How Two of the Darkest Movies Ever Prepared Jason Clarke for the Final Frontier (Exclusive)

If anyone was under the impression that actors are unaware of being typecast and typecast into similar roles over and over again, allow Jason Clarke to dispel those rumors, along with any doubts about whether this is actually negative or not. As the star of the Apple TV+ series “The Last Frontier,” the veteran actor plays Frank Remnick, the U.S. marshal of a small Alaskan town. Thrust into a central leadership role when a plane carrying some of the country’s worst and most violent criminals crashes in his backyard, Frank quickly discovers that he is on the sidelines of a series of events much larger than he ever thought possible. It’s not a role Clarke is unfamiliar with, to say the least, as he’s made a career playing various straight cops, soldiers, and other military personnel over the years. And to his credit, he knows this has its own benefits.

During a recent interview, I asked Clarke if she’s able to carry certain traits from one role to the next. Whether it was verbally harassing Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer” to within an inch of his life or channeling interrogation energy akin to that of a CIA intelligence officer in “Zero Dark Thirty,” both spiritually linked performances (and more) helped lead Clarke to an individual as nuanced and fascinating as Frank: a man who lives by a strict moral code in his work, even when this leads to complications in his personal life. As Clarke explained:

“It was inside me. You take them all with you and they sit inside you. There’s a lot of my father in this, a hard-working, sheep-shearing man. There’s the simplicity and the beauty of it, the decency. ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ the interrogator, the interrogation scenes in this, it all adds up and that leads to ‘Oppenheimer’: the ability to sit there and listen in an interrogation. the ability to tap a little to get something out of, but they must also be friends. “All of them, all of them become something more.”

You won’t believe it, but Jason Clarke still other role in an upcoming film where he plays, you guessed it, a military admiral. “A House of Dynamite,” which deals with the U.S. government’s response to an imminent nuclear attack, sees the artist reunite with his “Zero Dark Thirty” director, Kathryn Bigelow, for a film about power structures buckling under the weight of extreme scenarios. However, after spending so many weeks and months living as Frank Remnick in “The Last Frontier,” Clarke found himself in the perfect headspace to transition into his role in “House of Dynamite.” And, more practically speaking, his history of consulting real-life figures who have been admirals, police officers, or soldiers in his line of work also tends to come in handy. Clarke went on to say:

“And then there are a lot of cop shows, a lot of military shows. There really are. Kathryn Bigelow, to (cast me) to play an admiral in (‘A House of Dynamite’), I was able to fly over there and start working because I’ve worked with a lot of them, I’ve met a lot of them.”

For those who have yet to see the upcoming Netflix film, rest assured that it features another credible performance from Clarke in a role he is uniquely suited for. Fortunately, we will be able to enjoy even more of the actor in hourly doses over the next few weeks on the Apple TV+ program. New episodes of “The Last Frontier” stream on Apple TV+ every Friday.