Legendary actor Kurt Russell and his real-life son Wyatt are back to battle big monsters on the small screen in “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.”
The Apple TV series returns for a second season Friday, and is set in the Legendary Entertainment Monsterverse — which features titans of terror including Godzilla and Kong.
It’s an action-packed, stunt-heavy show for its cast — which isn’t as easy you might think for a former professional Hockey player like Wyatt.
“The difference is, hockey was a very specific, physical, shortened time period,” explains the actor. “You play for an hour and a half…you practice, you tear your body apart, build it up. But in this ‘game,’ you’ve got to do this all day, every day for like six months, sometimes. There’s a mental part of it which is very difficult and I think even athletes coming into it don’t quite understand.”
For father Kurt, working in television is something of a return to roots. The actor’s big breakthrough came in the early 1960s, with the Western television series “The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters.”
“We didn’t have trailers to stay in between shots; our little cubicle was on the set,” says Russell of those early days in television. “And the set now is about 50 times more quiet than the sets were then. Because nobody had the [technology] to talk to each other quietly!”
“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” also stars Emmy Award-winner Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, and Ren Watabe. Following Friday’s premiere, new episodes will stream every Friday through May 1st, exclusively on Apple TV.
