Unlocking the Mysteries of 'Bloodline' With the Cast of Netflix's New Thriller
"We’re not bad people… but we did a bad thing." That’s the tagline for Bloodline, the star-studded psychological thriller from the creators of Damages hitting Netflix this week. But what exactly did they do, and how bad is it? That’s where things get a little tricky.
See, it’s hard to talk about Bloodline without revealing the big, explosive twist that comes at the end of the first episode. We wouldn’t dream of revealing it, and neither would the cast, as we learned when we spoke to them at Netflix’s winter press tour in January. But we did pick up a few things we can safely share with you to prepare you for your weekend binge-watch.
It has a cast any cable series would envy.
The power of Netflix and the strong track record of Damages creators Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman combined to attract a first-rate cast, led by Emmy winner Kyle Chandler, who had his pick of TV projects after Friday Night Lights ended in 2011. At first, it might look like Chandler is playing another Coach Taylor type here as John Rayburn, a sheriff and the golden-boy son of a prominent family in the Florida Keys. But Chandler was looking to play something distinctly darker after FNL… and Bloodline is certainly that.
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Film veterans Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard play John’s parents Sally and Robert, who run a popular inn on the Keys; Spacek admits that TV is “a brand new template for me… there was a certain leap of faith I took because of who the creators are… I’m like a kindergartner! It’s been exciting.” And familiar faces like Linda Cardellini, Chloe Sevigny, Steven Pasquale, and Katie Finneran are peppered throughout the cast, along with Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom) and two-time Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz.
"We are remarkably fortunate to have the cast assembled that we have," Glenn Kessler tells reporters, adding that this ensemble "can do anything you throw at them and elevate it to a whole new level."
Nobody in this family is who they seem to be.
"There are so many secrets in the show," Cardellini tells us, and she’s not kidding. We’ve already touched on how un-Coach Taylor John is. Sally and Robert are beloved in their community… but not necessarily within their own family. And John has three adult siblings: party-boy brother Kevin (Butz); youngest sister Meg (Cardellini); and the proverbial black sheep, eldest son Danny (Mendelsohn), a money-mooching drifter whose return to the Keys after straying very far from the flock pops open a closet full of family skeletons.
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The rest of the family either resents or pities Danny, but Mendelsohn tells us he sees his character in a much different light: “Danny is the hero of this family, in my opinion. It’s Danny’s acceptance of this black sheep role that has really allowed this family to continue on flourishing… They’ve all survived within the family. Danny’s had to survive outside of the family. But Danny wants to come back. And in doing so, that means that this stuff gets stirred up, you know?”
Meg’s a successful lawyer who stayed close to home and has a boyfriend her family loves… but we learn early on there’s a lot more to her story, too. “She has a role within her family that isn’t totally true to who she is,” Cardellini says. “But she doesn’t know the difference, because she’s never truly stepped outside of her family. She never cut the apron strings, really.”
The Florida Keys is a unique setting, and Bloodline takes advantage of that.
It’s no accident Bloodline is set (and filmed) in the swampy, sweaty Florida Keys: It’s gorgeous down there, but it’s also virtually cut off from the rest of the world. “It’s a place where people go on vacation for a reason, because it’s kind of away from it all,” Cardellini says. “It’s a beautiful place, but also a place where really weird stuff is capable of happening.”
The isolation is a good recipe for drama, but the terrain can take some getting used to; Mendelsohn says the Keys really only clicked for him once he got on the water. “If you’re driving, it’s a very restricted place. You’ve got one road, and you’re up and back that one road all the time. You’ve got a boat? Bam! The whole thing suddenly makes sense. You really need a boat down there to get it.”
An unusually hot summer down south made things tough on the cast, too. “Sometimes the elements would be hard, because it’d be so hot and so humid,” Cardellini says. “I grew a healthy fear of mosquitos.” But it adds up to a distinctive sense of place we really haven’t seen on TV before, and that plays a big role in how Bloodline's plot unfolds.
Even if you know the twist, you don’t know the whole story.
No one in the cast will say a peep about the premiere’s big shocker, but that’s just the beginning of the twists and turns Bloodline has in store. “There are so many layers in how the characters develop,” Cardellini hints. “They change so much.” And like Damages, the show jumps back and forth in time to flesh out the story, she says: “Sometimes it backtracks and you’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s why they did that!’ It’s different from anything else I’ve ever done.”
And even the premiere’s twist might not play out exactly how it appears at first. In the episodes that follow, Bloodline plays with perspective, a la The Affair, to show we maybe shouldn’t take everything we see at face value. “That’s the thing about this show,” Cardellini says. “What is reality? And what is imagined? And who’s the narrator telling the story? And is what you’re watching really what happened?”
Bloodline's enigmatic slow-burn storytelling and layers upon layers of character development make it a perfect fit for binge-watching. Mendelsohn says he hopes a few intrepid souls actually watch the whole thing in one day: “I'm pretty confident that the people who do decide to climb aboard, they'll be very happy they did.”
Bloodline premieres Friday, March 20 on Netflix.
