Mayor of Kingstown star Taylor Handley is thrilled about the big changes for his character in Season 3 of the hit Paramount+ series—particularly one because viewers are finally getting to meet a new member of the McLusky family.
“We’ve been waiting for the arrival of Baby Mitch since Season 1, so we’re so glad to welcome him,” Handley told me, smiling, in a recent Zoom conversation.
Mayor of Kingstown, of course, is a hard-hitting crime drama where Mike McLusky (Jeremy Renner)—Kingstown’s ad-hoc “mayor”—is intensely tasked with keeping the peace between the inmates and the guards behind Kingstown’s prison walls and criminals and law enforcement officials on the outside.
Handley stars in the key role of Mike’s younger brother, Kyle, who in addition to becoming a new father in Season 3, is transitioning from his work as a detective with the Kingstown Police Department to becoming a member of the KPD’s S.W.A.T. team.
While the arrival of Baby Mitch is cause for celebration in Season 3, the birth comes with deep underpinnings of sadness. At the end of Season 2, Kyle and Mike’s mother, Mariam (Dianne Wiest) was critically wounded in a gun battle and at the beginning of Season 3, we find out that she didn’t survive.
As such, Season 3 begins with Mariam’s funeral, but the McLusky brothers can’t even mourn properly as a bomb goes off at their mother’s burial. It’s a stark reminder that Kingstown continues to be a dangerous if not outright deadly place for anybody to live—especially for members of the McLusky family.
Handley said that’s been the dark cloud hanging over Mayor of Kingstown since the series’ pilot episode in 2021 with the shocking execution of Mitch (Kyle Chandler), the oldest McLusky brother and Mike’s mayoral predecessor. The unexpected death set the suspenseful template for the series, and Handley is thrilled how the series’ co-creators are intent on keeping viewers on their toes with every episode.
“What Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon did in the first episode of this series was so genius because they had Kyle Chandler—America’s sweetheart—then they killed him in the middle of the first episode,” Handley said. “Personally, I thought it was a fantastic artistic choice because what it showed was that no one is safe in Kingstown.”
This, of course, means that Handley’s character could also die at any time in Mayor of Kingstown. But since the series has already lost Mitch and Mariam, Handley is hoping Kyle’s life will be spared.
“How many more family members of Mike’s family can they kill?” Handley said with cautious optimism. “I feel pretty good.”
Handley Says Renner Didn’t Miss A Beat In His Return To ‘Kingstown’
While the cliffhanger ending of Season 2 of Mayor of Kingstown made it quite clear to viewers that more of the show was on the way, those plans were thrown into complete disarray with Jeremy Renner’s near-fatal snowplow accident on New Year’s Day of 2023.
Like the rest of Renner’s fellow cast and crew members, Taylor Handley was merely hoping for his on-screen brother to recover. As such, Handley was taken aback not only by Renner’s rapid recovery but also by his sheer determination to make Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 a reality.
“We were so emotional and so grateful that he pulled through in the manner that he pulled through,” Handley said. “Not only that, he’s excelling.”
What really threw Handley for a loop, though was how Renner returned to the set of Mayor of Kingstown so soon after his accident as if nothing ever happened.
“Let’s just talk about the timeline here. It was almost a year to the day of his accident that he was back on set. One year after such an insane accident like that where over 30 bones in his body were broken,” Handley said.
“I’ve gotten to know Jeremy very well throughout the seasons and honestly it doesn’t surprise me how he’s come back,” Handley added. “Just in the way that he carries himself and the people that he has around him, the mindset he has and his work ethic—he’s a trooper and a machine. It didn’t surprise me when he came back even stronger than before.”
Mayor of Kingstown Episode 8 airs Sunday on Paramount+, with new Season 3 episodes premiering every Sunday through August 4.
Read the full article here