The father and son acting duo opened up to ET about creating their character together for 'Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.'
For Kurt Russell and son Wyatt Russell, starring together in the new series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters provided them with a unique opportunity to play the same character in two different time periods.
The father and son acting duo recently sat down with ET's Nischelle Turner, and reflected on the challenges of portraying the same man, 50 years apart.
"We were being given this opportunity to play the same person, as opposed to the father and son, so we started hammering away at it and saying, 'Let's make this good!'" Kurt, 72, explained.
"[Playing] father and son is like low-hanging fruit," Wyatt, 37, shared. "And we've never been people, genetically, who have gone for low-hanging fruit. It's just never been interesting [for me], it's never been interesting in his career."
Instead, Wyatt explained that he and his dad would prefer to ask the question, "'What's the hardest thing you can do?'"
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters tracks two siblings following in their father's footsteps to uncover their family's connection to the secretive organization known as Monarch. The pair follow clues that lead them to uncover events from the 1950s, involving Officer Lee Shaw, and through the present, when the organization is threatened by what an older Shaw knows about their machinations.
The dramatic saga - spanning three generations - reveals buried secrets and how epic, earth-shattering events can reverberate through our lives.
"I suddenly found myself saying, 'God, well, Wyatt's gonna create this character, and I'm going to play him later on in life, so its gotta all make sense," Kurt shared. "And I suddenly realized I've watched him all his life, but I've never examined him."
"That was really interesting, because I started seeing things about him that I could feel resembled me," he added with a laugh.
For Wyatt, however, the paternal similarities apparently resonate even more strongly when it comes to his own 2-year-old son Buddy and Wyatt's famous father.
"I see in my own son, more than I see in myself, the physicality of my dad," Wyatt joked. "Like, genes are recessive and traits are recessive and there's certain things my son does where I'm like, 'Oh my god! You're just like my dad.'"
Kurt and Wyatt's new series is a part of the Monsterverse cinematic universe, which began with 2014's Godzilla, and includes Kong: Skull Island (2017), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021).
For Kurt, getting to be a part of the world of behemoths and titans was something he'd been fascinated by since childhood.
"I was probably, I don't know, maybe 8 years old when I first saw Godzilla, and that was an image that I never forgot," Kurt shared. "What I love about sci-fi is great sci-fi is an opportunity to examine some huge [philosophical] questions."
"And it was just, for me, a wonderful opportunity to get to work with Wyatt," he added with a smile.
As for Wyatt, he came into the project without a particular affinity for kaiju films, and didn't grow up watching the many iterations of Godzilla.
"I wasn't interested in monster movies, I didn't see superhero movies, monster movies, it was not what I was into," Wyatt explained. However, he was drawn to the project because of what the producers were trying accomplish.
"The challenge of what [they] wanted to do was create a show that had something that went beyond just running from a monster," he explained. "[The] challenge was to make you care about the characters and have real depth, so that was that was what we took on. And it was fun to be able to do that. It was fun to be able to do it with my dad."
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters will premiere globally, with the first two episodes on Nov. 17, followed by one new episode weekly through January 12, exclusively on Apple TV+.
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