Kurt and Wyatt Russell are the real big beasts of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters”

The father-and-son film stars play the same character in different timelines on MonsterVerse show.

As you might expect from a MonsterVerse spinoff show, Apple TV+'s Monarchy: Legacy of Monsters has no shortage of gigantic beasts. But in Kurt and Wyatt Russell, the show's human cast boasts a real-life father-and-son pair who cumulatively cast a Godzilla-sized shadow over the science fiction genre. Wyatt's credits include the TV shows Black Mirror and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, while Kurt is a bona fide sci-fi icon thanks to his big screen collaborations with director John Carpenter, including 1981's Escape From New York — in which he played the President-rescuing Snake Plissken — and 1982's alien horror movie The Thing.

"I very much am fond of it," Kurt, 72, says of science fiction, when he and Wyatt join EW for a conversation over Zoom. "I think there’s two genres that allow you ask really big questions about humanity. Sci-fi and the westerns," adds the star, who played Wyatt Earp in 1993's beloved Old West tale Tombstone.

"I love sci-fi when it’s done well," says Wyatt, 37. "I kind of hate sci-fi when it’s not done well."

"Yeah, that'’s the scary part," Kurt says with a laugh.

"But when it’s really done well," Wyatt continues, "and there are some great set pieces, great ideas, future-history where you’re like, well, that's really smart, that could totally be what the future is like in 2093, then I love sci-fi. There’s no better place to play around in."

On Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, the pair play the same character, U.S. army colonel Lee Shaw, in different time periods. Wyatt portrays the '50s-era Shaw as he helps found Monarch — the secret organization that attempts to monitor the world's Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms — while Kurt is as an older version of Lee who, following Godzilla's 2014 attack on San Francisco, agrees to help siblings played by Anna Sawai and Ren Watabe find their father.

Monarch executive producers Chris Black and Matt Fraction tell EW that the elder Russell did not disappoint, on or off-screen.

"The man who played R.J. Macready and Snake Plissken and Jack Burton is every inch the movie star and the human being that you would hope he would be," Black says. "He does not let you down."

"He’s led such a crazy and incredible life, from kid actor to baseball player," adds Fraction of the actor, who played for the Double-A team El Paso Diablos in the early '70s. "And also, just to see the hair. Like, you see it and you’re like, goddamn, he's like a lion!"

Fraction says the pair "really worked" at ensuring their respective performances blend together into into a single character. "It got to the point where Wyatt was Lee and Kurt was Shaw, just to kind of differentiate, and I think you could see over the span of the season Lee becoming Shaw and Shaw rediscovering who he was when he was Lee," he says. "It was just a gift of the two of them working so hard together to make this character coherent across these decades. It was really, really fascinating to watch them work."

To keep track of what was going on with his character on the season's 10 episodes, Kurt laid out all the scripts on a table. The actor explains that he "can’t work digitally. It’s impossible. I was trying to get everybody to put it into one script, so I didn’t have to do that, it was very difficult. Yeah, I’m old school. And Wyatt is old school. That’s what’s interesting here."

"It’s so funny, I walked into my dad’s apartment, and he had all of these scripts laid out," Wyatt says. "I remember, when I was working on The Falcon and Winter Soldier, I had a table which was not quite as big, but the scripts were laid out."

Executive producer Fraction insists that the Russells were "game" to take on the more physical demands of the shoot, although Kurt is dismissive of his efforts in that department.

"To be honest with you, there wasn’t that much," he says. "There were some wire gags and stuff like that. [It was] hard running through the snow. Running, I’m not a big fan of. No, this wasn’t a difficult show really in that regard. [Wyatt] had a fight scene. That’s legit."

"I had a fight scene," Wyatt says. "Rope-climbing..."

"He had stuff," says Kurt. "We're going to keep it that way!"

Kurt and Wyatt previously shared a role on another science fiction project, director Paul W.S. Anderson's 1998 film Soldier. The pair played the titular role of a genetically-engineered, and emotionless, member of the military named Todd with the preteen Wyatt cast as the young, in-training version of the soldier.

"Wyatt was terrific," Kurt says. "I'm in my trailer doing some other stuff, he’s out there shooting, and I couldn’t get out there to watch. I say, ‘How did it go, Wyatt?’ He said, ‘I think pretty good, but when they fired the gun, I’m pretty sure I blinked.’ It just hit me right away. Man, he’s in it already, he’s already trying to find the right thing. I went to the director, Paul, and said, 'Can I look at the video, because Wyatt thinks he blinked?' [We] look at the thing, and there it is, Paul said, 'Yeah, you’re right, let’s do it again.' I thought to myself, okay, I like that attitude. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Wyatt’s now having the career that he's having, because it matters to him."

Wyatt will next be seen in the horror film Night Swim (out Jan. 5) while Kurt recently shot a role in the crime thriller The Rivals of Amziah King ,which the actor says "could be this very cool movie." The actor is less enthusiastic about EW's suggestion that the pair reteam on an Escape from New York sequel with Kurt playing a mature Snake Plissken and Wyatt his son.

"In my book, Snake should never mature," he says.

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