When you write weird and dark, which I've [worked with] you at times, even a show like Ally McBeal, it's so weird and so dark. You've got to do this." And he always wanted to do a Stephen King project and we all fell in love with it.
I thought to myself at the time that I really see this as a character-driven show and if I can get the brilliant actors I could get, starting with Brendan Gleeson -- who we were told he wouldn't do a series but he read it and loved it -- we all communicated and then we dove in and I got the rest of this cast that were superlative. I said from the beginning, I want to give these characters time to breathe; it's not just plot, the plot is the obstacle course these people through and some live and some die.
That was Mr. Mercedes and we were pleased to do two more seasons, even though it was frustrating to be on DirecTV. The good news about DirecTV is they let us do the show we wanted to make and it was one of Stephen's favorite adaptations ever. He sent me an email saying "I see what you and the writers are doing and I kind of wish I thought of that for my book!" But it was frustrating because not enough people saw the show so we're very grateful Peacock has given it a new life and, after it drops on March 4, it is our serious hope that we get to do [more].
Speaking of Stephen King's love of this adaptation, he has one of his most delightfully macabre appearances on this show. How did that all come about?
Bender: He happened to be on the set that day and we were doing that incredibly fun, delicious, dark sequence where Brady is with those wonderful characters and trying to impress them and clearly losing his marbles fantasizing the massacre of all these people that he'd love to kill. Stephen was on the set and I asked him if he wanted to do a cameo and he said he'd love to. I came up with the idea and he went to makeup and got the hatchet put into his back.
I will say one of my favorite moments -- aside from the Steadicam shot that moves along the dead waiter and blood on the floor and then we come up to Stephen as the short-order cook with blood and the hatchet -- I'm talking about what I referred to as Brady's mother locomotive c-section. I came up with the idea a few days before, which wasn't written, where Brady takes the knife, his mother is suddenly there, and he cuts open her belly and out of her womb pulls out the train that belonged to his dead brother dripping with blood.
I looked at Stephen and said "How great is that? That's got to be one of my finest hours!" and he laughed and said "It's great but it's pretty gross" and I said, "Well, that's got to be a home run coming from you to say it's gross!" It was just a great day on set and it's a sequence I'm very proud of followed by [Harry] and Robert's brilliant performance when he goes into the bathroom and manipulates him and tears apart the bathroom; it's just wickedly sick and funny. I find Stephen King funny at times and I think anything you can do with that to balance what's gruesome is important.
While Brady haunts Season 3, how was it adapting Finders Keepers and developing antagonists for Bill Hodges and the team?
Bender: I thought Gabe [Ebert] did a brilliant job playing Morris and then there's, of course, Kate Mulgrew as Alma Lane. David Kelley called me up working on Season 3 and said "I've got this great, new character and she's a real sicko!" and then he wrote it and Kate Mulgrew just hit it out of the park. Starting with Bruce Dern as John Rothstein, the writers and I decided to go to Finders Keepers to tell the story; that was David and Jonathan Shapiro, who wrote Season 3, who came up with the idea to focus it mainly on Finders Keepers. We had the actors who could pull it off and the writers just wrote great stuff.
Not having Brady, because he was so brilliant and what we all came up with together spontaneously at times...the writers came up with something in Season 2 that was tricky to pull off and not make it too sci-fi but keep it grounded even with Hodges [saying] "This isn't possible! The guy is laying in a coma in a hospital bed, he's practically braindead!" and then slowly [make it] undeniable what was going on, that's what we pulled off with Hodges.
The writers came up with the idea of having him in his lair because I didn't want to shoot the whole season with poor Harry Treadaway stuck in a hospital bed getting bedsores while doing voiceovers, it would've been really shitty. [In finding] a way to make him an active participant in the show, the writers [decided] to make his basement lair in his brain and that worked brilliantly. And I said if we were going to have it in his brain, let's make it the Brady Hartsfield Museum and bring in the crashed car, the gravestone of his brother and all the stuff that he's done throughout the season around him like all of his greatest hits. We did that but that initially came from Dennis Lehane and the writers which I thought was really great.
We always use music on the show in a really eclectic way, which I was very proud of and was motivated by Hodges' record collection. I'm not a big fan of just doing music and montages; it's overused to get emotion [by] playing the song, I wanted to do it based on the characters. David and I decided [Hodges] would have this record collection that was the only thing he would take care of. We had his record collection and Brady's music and I would always see [Treadaway] letting loose and dancing and one day he came in for rehearsal in Calvin Klein underwear and a tank-top and he wasn't in wardrobe and I told wardrobe I wanted him in his underwear. The next thing we know, we have the Radiohead on and he does this crazy, insane dance and a lot of that stuff was so creative and inventive. It wasn't at all easy to lose him [for Season 3] but I think we had actors and writing that gave the show enough of that it kept us going without him.
You were saying DirecTV let you make the show you wanted to make. Coming off the frustrations with Under the Dome, what was something you and David were keen on leaving your mark when adapting Mr. Mercedes?
Bender: I don't look back a lot -- I've been a painter since I was fourteen and feel like every painting is a new one -- I just want everything to be as great as it can be as I'm doing it. I had a lot of autonomy on Lost from Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse in terms of they would write these brilliant scripts and then we would make them alive. And at times things would happen that would surprise them but that they usually loved. I kind of like not knowing where the drip of paint is going to go and leaving room for stuff to happen and I knew I wanted to do a show based on Mr. Mercedes with David and the rest of the writers' brilliant scripts; my daughter Sophie wrote Holly for the first two years and established her brilliant character along with the books.
And I knew I wanted the show to be character-driven and I knew I wanted to have time, not only in the shooting of the film but the cutting of the show, that the characters would live and breathe and it wouldn't just be plot which was one of the challenges in Season 2. We brought in a bunch of new writers and suddenly started it started to be more plot-driven and it started to feel networky where you have you build in those commercial breaks. And I said I wanted to let this show breathe and be rad at times and that's something I knew I wanted to do and I knew I wanted to push the envelope.
Yes, it was written that Brady walks down the stairs after his mother plays with him and he masturbates; I knew that would be challenging. Our wonderful Director of Photography and I decided to do it in silhouette but you still got it and it still made total sense and it was even more graphic in silhouette. I felt that our hands were tied a little bit by the network on Under the Dome by not having it go there too far so I knew I wanted to do something that would push the envelope and, God bless DirecTV, they were very supportive.
From the first scene, with the car massacre, in Europe, it was resisted because that was the weapon of choice for awhile in Europe with maniacs mowing down people. Ultimately, I wondered if Mercedes is going to allow to allow it but, because Stephen's book is called Mr. Mercedes already, they didn't say anything.
What are you hoping, with Season 3 coming to Peacock, that audiences can dig into with this show if they missed it the first time around?
Bender: Exactly what you said, that's my hope, and I think based on audience reaction and numbers, I think that's happening. When it was first on DirecTV, even Season 2, I'd hear more from friends in Europe who loved the show. I'm very grateful that Peacock has breathed new life into the show and introduced it to a new audience and our hope is that when [Season 3] drops and people come to the party and really dig it -- Stephen thinks it's our best and I would say it certainly is close if not our best -- my hope is that Peacock [lets us do more].
Based on a trilogy of crime novels written by Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes stars Brendan Gleeson, Gabriel Ebert, Jharrel Jerome, Kate Mulgrew, Justine Lupe and Holland Taylor. Season 3 arrives on Peacock March 4.