Kyle Chandler has admitted he used his role in new show Bloodline to work off some of his own personal family grudges.
The Friday Night Lights star is among an all-star cast, including Sam Shepard, Sissy Spacek and Ben Mendelsohn, in the Netflix original drama from the writers of Damages about the Rayburn family, who are hiding plenty of feuds and dark secrets.
Kyle said: “It was nice, because you get to go on stage, and you have a family scene, and there’s no doubt you’re thinking about drawing from your past, and you get to throw bombs at your family while you’re shooting. It’s a very enjoyable process!”
Ben agreed: “Everyone would have their own sense of family dynamics and people they knew were black sheep, so that was weaving throughout there the whole time.”
And the actors confessed that by discussing their own family relationships with the cast and the writers, they learned each other’s sensitive spots.
Kyle said: “You learn how to make someone cry in a scene by picking on that scab that you know is available, it makes it a lot of fun.”
But the actors also had to find a way to bond, so they could play brothers.
Ben said: “We knew we had to find a way to get along, and Kyle and I are very different people to each other. But I’ve got to hand it to him, Kyle is a professional through and through and he was able to overlook a lot of my faults.
Kyle added: “It was pretty easy once we started getting into the work. Ben is good at what he does, at just opening up and playing the game. You’ll see, it’s an enjoyable show to watch because the people who are doing the work are enjoying themselves. It became a family real quick.”
The show was shot in the Florida Keys, which is very hot, and has extreme weather conditions, alligators and bugs, but the stars made the most of it.
Ben said: “There was a lot of good times. It was a hot summer, and there some tough days, but we had a lot of fun. We were out on boats and stuff, there was a lot of good times.”
All 13 episodes of Bloodline will launch on Netflix on Friday, March 20.
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