William H. Macy as Sheriff Krueger in the action/crime/thriller, THE DEPUTY, a Well Go USA release.
Courtesy of Well Go USA
***WARNING! The following contains major spoilers for the film!***
Thirty years after the release of Fargo, William H. Macy finds himself at the heart of another hyper-regional crime caper with unexpected twists and turns in director Matt Sukkar’s The Deputy.
Adapted by Carlo Bernard from the 2009 novel of the same name by Victor Gischler, the film unfolds in a sleepy Southern town where layabout Toby Sawyer (Duke Nicholson looking like Alden Ehrenreich’s ne’er-do-well younger brother) works as a deputy under the gruff, yet kindly, Sheriff Krueger (Macy).
“He’s a fatherly figure to Duke’s character,” Macy said of Krueger, who took a chance on the irresponsible young man with a chain-smoking habit and barely enough money to support his wife (Billie Lourd) and infant child. “I liked the way this thing was written. He’s kind, but he’s stern; and he’s got people working for him who he has to keep an eye on, because they are they are young and dumb and inexperienced. He’s got to keep a tight grip on it, particularly [when it comes to] his new, young deputy.”
The actor knows a thing or two about effectively unreliable characters, having played walking disaster Frank Gallagher in all 11 seasons of Showtime’s Shameless. “He was so wrong, deliciously wrong all the time,” Macy said of the role that landed him six Emmy nods. “Everyone in Shameless evolved. They grew up, they got married, [but] Frank never changed.”
Toby’s well on his way to becoming Frank Gallagher wannabe. As Macy put it, “He’s a piece of work, and you know it when you take one look at him.”
After a local man turns up shot to death in a parking lot, Toby is tasked with watching the corpse, but almost immediately leaves the crime scene to get laid. He comes back to find the body has mysteriously vanished, kicking off a borderline surreal evening of odd occurrences and revelations.
“It’s a murder mystery, but no, different genres,” Macy said when asked if he saw any parallels between The Deputy and Fargo, the latter of which nabbed him an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor. “Matt very purposely placed it in the South. He wanted that vibe. Same genre, but different films.”
The movie certainly lives up to its title, centering all of the action around Toby.
In fact, Sheriff Krueger only appears at the very beginning and very end. While Macy wasn’t on set for long, he thoroughly enjoyed the somewhat scrappy experience of working on a lower-budget project.
“Matt runs a good set,” he said. “But he was stressed. It’s an indie film. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and lots did go wrong in this film. When we got to my climactic scene, we couldn’t shoot it because someone had forgotten to build that part of the set. It’s a caution to make an indie film, but that’s balanced by the great spirit and great will to be there that everyone has. Because generally speaking, everyone’s moving up a step. If you were a second [assistant director], maybe you’re a first. If you were an assistant [costume designer], maybe you’re the costumer now. So everyone’s really working as well as they can.”
It makes for a nice change of pace from the occasional studio blockbusters like Jurassic Park III, described by Macy as a “magnificent” production.
“A big movie [with] really great people,” he added. “The best and the brightest in Hollywood doing the best work that they could. We used CGI, but it was in its infancy. It wasn’t simple and it wasn’t cheap, so a lot of that was mechanical. Those Velociraptors were actual puppets, animatronic. It took four or five people to run one, and I just thought it was thrilling.”
Asked if he’d like to see the Kirby clan return for more dinosaur action, Macy replied, “Yes. But let me be specific—yes, please.”
The actor also hopes to one day star in a horror movie as a skeptic who doesn’t “believe in the supernatural. “[The character who says], ‘Oh, grow up! There’s nothing in the closet!’ while the thing is looming behind me, about about to eat me, and I’m yelling at my family. ‘You’re living in a fantasy! Stop all this nonsense!’ I think that would be a great role for me.”
(L-R) Duke Nicholson as Toby and William H. Macy as Sheriff Krueger in the action/crime/thriller, THE DEPUTY , a Well Go USA release.
Courtesy of Well Go USA.
In The Deputy’s denouement, we learn that the sheriff was in on the homicide the entire time. He and another deputy, Billy Banks (Stephen Dorff), are corrupt as can be, illegally smuggling migrants over the U.S. border in exchange for cold-hard cash. “The bad guy is always fun [to play],” confessed Macy. “I like the twist in this thing, that sweet man is actually a bad guy … I’m a story guy. If you give me a good story where I didn’t see the ending coming, I’m a sucker for that.”
Once unmasked, Krueger’s final gambit is to try and rage-bait Toby, à la Kevin Spacey’s John Doe in Se7en, in the hope of provoking the young deputy into making some kind of slip-up.
“The way I played it was that I was still looking for a way out,” Macy explained. “He’s put handcuffs on me and blinded me, but I don’t give up. The taunting was to keep the ball in the air because you never know, and I was ready to make a move any time that I could. It just didn’t work out.”
Toby, who’s been forced to mature over the course of his nocturnal endurance test, doesn’t rise. Krueger’s strategy fails and he’s left with nothing but a glorious mustache, which was not a prosthetic.
“That’s me, buddy,” Macy declared proudly. “I’ve got a good mustache. I’ve had it off and on my whole life. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of growing it back. I’m doing this [Dan Fogelman] series called The Land, and I have a mustache in that. So it’s time to get the old top-lip growing.”
The Deputy is now in select theaters and available on digital VOD
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