[This story contains major spoilers from the Mayor of Kingstown season four finale.]
If one Mayor of Kingstown character holds the moral high ground in a town full of hard time prisoners, corrupt cops, gangsters and weary prosecutors, it’s Mike McLusky’s (Jeremy Renner) younger brother Kyle McLusky, played by Taylor Handley.
Since the first season, Kyle presented himself as a young detective on Kingstown’s highly corruptible police department who wanted to get along with his colleagues, protect the citizens of his dangerous crime-written city, and get home safe to wife Tracy (Nishi Munshi) and their newborn baby boy. The goal was to save enough money to move out of the dreary town and find a police department in a quieter, safer city.
But being the baby brother of Kingstown fixer Mike, who took over the job from their murdered older brother Mitch McLusky (Kyle Chandler) in season one, what was once a reachable dream has became unobtainable, as Kyle has gradually become more and more of a victim of the corrupt Kingstown with each season.
True to his nature, Kyle decided to make himself a sacrificial lamb and did a six-month bid in prison to protect a rogue officer from being forced to testify — an act that might bring down the entire Kingstown Police Department and his brother as a result. But as viewers learned in the tragic final two episodes of season four, it would have been better for the goodhearted protector to have minded his own business and looked out for himself — or those he loves most will pay the price.
The Hollywood Reporter recently caught up with Handley about that tragic arc of Kyle’s wife being brutally murdered while he was in prison, the threats to his son and the shifting relationship with Mike that might severely impact the McLusky family forever when the newly announced fifth and final season returns. [Editor’s note: This interview took place before the season five renewal news was announced.]
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When you first saw the script for season four, what were your thoughts about the hardships and heartbreaks coming for Kyle this season?
I just went, “This is everything I could have hoped for… let’s go!” He’s the center of the conflict. A cop goes to prison, everybody knows that’s not a good thing. So right away, everybody is put on notice. The audience is going, “Here’s the fresh-faced detective who’s not so fresh anymore. He’s going to do a six-month bid, how is this going to play out?” I thought it was a great decision by the creators.
Did you have any idea in advance how Kyle’s storyline was going to go with such great loss and darkness?
Yes. At the finale of season three, Kyle is seen getting carted off in the back of a cop car. I had heard murmurs that he was going to do some time. Again, you go, “Please, just go all out!” And I can happily say they really have. We’re on season four, and we have season five coming out. From here on out, it just goes harder and harder and harder. It’s coming together so good. And I felt a lot of love on set. I felt the magic on set, and now I’m seeing it while watching it all come together.
Taylor Handley as Kyle McLusky.
Jeremy Parsons/Paramount+
In the first episode this season, Kyle was beaten nearly to death by an inmate trying to make a name for himself in killing a cop. Then there were intense scenes of your character and an attempted rape in prison, all culminating to that tense moment when you hear a murderous Aryan Brotherhood member (Merle Callahan) in a home with your wife and child in the background. How did you prepare for such a physical and emotional ride?
Great question. This season, I knew it was going be a mountain to climb. When I was shipping off to Pittsburgh to go film, I was telling my wife: I got a mountain to climb. I’m really looking forward to it, but it’s going to be tiresome. Just going through all the emotional stress that Kyle has to go through, you want your performance to be the most truthful it can be, so you have to pull out all the stops to make it the best you can.
Not only is there the physical stuff Kyle goes through, that I went through, but it’s the emotional. You go to some dark places in your imagination, and sometimes you pull from personal experience, but you try not to do that too much. You don’t want to have to wind up in therapy after a season.
After filming some of these scenes, you don’t want to go and get a little therapy?
After a day of filming, you gotta go home, put your feet up, put on Seinfeld or something, and order Uber Eats. Some comfort food, and just relax, and make sure you get a nice night’s sleep and wake up in the morning to start all over again.
Kyle goes to prison in what appears to be a selfless act to protect the Kingstown Police Department from the prosecution at the risk of their unscrupulous tactics being exposed, and protecting his brother Mike. If there is anyone with an ounce of decency and moral fabric in Kingstown, it’s Kyle. But is Kyle also looking to punish himself? In season two, Kyle fired the bullet in a shootout at his family home that ultimately struck and accidentally killed his mother (Dianne Wiest).
Absolutely! I think there’s a mix of all of that, and he does feel guilty. He starts off as a fresh-faced detective trying to do good, protecting the ones he loves and the citizens of Kingstown to the best of his ability. But Kingstown grinds him up through the prison riots, through being fired from his job to accidentally being responsible for the death of his mother. His older brother, Mitch, died. It’s one thing after the other that this guy has to go through.
He absolutely feels guilty. How could a person not feel guilty for the thing he was responsible for regarding his mother? At the same time, he continues to be that protector. He’s going to jail not just to protect Robert [the rogue cop who was about to shoot an innocent man and his young son during the middle of the gang shootout at the end of season three], but to protect his brother and Ian [played by co-creator Hugh Dillon] to make sure everyone he loves is good, so they can get through it and move on. During one of the beginning episodes, he said he wants to get out of Kingstown with his wife and baby.
Jeremy Renner as Mike McLusky with Handley as brother Kyle.
Jeremy Parsons/Paramount+
With the death of his wife Tracy and the threat on his baby son’s life, does Kyle blame his brother Mike for that trauma?
Actually, the answer is yes. It’s what the show does so brilliantly — take these situations that should be stock standard. Oh, your brother promised this and he didn’t deliver on it, so you hate your brother. This very polarized idea about what that should be. But his brother is the only one of his family he has left. So the answer is: It’s complicated. The show so brilliantly takes that situations that any normal person would say, “Well, you need to hate him or you need to do this or that,” and makes it complicated and human. There is no right idea or right way to deal with a situation like that. Everybody’s so different.
That was actually a great thing about this season — to take those situations [and] how Kyle is going to deal with the situations he has incurred. It was a thoughtful, tailored performance that I brought to that I was gifted with in the material.
What was the hardest scene you had to prepare for, and is that the same scene you’re proudest of?
I think it is that scene in episode eight. There’s something kind of special going on. When there’s a scene that happens that’s not like every other scene. Every scene in Kingstown is great, right? But every once in a while, you get an opportunity to deliver a performance where if you really commit and you go above and beyond what the scene calls for, which I try to do all the time, but sometimes it all clicks.
I think in that scene, we did find something special. On the performance on the day, which is all I’m really in control of — not how it gets edited or whatever happens with it, but I know that on that day, when I was walking from my holding area to go do the scene, everybody kind of parted and backed up against the wall and was really respectful and quiet. Everybody can be cracking jokes and whatnot, but everybody knew the gravity of the situation that day. It was like we were all on the same team, and we all knew what the order was for. Everybody provided me with such a great environment to complete that scene. So yeah, that was my standout.
Can Kyle McLusky rebound from such a horrendous and deeply traumatic tragedy in season five?
I hope. It’s totally out of my hands. As an actor, you hope you’ve done the best work with the material you’ve been given in order to inform writers and creators for next season so you can continue to do the heavy lifting. You hope you have shown them that they can trust you to continue to deliver great performances. The storyline will continue to show Kyle’s journey through the Kingstown meat grinder.
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Mayor of Kingstown is now streaming season four on Paramount+.