Most teenagers in the '80s were probably preoccupied with playing sports, dating, and breaking video game high scores, but not the Hardy Boys. Inspired by author Edward Stratemeyer's beloved series of novels, The Hardy Boys TV series finds siblings Joe (Alexander Elliot) and Frank (Rohan Campbell) investigating the death of their mother, Laura, as well as other cases and supernatural phenomena. However, it's up to their father, Fenton – portrayed by Dark Matter and Blindspot's Anthony Lemke – to keep them in check and out of danger. Fenton, a roguish and relentless police detective, is doing his own sleuthing on the side, and, eventually, those two worlds are going to collide.
Anthony Lemke recently spoke with CBR about bringing the Hardy father to life on The Hardy Boys. He dove into the legacy of the teen sleuths, playing the father figure, getting into trouble, and a possible Season 3.
CBR: You loved playing the swashbuckling, Han Solo-type rogue on Dark Matter. What's exciting and interesting about playing the dad, Fenton Hardy, on The Hardy Boys?
Anthony Lemke: What was super-exciting for me when that call came in was, "Oh my gosh. I get to live something I am basically going through now." My eldest kid is 15, and my youngest is 13. It's right in the zone. For Hardy Boys' first season, it's basically bang on. I just found that rewarding and exciting to come in and bring my lived experience, my daily lived experience, into the scripts. It's there.
Playing the dad stuff, he does get involved, specifically later on. You see him actively in the detective/sleuthing stuff, but it's pretty heavy on the dad stuff. I find that rewarding to bring that into the picture. Of course, it's The Hardy Boys. That's the second part of it. How cool is that? Invented in 1927, it's been around for almost 100 years. It's just fun to contribute and be one piece of that legacy. To be able to play the dad is a real honor.
As you mentioned, Fenton isn't initially involved in the sleuthing this season... Then, boom! Enter Olivia. How much did you know ahead of time?
It's a little bit like Dark Matter in the sense that, no, we didn't know it all. I don't know how intentional it was to not drop 10 scripts on our desk. I know that for [Dark Matter showrunner] Joe Mallozzi, it absolutely was intentional. He intended to keep us in the dark because that worked for our characters. In this particular case, I didn't know where all that was leading when we were shooting it, which is fine in the sense that [that] is what your character knows. It ends up creating an in-the-moment sense. There's not a risk you are going to be playing the ending because you don't know it. I knew as much as the audience knows.
Fenton gets kidnapped by Olivia. How would you describe that dynamic because they both want something from each other? It feels very bait-and-switch.
Yeah, it really is. You had to think he would have seen something like that coming but couldn't help himself. In the end, he walks into many situations to try to figure out what happened to his wife. Maybe there was a bit of blindness there. As an actor, when you are reading it, you go, "This is going to end badly." Then, lo and behold, it ends badly.
Of course, you can't play that. You have to say, "Well, what would make someone ignore the Spidey-sense?" Sometimes there are things that are more important, such as finding out what happened to his wife, Laura. If you haven't watched the whole season, I won't spoil it. There is a big reveal about Laura at the end of it all, so I guess you could say it paid off, ignoring that Spidey-sense. That was the challenge in that particular relationship.
Fenton and his sons' narratives start off separately before those worlds collide. With all these big and deadly pieces in play, how much is he struggling with keeping Frank and Joe safe but also keeping them involved in the investigation?
Part of it is the convenience of the DNA of that particular show. It's a show about kid detectives, kid sleuths, which doesn't happen that much in the world. It's in the fantasy detective genre. Thirteen-year-olds aren't running around putting themselves in that kind of danger and solving stuff adults would be. That's the joy of the show. What's interesting about the show is it's very difficult to imagine kids these days having that kind of free-range ability to do whatever they want. They were smart to set it the '80s and have this retro feel to it. You sort of buy that Fenton could be, "Boys will be boys. Get out there. Get yourself into some trouble. Try to figure a way of getting out." I think my childhood was the tail end of that.
I think about how hard it is now to create the kind of environment, where your kids could live a version of that childhood now. If they set it in the present day, I don't think the relationship between Fenton and the boys would be the same. People might have a tougher time believing Fenton could be as hands-off and like, "Get out there and go get 'em. Go diffuse that bomb. Put yourself in harm's way." For better or for worse, kids were just way more independent. They got into more trouble and had to figure stuff out more for themselves. In that world, it makes a ton of sense that the relationship has evolved the way it does.
Frank's body is currently possessed by his great-grandfather's spirit. Why do you believe Fenton should be the one who clues in that something is off with his son?
I think there's a connection that parents have with their kids. Kids often feel that they are able to hide things better than they are, able to pull the wool over their parents' eyes, able to outwit their parents more than they actually do. Largely, it's because parents don't choose every fight. They remember being kids. I think there's an element in my answer, this idea that a parent would say, "I've known this child intimately for his entire life. There is something off."
Catch Season 2 of The Hardy Boys streaming now on Hulu and airing Monday nights in Canada on YTV and live and On Demand on STACKTV.